IN THE EYE OF DIXIE STORM.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

Cameras were rolling when, on the eve of the Iraq War, Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks made her historic crack about President Bush at a 2003 concert in London.

The best-selling female group of all time thought it would be appropriate to have their (since) ironically labeled ``Top of the World'' tour filmed, and to their credit they kept the video cams around as fallout from the off-the-cuff remark turned the Chicks into right-wing punching bags and pariahs to large swaths of once-adoring conservative country music fans.

By the time documentarians Barbara Kopple (``Harlan County U.S.A.'') and Cecilia Peck hooked up with the Chicks some two years later, they were two lucky liberals. Maines and her bandmates, sisters Martie Maguire and Emily Robison, had not only become completely comfortable with discussing anything in front of cameras, they'd developed their own hard-nosed united stance against the attacks on their politics, personalities and careers.

Plus, there was all that previous footage from the hottest days of the controversy to cull from. All Kopple and Peck had to do was let the Chicks keep having their say, and it was access city.

As a result, the movie ``Shut Up & Sing'' doesn't give the anti-Chicks contingent much traction; indeed, even when Bush logically points out to a TV interviewer that the ladies had just as much right to express their opinions as some of their fans did to boycott their products in response, we're meant to laugh sneeringly at some perceivable hypocrisy in his statement. At the same time, though, Kopple and Peck go pretty easy on the Chick-haters, too; we hear the girls laugh at a few rightie blog postings and share their paranoia over a Dallas concert death threat, but the more bilious blatherings of professional and amateur over-reactors are decorously underplayed here.

What we get in exchange is a video love letter to three smart, passionate, forthright and ever-lovin' Texas gals. Somehow though, this never gets nauseating, because it really does feel like as intimate a look at major celebrities as any film outside of that Metallica documentary has gotten. And unlike those heavy-metal bozos, these gals are wrestling with worthwhile issues. They also still seem to be basically decent folks, even after enough success to warp anybody's core values -- and after coming to terms, sometimes not entirely, with a lot of anger.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

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SHUT UP & SING - Three stars

(R: language)

Directors: Barbara Kopple, Cecilia Peck.

Running time: 1 hr. 33 min.

Playing: AMC 15, Century City. Goes wide Nov. 10.

In a nutshell: Intimate portrayal of the Dixie Chicks dealing with their former fans' reactions to Natalie Maines' anti-Bush statements.