[5.2/10] There’s a funny, challenging, and thought-provoking documentary to be made about the complicated issues that involve a cultural relic like Apu still being presented nearly three decades later, the broader issues of representation and depiction of people of color in Hollywood, and the way that the world of animation has an uneasy relationship with our country’s ignoble history of blackface. This just isn’t it.
Hari Kondabolu has noble aims here, but his reach exceeds his grasp. It’s probably too big a topic to be covered in 45 minutes, and Hari wastes too much of that runtime focusing on his own experience of trying to make this documentary and personal history and his narrow crusade to challenge Hank Azaria about this. There’s a lack of focus to much of this and a lot personal indulgence.
To that end, the best parts of the documentary are when Hari is talking to others. Despite the lack of real wit or nuance that Kondabolu brings to the table, everyone from Whoopi Goldberg to former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy to Kal Penn to Kondabolu’s own mom has a much more insightful and articulate take on this issue, to the point that I wished for any of them to make their version of this documentary that could do more to place the problematic issues around Apu into context and to more clearly identify and explore the problems with his depiction than just resorting to a bunch of amorphous, unfocused venting.
The ending is particularly botched, where Kondabolu turns Hank Azaria understandably not wanting to go on camera with a guy trying to attack his work into an ironic statement about representation, while then turning around and patting himself on the back for helping support the cause of representation himself. It’s the kind of self-centered approach the documentary takes to an issue much bigger than this one guy’s experiences. While I can appreciate Kondabolu’s efforts to ground this broad topic in something personal, it comes off as myopic rather than individual.
Again, there’s a story worth telling here, about how a majority culture’s racial blindspots and a lack of representation lead to marginalization on both sides of the screen. But Kondabolu’s blunt instrument of a film doesn't get at that problem with a lot of incisiveness, complexity, or good comedy. The best you can say about it is that it starts a conversation worth having, though hopefully one led by the other folks in Kondabolu’s film rather than the man himself.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2018-04-14T21:46:30Z— updated 2018-10-29T15:48:10Z
[5.2/10] There’s a funny, challenging, and thought-provoking documentary to be made about the complicated issues that involve a cultural relic like Apu still being presented nearly three decades later, the broader issues of representation and depiction of people of color in Hollywood, and the way that the world of animation has an uneasy relationship with our country’s ignoble history of blackface. This just isn’t it.
Hari Kondabolu has noble aims here, but his reach exceeds his grasp. It’s probably too big a topic to be covered in 45 minutes, and Hari wastes too much of that runtime focusing on his own experience of trying to make this documentary and personal history and his narrow crusade to challenge Hank Azaria about this. There’s a lack of focus to much of this and a lot personal indulgence.
To that end, the best parts of the documentary are when Hari is talking to others. Despite the lack of real wit or nuance that Kondabolu brings to the table, everyone from Whoopi Goldberg to former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy to Kal Penn to Kondabolu’s own mom has a much more insightful and articulate take on this issue, to the point that I wished for any of them to make their version of this documentary that could do more to place the problematic issues around Apu into context and to more clearly identify and explore the problems with his depiction than just resorting to a bunch of amorphous, unfocused venting.
The ending is particularly botched, where Kondabolu turns Hank Azaria understandably not wanting to go on camera with a guy trying to attack his work into an ironic statement about representation, while then turning around and patting himself on the back for helping support the cause of representation himself. It’s the kind of self-centered approach the documentary takes to an issue much bigger than this one guy’s experiences. While I can appreciate Kondabolu’s efforts to ground this broad topic in something personal, it comes off as myopic rather than individual.
Again, there’s a story worth telling here, about how a majority culture’s racial blindspots and a lack of representation lead to marginalization on both sides of the screen. But Kondabolu’s blunt instrument of a film doesn't get at that problem with a lot of incisiveness, complexity, or good comedy. The best you can say about it is that it starts a conversation worth having, though hopefully one led by the other folks in Kondabolu’s film rather than the man himself.