20. Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey (2011)
A pretty interesting documentary that tries just a little too hard to be uplifting. Admittedly Kevin Clash has an awesome job, and he’s had the opportunity to work with several of my idols, so that should make this epic enough, but I think it’s the sort of super positive, happy go lucky, smile gosh darn ya smile quality of this movie that brings it down.
The real interesting stuff occurs before Clash’s rise to fame, his up bringing, his puppet making, and his brush with local celebrity. The rest seems too fairy tale-esque and is too rose colored to be interesting. In fact there’s only a couple real moments of humanity in the film after about thirty minutes in.
Like I said the Henson stuff is interesting and great, but some of it feels a bit too ‘DVD extra’ and not emotionally connected with audience.
3 out of 5 stuffs
