{"id":3321,"date":"2010-11-11T07:25:14","date_gmt":"2010-11-10T21:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=3321"},"modified":"2010-11-21T18:32:18","modified_gmt":"2010-11-21T08:32:18","slug":"catfish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=3321","title":{"rendered":"Catfish"},"content":{"rendered":"

This review contains major spoilers<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Catfish<\/em> is the Other Facebook Movie.\u00a0 The one that isn\u2019t written by Aaron Sorkin and doesn\u2019t have Justin Timberlake in it.\u00a0 It also has one of the most misleading trailers I\u2019ve ever come across.<\/p>\n

Through amateur home video footage, we are introduced to a photographer, Nev, who befriends a girl on Facebook, has a six month relationship with her online and then goes on a road trip to visit her.\u00a0 When he finally reaches his destination, all is not what it seems.<\/p>\n

The trailer for Catfish<\/em> suggests that the film turns into a horror or a conspiracy theory movie at this point.<\/p>\n[youtube]http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=AFKe75Q6eVw[\/youtube]\n

Instead, we learn that the girl from Facebook is actually a married middle-aged woman who cares for two handicapped children at home and suffers from loneliness.\u00a0 She decides to escape her reality by creating an online persona and goes to pretty extraordinary lengths to build upon this fiction.\u00a0 She creates over a dozen fake friend accounts for her online creation to make her Facebook page look more credible.<\/p>\n

When he learns this truth, Nev is incredibly understanding and patient.\u00a0 He listens to her story and learns about her life.\u00a0 They chat a little and then he leaves.\u00a0 That\u2019s where the credits roll.<\/p>\n

After I got over the initial confusion and annoyance over the misleading trailer, I can appreciate that there\u2019s a moderately interesting documentary about one woman\u2019s loneliness and how she copes with it.\u00a0 And Nev is a far more understanding person than I would be, for someone who has travelled four hundred miles to hook up with an attractive online girlfriend who it turns out doesn\u2019t really exist.<\/p>\n

That said I feel as though the filmmakers really unnecessarily structured this documentary around having a big twist and I presume that they are also complicit in its misleading marketing.\u00a0 I can\u2019t help but feel a bit sour about their need to bait and switch.\u00a0 Have some faith that your audience want to watch your film!\u00a0 I feel as though most of the discussion around this film will be centered on what its not, not what it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Needs a ‘dislike’ button<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[686,219],"class_list":["post-3321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films","tag-catfish","tag-facebook"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3321"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3417,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3321\/revisions\/3417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}