American Mullet
Wow, what a horrible documentary.
For one, it suffers from an unfortunate trend that many documentaries have fallen into as of somewhat recently. The filmmakers seem to assume that the audience cares about their journey and involvement in making this film. I'd say that nearly a fourth of this film is comprised of montages of shots of the filmmakers in their van or shots of cities and country side as the van drives across the country, or shots of them walking around different locales holding up a drawing of a mullet. This is boring and provides no insight on the topic whatsoever, other to inform us that they had to travel to many places in the country to talk to different people which is clear just from the different interviews themselves. I'm not sure if it's because Michael Moore has become probably the most identifiable and monetarily successful "documentary" filmmaker within mainstream culture, but this focus on the filmmaker as a major set piece in their own documentaries needs to stop. There are of course times when documentary is auto-biographical in a way, and then featuring the filmmaker is relevant because it is the entire point. Maybe if the filmmakers in this doc had themselves worn Mullets for large parts of their lives, it would be more relevant. But it's clear they don't. During the end credits we even see one of the filmmakers get her first Mullet hair cut, which again I could care less about, especially after surviving the rest of this film, which luckily clocks in at less than an hour long.
We get the idea from talking to many people who are kind of presented as stereotypes like Lesbians, Country Western Musicians, Latino Football Players. The few amusing moments have nothing to do with mullets, like the Football player who is trying to craft his son into exactly what he wants him to be to try to live vicariously through him. It's funny but sad. It's a real person. I think the filmmakers overlooked the fact that it's these real moments that are more amusing than the mullet stuff. Maybe they thought they were getting at these moments, but they weren't. I'll admit, it's probably hard to tie everything together, but that doesn't make the film any less of a failure.
The worst part of the movie is how much time and credence they give to an interview with a masked dimwit who runs some website that has become famous for posting pictures of people with mullets and making up false and extremely mocking information about the people in the pictures. It's not like this guy or his equally pathetic and insensitive partner who sneaks up on the people to take pictures has any insight into anything worth hearing about the topic of people with mullets. The fact that he hides his face and about halfway through the interview realizes he is about as pathetic as the false lives he details on his website and starts trying to halfway apologize should be enough indication that there is no worth listening to his words.
I can't believe I even talked about this movie so much. I think my girlfriend and I thought just because the topic of the documentary was Mullets that it would be interesting enough. We realized rather quickly this was not the case. Too bad the filmmakers didn't realize this soon enough either.
Rating: 2/10