Coming to DVD today, Tuesday, September 22: THAT SUGAR FILM
Damon Gameau’s experiment on sugar’s impact on health premiered at IDFA last year. Since then it has screened at Edinburgh, Seattle, New Zealand, San Francisco Green, Bentonville, and Encounters, among other events.
Like so many other food and health-focused docs of the past decade, Gameau’s is a shameless knock-off of Morgan Spurlock’s SUPER SIZE ME. Instead of McDonald’s, the Aussie filmmaker/human guinea pig tackles a more insidious culprit: sugar. And not just in the obvious taboo forms like confectionaries, ice cream, and the like, but in foods that are marketed to the consumer as healthy but are actually packed with sugar. Long weaned off of refined sugars, he sets out to consume the supposed average sugar intake of his fellow Australians, a staggering 40 teaspoons a day, for two months, while maintaining his regular exercise regimen. As is de rigueur in this doc sub-genre, he consults doctors to obtain a record of his baseline health as well as nutritionists and other vague experts to get their take on the insanity of his plan. Surprise, surprise, he gains weight, suffers worrisome health consequences, and has apparently proven the deleterious affects of the oh-so-sweet toxin on the human body. But while a viewer might question some of the science, the experts’ qualifications, and their conclusions, Gameau presents everything at face value, making the entire proceedings feel oversimplified and perhaps best suited for a younger, uncritical audience who could certainly benefit from the idea of eating in moderation, and would likely be drawn to the often over-the-top special effects and animation employed here. For his part, while fulfilling the role of on-screen host gamely, frequently exposing his growing belly and dancing around in his underwear like a fool, Gameau takes things a step too far in the narcissism department with an ill-advised final music video.
what (not) to doc 