6.1/10. I appreciate what Brett Morgan was attempting to do by getting rid of the talking heads and other elements we expect in a documentary, and it was interesting, but this one didn't really work for me. Maybe it would have clicked better if I hadn't just watched the O.J. Simpsons: Made in America documentary, which did a much better job at putting at least the OJ-related events of this day into context. While it was cool to see man-on-the-street interviews of the NY Rangers parade or hear the crowd at the garden cheer the Knicks in the NBA finals or see President Clinton open the World Cup, it was all just sort of there.
The one truly interesting part of the documentary was getting to see some of the behind the scenes news stuff, like Bob Costas discussing how they were going to cover the basketball game and the OJ stuff at the same time. Really, this was more of a media documentary than a sports documentary, and some clearer focus on that side of it might have helped. Similarly, I liked how Morgan used old footage of Palmer to put his final round at the US Open into context, but it just made me want to watch a doc about Arnold that did more to explain the significance explicitly, as affecting as his emotional interviews that day were.
Overall, it was an interesting idea to focus on one crazy day in the sports world, but the results were a little too scattershot to really work as anything but a neat experiment.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2017-01-18T03:16:50Z
6.1/10. I appreciate what Brett Morgan was attempting to do by getting rid of the talking heads and other elements we expect in a documentary, and it was interesting, but this one didn't really work for me. Maybe it would have clicked better if I hadn't just watched the O.J. Simpsons: Made in America documentary, which did a much better job at putting at least the OJ-related events of this day into context. While it was cool to see man-on-the-street interviews of the NY Rangers parade or hear the crowd at the garden cheer the Knicks in the NBA finals or see President Clinton open the World Cup, it was all just sort of there.
The one truly interesting part of the documentary was getting to see some of the behind the scenes news stuff, like Bob Costas discussing how they were going to cover the basketball game and the OJ stuff at the same time. Really, this was more of a media documentary than a sports documentary, and some clearer focus on that side of it might have helped. Similarly, I liked how Morgan used old footage of Palmer to put his final round at the US Open into context, but it just made me want to watch a doc about Arnold that did more to explain the significance explicitly, as affecting as his emotional interviews that day were.
Overall, it was an interesting idea to focus on one crazy day in the sports world, but the results were a little too scattershot to really work as anything but a neat experiment.