Had a few minutes, so I watched this. It's garbage. The soundtrack sucks, a lot of it sounds like Youtube royalty free stuff
. As far as direction/cinematography, it's like the cinematic gods ate a bunch of filming styles, and shit sprayed a fetid mishmosh of scenes out afterward. Bad jump cuts, Awkward flashback scenes, overly dramatic shots that there was no need for. It's like a bad commercial for some athletic brand.
Most of the older bodybuilders look pasty and sick, and just beaten down. Haney and Schwarzenegger being the exceptions. Haney is a really nice ambassador for the sport. The interviewer is bland, and many of these newer guys have no personality compared to the Pumping Iron ones. These shitbirds think they're on CSpan. Lots of backslapping, and lamenting how hard the sport is. They managed to suck a lot of the charm out of Piana and Greg Valentino too. Piana does come off looking a lot better than I thought. His segments maybe the best part of the film.
Kai comes off decently, very likable, but again the way this is directed, sucks the life out of his story. Lots of jump cuts, and bland interviews about Kai. They also could've edited out some stuff out of his second segment.
The Van Monger segments are :shrug:, very bland, and I don't really care about his love life.
They're managing to make the schmoe angle uninteresting, They should've watched the Louis Theroux bodybuilding special from years ago on how to do it right.
Dana Lynn Bailey is in it for like 2 minutes, and either had a cold or something strange was going on just before. Also did the whole "I'm natural" thing when there was no need to.
Sorry if this reads a bit disjointed. But I was adding thoughts as I watched. It really is a mess of a film and a struggle to watch. If you're a fan of the hobby, you'll learn nothing you didn't know before. And it offers nothing to the casual, non bodybuilding viewer because it is a bland, ugly film with zero intellectual or eye appeal. It's just
.
