catfish movie review

Catfish

By: Radley Howell

            There are over 500 million people that participate in the Facebook community! The average individual has 130 friends and spends about 55 minutes per day on Facebook. With such a famous and useful tool you will discover some not-so-comforting information by watching Catfish directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman. They go in-depth on a man who formed a relationship over Facebook and reveal the secrets that lie within.

            The movie Catfish is a 2010 American documentary directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman by Rogue pictures. The film is rated PG-13 for some sexual references and has a running time of 94 minutes. Nev the main character starts a relationship with a girl hundreds of miles away over Facebook, but are things really what they seem?

One day Nev received an email of a remarkable painting from an 8 year old girl Abby. Abby made it of a piece of Nev’s work that she found in the newspaper. Ariel (Nev’s brother) and Henry (Ariel’s friend) decide to document Nev’s interactions with this truly talented kid. Over the months he stays in touch with Abby via e-mail and Abby continued painting for Nev. He starts talking to the rest of the family. He then creates a relationship with Abby’s older sister Megan after 9 months of dating Nev goes off in search of Megan and Abby who lives up in Michigan. But he smells something fishy going on due to some lies that just don’t add up. The rest of the movie answers what’s really going on behind the curtain.

             “They used to tank cod from Alaska all the way to China. They’d keep them in vats in the ship. By the time the codfish reached China the flesh was mush and tasteless. So this guy came up with this idea that if you put these cods in these big vats, put some catfish in with them. And the catfish would keep the cod agile. And there are those people who are catfish in life. They keep you on your toes. They keep you guessin’. They keep you thinkin’. They keep you fresh. And I thank God for the catfish, because we would be dull and boring if we didn’t have somebody nipping at our fin.” – Vince Pierce, from the movie Catfish. I found this line very insightful. What it means is that you need competition or roadblocks in your way to stay at you’re best.

            I thought the movie was just good nothing more nothing less. I didn’t find it to have any really good parts, there wasn’t anything special done to make the movie stand out from the others it was just there. It was just a fun film to watch with little secrets here and there to keep you guessing but that’s about it.