My good friend Mike has taken his time to make a list of films he suggests that I watch this year. That list is even broken down into categories and only three documentaries currently reside on it. Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films, which has 95% on Rotten Tomatoes and is currently free to watch on Netflix, is one on the list and I’ve been hearing lots about it on the Podcasts lately so my wife and I decided to give it a watch.
Mark Hartley directed this documentary that tells the story of two cousins, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, and how their obsession with cinema pushed them to own Cannon films and changed the traditional method of how films were made and marketed. The thing was, this passion led them down a road that would ultimately cause the company to go under. The documentary features several people involved with Cannon films as well as people who had some contact with the cousins.
THE GOOD
The story is quite compelling as it is about the American Dream. Golan and Globus loved movies and they gave everything they could to make their dreams come true. Unfortunately, their love of movies often led them to blindly creating and casting films, and their understanding of what makes a movie “good” definitely didn’t match that of the public’s perception. Movies that Cannon made include Superman 4, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Breakin’, many Chuck Norris films, most of the Death Wish films, and many B-movies.
The interviews are well done and the stock footage that appears in the documentary is well used. The clips from the actual films had me questioning how anyone thought it could possibly be a good film at times, which matched the theme of the documentary. Many of their movies relied on nudity in order to get the appeal of the audience further showing their ineptitude for good storytelling. Luckily, the documentary isn’t bad at storytelling, too.
THE BAD
This documentary features a lot of the aforementioned nudity. Not what I was expecting when I put the film on and while the nudity was from clips of Cannon films, it probably wasn’t needed in a documentary. This falls into the bad section of the review because adding nudity to a film when it isn’t needed narrows the audience who can see it and doesn’t really add to the story. Simply hearing about how these guys over used nudity to sell concepts that would have otherwise never be made is sufficient for the purposes of the filmmaker. Add in that some of the nude scenes are from rape scenes that were already controversial in the films that initially appeared in and it can make for an uncomfortable watch.
I also found myself loosing interest as the story went on. I would have loved to hear from Chuck Norris or Sylvester Stallone since they were two of the bigger names they worked with. Not that the interviews were bad, but it did feel like it started dragging towards the end.
THE VERDICT
Overall, this documentary is interesting, especially if you’re a lover of film. It manages to be both inspiring and maddening that people who love film can make it doing things in a new way, but also that maybe they didn’t really love film as much as the idea of film. I may have watched this a bit too late because I did find myself wishing it would end already, forcing me to give Electric Boogaloo a 6 out of 10 Go-Gos.
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