Catfish

2 out of 5 Stars



Nev meets someone online. Then he meets the rest of the family. The family includes a mother, an 8 year old daughter named Abby who paints incredible paintings, a daughter named Megan who begins to flirt with Nev, and a husband named Vince. Things start to seem a little strange so they decide to go visit them up in Michigan. The advertising scheme: Don't Let Anyone Tell You What It Is. Yeah, if they did there would be no movie.

This is supposed to be based on real life events. After Nev is in communications with Angela, the mother, for a while one of his brothers decides to start documenting it. Of course in the end it turns into the movie that was released, somehow picked up by Universal. Without a marketing campaign this movie would have gone nowhere. If you have a little bit of intellect you can figure out where the story is going pretty darn fast. I mean, think about it. Meeting an entire family on facebook who gets along with you? You do the math. It's an intriguing film and makes you want to see it through to the end, unlike the fake documentary style films that have been released. But it's still ridiculous. It's a story that's just not interesting enough to warrant a 90 min. film. It should have been closer to an hour. Sure, it was edited pretty well and it was surprising some of the footage they captured but by the end of the movie there really isn't anything that surprising. It's terribly predictable what happens considering the technological world we live in the parameters that facebook allows. There is nothing to be amazed at here. It is a bit of a cautionary tale about meeting people through social networking but that's about it. Beyond that it's something anybody could have done had they owned a camera and the same event happened to them. The difference? Somehow these guys managed to get a studio to pick it up. Sure there is a bit of a story here but nothing for a feature film. Maybe a short story. It's an intriguing film but certainly not anything great. Far from it. In fact, I think I'll start recording my life now. Maybe something interesting will pop up and I can make thousands off a documentary I get Warner Bros. to pick up.