Movie Review: Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope

Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope ***
Directed by: Morgan Spurlock.

You have to admire the kind of passion on display in Morgan Spurlock’s new documentary – Comicon Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope. You admire it because it’s so rare to see people this passionate about anything. Yes, it’s easy to laugh at grown adults who spend their days obsessing about comic book characters, science fiction or video games – who devote a lot of time to making costumes or drawing their own comics, or collecting toys. But hey, don’t we all need a hobby? Something we love beyond all reason, that is just ours, that makes us feel special? Something that no matter what is going on in our lives that we can turn to to make ourselves feel better? I think we do, and no matter what you say about the people who populate this documentary, they have found that. And contrary to popular belief these self-described “geeks” don’t all live in their parents basement and have never gone on a date – they lead fairly normal lives aside from their obsession.

The movie looks at the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con, the biggest such convention in the world. Director Morgan Spurlock gets interviews with many of the Con’s biggest attendees – Kevin Smith, Joss Whedon, Harry Knowles, Stan Lee, Matt Groening, Frank Miller, etc – all shot with a white backdrop, who reflect on how much they love the Convention, and share some of the most bizarre stories and encounters they have had there. These interviews are fun – but they are secondary to the film’s charm. The most fun comes from following some of the attendees who view Comic-Con as some sort of Mecca.

Some come just for a chance to meet their heroes – or to buy the latest Galactus action figure (and if you don’t know who Galactus is, that’s probably a good sign that this movie isn’t for you). Still others come for business. The movie follows two people who are going to be doing portfolio reviews – where they show their drawings to professionals in an attempt to get their foot in the door – one find he has actual talent, the other finds that drawing professionally is a lot more difficult than having passion for it. One geeky couple comes every year –they actually met at Comic-Con, and the he wants to ask her to marry him at the Kevin Smith panel – but finds it difficult to get away from her long enough to pick up his specially designed, Lord of the Rings inspired engagement ring he had one of the jewellers at the Con make for her. Another woman, and her friends, has spent months making costumes based on their favorite video game to participate in the Masquerade – and have done an amazing job of it. The most bittersweet of the stories is about a comic dealer who has been coming ever since Comic-Con was small enough to be held in a large room, and had 500 guests, and now finds himself, and the rest of the comic’s dealer, shunted off the side. The reality is while it is still called Comic-Con, comics really are secondary – major corporations and studios have taken over, and see this as a chance to promote their latest geek product, and the people who built the Comic-Con are no longer really required. With the economy in trouble, people don’t have money to spend on comics. And while millions pay to see comic book movies every year, very few actually want to read the comics that inspired them. This dealer may well have to sell his most prized comics – valuing in total around $1 million in order to survive.

 
The film was directed by Morgan Spurlock, who has quickly become one of the most recognizable, yet divisive figures in documentary film. After his well-regarded debut, Supersize Me, he has sputtered more than a little bit – his Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? was awful, and last year’s The Greatest Movie Ever Sold was not much better. Spurlock, wisely, keeps himself off camera this time – and in fact, you never even hear his voice. Unlike his other films, he knows he is not the story here – and lets those who are, tell their own stories. It works. Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope is not a great documentary, but it is fun and affectionate one. Given the subject matter, what else could you expect. 

DVD Review: Pom Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold **

Directed by: Morgan Spurlock.

Morgan Spurlock is a funny guy, but I’m not sure he’s as funny as he thinks he is. His first documentary, Super Size Me, worked because Spurlock was a nobody, an unknown comic presence who decides to do something incredibly stupid – eat nothing but McDonalds for a month – and was surprised by just how god awful it was for him. That movie was clever, in part because I don’t think Spurlock was trying so hard. In his two features since, the almost insufferable Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? and the now the slightly better Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, Spurlock is trying too hard to be clever and funny – and the result just isn’t very good.

The idea behind the movie is that Spurlock will fund an entire documentary on nothing but product placement money. The movie will be about him trying to finance the movie. So we see him on the phone with many big companies, trying to convince them to come on board as a sponsor, and telling them what they will receive by doing so. For $1 million you can even get your name above the title of the film, which is how the movie became to be known as Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.

The point of the movie, if there is one, is to make product placement invisible for the audience. To show them just how much they are being targeted by huge corporations who want to slip advertising into everything they watch. Practically every blockbuster has some sort of tie in products, from fast food chains to cars to toys and everything else you can imagine. And then, of course, there are those product placements in the movies themselves, which can be as subtle as someone drinking from a coke can, or being thuddingly obvious, as people mentioning the product by name over and over again (and Spurlock has examples of both in the film).

The biggest problem with Pom Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is that Spurlock isn’t actually telling you anything you don’t already know. You’d have to be pretty dense not to see product placement in the movies and TV these days, which makes one of his talking heads interview subjects suggestion that you be informed when you are being advertised to in the body of a movie redundant. We know already. Wayne’s World brilliantly skewered this way back in 1993, and David Mamet’s State and Main did an even better job more than a decade ago, when the director of the film within a film had to find a way to get the name of a website into a period movie (and succeeds). Spurlock’s interviews with political and intellectual and business figures like Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader and Donald Trump are not all that enlightening, because we know what they’re going to say before they say it. His interviews with filmmakers like Peter Berg and Brent Ratner, who both admit there is product placement in the movies but don’t see how it effects the film itself, are equally dull (after all, does it really matter if we see Will Smith drink a coke in a movie?) His interview with Quentin Tarantino is a little more enlightening, if only because Tarantino admits he was turned down by Denny’s not once but twice, when he wanted to set scenes from Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction in one of their locations.

