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Reviews
The Biggest Little Farm (2018)
Too much of a good thing?
A charming film in many ways, all attested to here and elsewhere. But, I'm surprised by the absence of criticism of its frequently oversentimental tone, overwrought music track, anthropomorphic story lines, and animation that would be at home in an elementary schoolroom. In truth, this would be a good documentary to show elementary school kids. For the rest of us, might it actually weaken the truth of a documentary to have wall-to wall music triggering every response like fiction film? And how many close-ups of Todd the Dog's milky eyes can you tolerate before questioning the technique? How many dewey drone shots can you see before feeling that what we're seeing is a bit unreal... sometimes looking more like a cereal commercial, than something rooted in truth?
Grand Prix Driver (2018)
Weak and unsatisfying
This has the feel of a well-intentioned project, gutted and edited into near pablum by lawyers and the Marketing Departments at Honda and McLaren. Not to mention whatever entity owns the rights to F1 footage of which there is maybe 15 seconds in the whole thing. And I say "whole thing" advisedly as they stretched like crazy to make this into a 4 part series. I suppose McLaren should get some credit for allowing it to be shown at all, although one could argue that it serves them well to put all the blame on Honda's engine. The filmmakers should get a lot of credit for the very hard work of being there at critical moments to cover several story lines, probably shooting over a hundred hours of video, and shouldn't be blamed for the show getting its balls cut off (if I may say) in the editing room. There is fascinating footage of race car testing, lots of not so fascinating footage of driver gym workouts, way too much of McLaren HQ, but again ZERO footage of the racing that is supposedly the point of all this nonsense and piles and piles of money.