“Don’t let anyone tell you what it is.” So sayeth the tagline to Catfish a Docu/Mockumentary starring Yaniv Schulman (or Nev.) I’m here today to tell you what it is. One big fat filmmaking fail.
The story revolves around Yaniv Schulman, a 24 year old hipster, complete with nerd glasses, cutoff jorts (jean shorts) and a tramp stamp above his ass.
He is a photographer and when one of his photos makes it into a magazine, an 8 year old girl paints it and starts a facebook friendship with him. He has regular conversations with the girls mom Angela, and 19 y/o daughter Megan. The relationship blossoms and he falls for Megan.
SPOILER. Turns out Megan, Angela and everyone else supporting the story is all the creation of the creepy mom Angela who paints the pictures herself and pretends to be a smoking hot 19 year old. Ahh the wonders of Facebook!
Yaniv and his filmmaking brother decide to get to the bottom of the story and travel to Michigan to uncover the truth when holes start to pop up in the family’s story.
PROBLEMS. According to IMDB the filmmakers claim this is a real story. FALSE. It is staged and a big ole fat hoax. If you go to IMDB here you can even see that the film is classified as a “thriller” instead of a documentary.
I’ve been disappointed a few times this year but wowsers this one really pissed me off. If the story were true I would say the film was “mildly interesting.” Now knowing that it’s staged I feel the film is “anger inducing ca-ca.” The only thing that kept me from completely flying off the handle was the fact that Angela had to take care of her husbands two mentally handicapped step children. That tugs at my heart strings but still makes me Hulkishly angry knowing that the filmmakers took advantage of this to humanize Angela.
I would urge NOBODY to see this movie. I gave it a 1 in my 2010 film rankings bringing it neck and neck with M. Night’s Ultra turd The Last Airbender.
I’ll leave you with a few thoughts.
1. 45 minutes into the movie I looked at my watch. I thought I’d been there for over an hour. I knew then that something was amiss…
2. When the movie got over a middle aged man and his wife got up the INSTANT the credits started rolling. He tartly told his wife, “LET’S GO.” Outside the theater I heard him say “It shouldn’t have been called Catfish, it should have been called Suckfish. It sucked.” She gently tried to stand up for the movie she’d very obviously dragged her unwilling husband to. He only replied: “It sucked.”
3. These filmmakers have cast their lines, fishing for an audience for a falsely advertised and poorly concepted movie. A word of caution. DON’T BITE.
2010 in review « Fixing Films
Jan 02, 2011 @ 08:14:19
Austin
Jan 09, 2011 @ 21:44:46
Uhm… Excuse me, Mr. Man?
This movie was NOT staged in any way whatsoever…. This film was a documentary but ehy classified it as a thriller so that more people would see it. It was only a thriller because nobody knew what it was about and that was their intent. Stop posting things if you don’t know about them… k bye
Rob
Jan 09, 2011 @ 22:00:34
MTV Interview with Yaniv Schulman: http://www.mtv.co.uk/film/catfish/news/250451-mtv-talks-to-catfish-filmmaker
Q: Catfish caused quite a controversy and lot of people accused you of creating a mockumentary – a fake documentary.
A: I think it’s a particularly interesting moment in time in film history because I think there is a trend moving away from the sensational, overly scripted Hollywood stories, that don’t have really much relevance to our lives. People are more interested in seeing smaller films that are about real life issues.
Obviously documentaries are as real life as you can get but there has been this movement to sort of mixing real life and fiction. I feel there needs to be a new genre ‘faction film’ – and you know some of it is real and some of it is not.
He’s admitting some of it’s made up. Thanks for playing buddy.
Don'tmatter
Mar 28, 2011 @ 03:57:04
It’s real.
You don’t know things, just like to talk like you do.
I liked it, which makes it a good movie to me.
Funny how subjective opinions are huh?
holden
Apr 03, 2012 @ 11:28:08
holy crap