Pom Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is at its best when Spurlock is talking to the companies interested in investing themselves, and when doing his “ads” that he puts right into the body of his movie. Spurlock shows a knack for these ads, which makes you think he’d be a great pitch man if he decides to go that way. Spurlock is very good at being both overt and subtle in his product placements.

The film its at its worst when Spurlock wonders aloud on screen (as he does quite a bit in the film’s second half), if he is selling out by making this movie. If he didn’t want to run the risk of looking like a sellout, he shouldn’t have made a movie about him raising money for a movie from ad revenue alone. It comes with the territory.

Ever since Super Size Me came out in 2004, Spurlock has been compared to Michael Moore. The reason is clear – both of them take on big corporations in their documentaries in an amusing way, putting themselves front and center in their films, so the film is about them as much as anything. The difference between Moore and Spurlock – what makes Moore a wonderful filmmaker and Spurlock an average one – is that there seems to be real anger and passion behind all of Moore’s films. For better or for worse, Moore believes in what he is telling you, and he works hard to convince you he’s right. Spurlock lacks that same passion. He still seems like a goofy kid with a movie camera making movies for a laugh. Those can be successful, but much of the time they aren’t – as Spurlock’s last two films prove.

Movie Review: Freakonomics

Freakonomics ***
Directed by: Seth Gordon (Introduction and Interludes), Morgan Spurlock (A Roshanda by Any Other Name), Alex Gibney (Pure Corruption), Eugene Jarecki (It’s Not Always a Wonderful Life), Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady (Can a Ninth Grader Be Bribed to Succeed).
Written By: Seth Gordon and Jeremy Chilnick & Morgan Spurlock and Peter Bull & Alex Gibney and Eugene Jarecki and Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady based on the book by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen Dubner.

The omnibus film has been around for decades. While the idea of gathering a group of highly respected filmmakers together to make short films, all based around a single theme, seems like a good idea, the result is rarely very satisfying. The new film, Freakonomics, applies the formula to the documentary genre – taking the best selling book by Steven Levit and Stephen Dubner as its model. And while the film is not great, it is entertaining, involving and fascinating. In this instance, it actually worked.

The film assembles documentaries Seth Gordon (The King of Kong), Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room), Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight) and Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady (Jesus Camp), all of whom, except for Gordon who provides the introduction, and various other interludes between the other longer segments, take a section from the book and make a documentary out of it. While all the films are different, I think they are about equal in terms of quality.

Spurlock’s A Roshanda By Any Other Name, is the first segment. As a filmmaker, I find Spurlock increasingly annoying and smug, but his segment has an undeniably fascinating subject matter, that although Spurlock sticks his nose into a little too much, he cannot ruin. The film looks at the effect something as simple as a name can have on a person. For instance, one social scientist did a study where he sent out the exact same resume to the exact same companies – half with the typically white name Greg, and the other half with the typically black name Tyrone – and discovered that Greg got called for an interview more often than Tyrone did. The film also looks at what effect a name can have on your personality, and what it says about your socio-economic background. The result is a fascinating, amusing documentary about identity.

The next segment is Alex Gibney’s Pure Corruption, which is probably the best of the four docs on display. It looks at a very strange issue – cheating in the world of sumo wrestling, which is supposed to be a very pure sport. The result of analysis of the data suggests that cheating runs through sumo from top to bottom – and most people overlook it because they consider the system pure. Each sumo tournament has a wrestler go through 15 bouts – if you win 8 or more battles, you get more money and more prestige, and if you lose 8 or more, you are shamed. The study finds that almost every time a wrestler with a record of 7-7 goes against a wreslter with a record of 8-6 in the final round, that the 7-7 wrestler almost always wins, yet the next time these two wrestlers meet, the 8-6 wrestler wins. The system is so ingrained in their sport, that violence and even murder have been perpetuated to keep people silent about it. Gibney is on shakier ground when he tries to extrapolate this to the larger, political and economic system in America (if he had more time perhaps he could have done this part properly and more thoroughly – but the result is a fascinating little doc nonetheless.

Eugene Jarecki’s It’s Not Always A Wonderful Life is the most innovative, and controversial, of the shorts. Intercutting scenes of the Frank Capra classic, with animation and statistics, the documentary tries to explain the decrease in violent crime of the early 1990s with the Roe vs. Wade decision. The documentary claims that all the factors given as to why there was such a dramatic decrease in violent crime represented only about 50% of the reason – the other 50% is because a generation of unwanted children – those being the most likely to turn to crime – were not born. It’s a controversial theory, one that cannot wholly be backed up – but offers much food for thought – especially when it shows that those states where abortion was legal before Roe vs. Wade experienced a drop in crime ahead of the rest of the country, and in those states where abortions are more widely available, the crime rate dropped even more. This film is undoubtedly controversial, but like the best documentaries, offers you something interesting to think about.

Finally Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s segement, about a test where they tried to get 9th graders to do better in school by bribing them. Each student who maintained a C or better in every one of their classes, received $50 a month, and a chance to win an additional $500. The results of this test were disappointing – seemingly many kids simply don’t care about getting an education – but the process of the testing itself – and why it worked for some and not for others, was fascinating in and of itself.

Freakonomics is not a great documentary. For one thing, because of its format, none of these issues, which could probably each be a feature doc, were given quite as much time as perhaps they deserved. But the film does offer a lot to think about, and puts it all in an entertaining package. The result may not be great – but it sure is interesting.