As the new documentary Jagged observes, Alanis Morissette’s album Jagged Little Pill was widely reviewed - by men. Does the world need another man’s take on Morissette and her legacy? You’re welcome to opt out of the rest of this review, but I can at least say that I aim to clear the low bar of not reducing her to an “angry woman,” as so many music writers in the ‘90s did.

As Morissette herself observes in Alison Klayman’s documentary, streaming now on HBO Max as part of the Music Box series, music was the one constructive outlet she had for sharing her pain and anger - and she had to fight even to claim that outlet. What’s more, Jagged Little Pill is far from exclusively an angry or painful album; taken as a whole, it includes a lot of hope and joy as well.

Though the artist agreed to be interviewed for the film, she’s denounced the final product, calling it “salacious” and “reductive.” We’re left to only imagine how Morissette hoped the film would take shape; my hunch is that she was thinking there’d be more about the actual composition and recording of the music, and less about the bad behavior that surrounded her as a young woman.

That said, the finished film doesn’t come across as cheap or sensational. Klayman portrays Morissette as an enormously talented artist who didn’t get a fair appraisal, despite her mammoth commercial success and straining shelves of major awards. Sexist assumptions led to collaborators like Glen Ballard, for example, getting more credit than they deserved (for his part, Ballard praises Morissette effusively).

Listeners may also have assumed that Morissette, who had just turned 21 when the album was released in 1996, was singing about typical teenage drama. In fact, as Jagged illustrates, at that point Morissette had been in music and entertainment for a decade, and had been subject to constant harassment and abuse by the men she worked with. The documentary doesn’t name names, but as Morissette hints, it really didn’t have to: with virtually every man, she learned, there would come a moment when a line would be crossed.

Morissette probably could have done without the discussion of her all-male band’s sexual exploits on the Jagged Little Pill tour - “there was literally a room” where girls would be admitted for backstage intimacy, drummer Taylor Hawkins, now of Foo Fighters, admits - but that short segment illustrates just how pervasive sexual exploitation was in the industry Morissette entered. We’re left to surmise that many of those fans who made out with Morissette’s bandmates in hopes of meeting their idol were underage, a true and brutal irony given the artist’s own story and the trust she placed in the men sharing a stage with.

The film might have been a challenge to shape, given that due to Morissette’s strength and discipline there isn’t a crash-and-burn arc to follow. She rose, and rose, and…remained. While none of her later releases matched the sales and cultural impact of Jagged Little Pill, Morissette’s had a successful career; you may be surprised to learn that she’s sold more albums that aren’t Jagged Little Pill than those that are, no mean feat when a record’s gone triple-Diamond with 33 million sold.

The documentary is full of delightful details like Morissette’s observations on women from Ottawa (they’re all slightly androgynous, and they know how to party), footage of her early years (I realized that my personal favorite Alanis era was ‘80s synthpop), young fans’ rave reviews of Morissette’s show (one, presumably from Massachusetts, calls it “flip wicked”), and clips of other artists covering her songs (no surprise, Beyoncé wins).

Given the artist’s reservations, you may want to skip Jagged. If you do watch it, though, I expect that - like me - you’ll gain a new level of appreciation of one of music’s most influential mavericks.