Reviews

This film was thoroughly enjoyable. It's weirdly getting dragged for having a main character who royally messes up and admits royally messing up, but everyone these days seems to have this idea that everything on screen or in print is condoned. I've even seen news media get dragged for reporting tragic news as if reporting it meant agreeing with it happening.

As far as this film goes this mentality is particularly unfortunate since you have a trans director and trans cast (many of the latter denied other's claims that they were misgendered or disrespected on set) bringing a story potentially to a wider audience who could learn something not so much from the main character but from all the characters.

Relying on stretching the "truth", ignoring the whole concept of "truth" entirely at times, circular questions "answered" only by other questions, and to top it off, to give it an extra creepy vibe, Blair Witch/Ghost Hunter type scenes unnecessarily shot at night when they could have been shot during the day to enable the viewer to actually see what was on the walls they were pointing to and referencing...

The problem here is that the guy was convicted on ENTIRELY circumstantial evidence, on the basis of "eyewitnesses" who were stoned out of their gourds 20 years before but suddenly after the fact "remembered" stuff - never mind the sticky detail that none of their memories actually match the others'.

The idea that this guy is "creepy" because his bone structure is gaunt or any of the rest of it is nonsense. What's creepy are the scenes of the community standing around looking at him coming and going to court with their mob scene expressions. And yes, it's creepy that these four or five children disappeared and their remains were never found. And creepy that any of a number of individuals could have done it (despite none of that being really solved, with a conviction randomly hung on one guy with zero real evidence). But the fact is that thousands of kids disappear every year, and this "documentary" is about a few kids from a while ago. In the end the court just hangs the blame on one guy without any real evidence, after which the simpletons gathered outside the courtroom stand there slack-jawed, patting themselves on the back, to later rest their heads on their pillows thinking they "did the right thing" (by making up "memories" to pin this on him) and also thinking they've somehow made the world safer for children - by NOT finding and convicting who actually committed these crimes... The fact that that represents a typical cross section of modern society is truly chilling.

A stalker who damages property to top it off and isn't jailed? A cop who stops everything (slow crime day?) over... a lost wallet?? A "dentist" with teeth grosser than Al Gore's??? The truly weird "I knew you'd want it" make out scene in front of the house with a woman he'd seen all of SECONDS in one previous scene???? The wife with her "I'd like to meet your mistresses", and "Sure mistress, come on in for tea, I wanted to meet you anyway", followed moments later by "So you're bringing them home now?" ???????? "Mommy, when I turn into a cat, will I eat cat food?" ?????????????? To think I wasted an evening and three times as much as the movie ticket cabbing it over to see this abortion - but then I KNEW better than to go see a French "film" in the first place - and all because high brow reviewers gave this incomprehensible pointless mess gold stars BECAUSE it was an incomprehensible pointless mess, par for the course for the "if it's unentertaining and godawful, it must be 'art'" crowd...

I hate the human race.

This is probably a spoiler, but the film is after all a documentary. If you'd like to see it first, please do so before reading...

I just saw the screening of this at Sundance, and I was appalled. The filmmaker initially makes it seem as if he will be painting an unsympathetic portrait of steroids. Then he glosses over the Benoit tragedy with a curt few minutes and an ultimate dismissal of the possibility of the violence being attributable to steroids. He moves on to handpicked interviews with experts he disagrees with (who he presents as incompetent and who are universally anti- steroid) and experts he agrees with (always presented as intelligent and pro-steroid). During the Q&A when I asked him why in the glib and ultimately pro-steroid message of the film he whisked right over the possibility of tragedy to women and children and whether doing so was because real violence and death would have darkened the comedic tone of the film, or whether he did so simply because he wasn't a woman and couldn't relate or didn't care, he replied that no woman or child harmed was ever proved to be harmed because of steroids. Proved. I guess not enough dead bodies to prove it to him just yet. So if you think in light of those tragedies this film is going to enlighten everyone, think again.

Everyone else in the theater spent the rest of the Q&A kissing up and telling him how great it was and how enlightened they now were about the harmLESSness of steroids, and he even wrapped it all up by perkily announcing that after the festival circuit he plans to hand-peddle his movie to high schools and colleges to dispel the negative assumptions about steroids!! Like the bring your father to career day scene in Thank You For Smoking, and not one person in the entire theater was shocked and appalled. Amazing that he wants to do his part to actively encourage steroid use in children and young adults when steroid use among kids as young as 8th grade is alarmingly on the rise.

Even while carefully choosing experts whose opinions mirror his own and whose statements continually deny that anabolic steroids have no consequences, the filmmaker continuously insists "the effects are reversible" - what effects? He is clearly implying negative effects, since you wouldn't want to brag about positive gains being lost, and when he makes this oft- repeated statements it's obvious that he means anything negative. He seems petulantly upset that cigarettes and alcohol are legal but not steroids - is he saying that since cigarettes and alcohol are bad for you that one more substance that's bad for you shouldn't be a problem? Why the comparison? Perhaps since he plans to peddle this clearly pro-steroid film to high school children and college students, films about the acceptable but temporary use of alcohol and tobacco should be shared with a younger audience, as well? Since clearly the ill effects of heavy drinking and smoking are by and large reversible once they are stopped, as well? Does the filmmaker actually expect us to believe that any of the men who he interviews, many of whom (including his two brothers) openly state that they will probably never stop using steroids, should indicate to society that encouraging young adults to "temporarily" dope is a good idea, or that anyone who initially starts them will actually at some point quit?

Remember that this guy is no elbow patch tweed jacket wearing milquetoast, he's a huge powerlifter who because he himself doesn't dope (but his brothers do) and can easily hold his own with any violent guy on steroids. Most women and children can't. Apparently not a concern for this guy. And funny, all his friends (and brothers) use steroids, think he's biased? After all, since a man sees one side of his friends and the women and children who share intimate constant contact with him often see a darker side, the filmmaker isn't that dissimilar to the people who always say "he seemed like such a nice guy" after someone murders their family. You'll need a lot more than a grain of salt for this one, since the filmmaker has his own Adonis complex that he freely admits he's quite happy with and an entire entourage of steroid users as friends and family who skew a documentary that is presented in trailers as unbiased. It's anything but.