Review of Grizzly Man (2005) by Creme F — 08 Jul 2009

Herzog is one of the most overrated directors. The only cool thing about this was seeing the grizzly bears close-up and when Timothy got close up with them. Herzog has the most annoying narroration voice and other then some really really cool grizzly scenes it felt that he was cramming in too much unneccessary stuff just to make the documentary longer.

I think I heard from 5 different people their 5 persectives, all saying that "Timothy wanted to be a bear" (wow! earth shattering!). The clips with the ex-girlfriend were completely useless and offered absolutely nothing inciteful about Timothy that the audience didnt already figure out 5 minutes into the movie.

The coroner was an absolute joke. Why was he in this?! All he did was say 10 different times that Timothy told the girlfriend to run away when the bear was attacking and then he tried to be all philosophical about that.

You are a freaking coroner!! Show us some pictures of the remains or talk about how brutal the attack was. I also dont think he knew it was a documentary because he was trying to act way too hard. Even alot of the clips of Timothy talking just got annoying because he always kept rambling on and on and Herzog thought it was necessary to keep it going.

It would have been so much better had he learned that he doesn't need to include every single word Timothy says, just the interesting, important, and relevant stuff! There was one scene where we just watched Timothy yell about the same thing over the course of 7 minutes and he must have said 'fuck' about 45x.

That is ALL he did was say 'fuck you' to everyone he was pissed off at. There were other clips where Timothy would cut in the middle and start over and say the same script over and Herzog put all of this in.

Out of this 1 hr 40 min film there was probably only 15 minutes of cool footage. In conclusion, all of Timothy's footage that Herzog included, probably only 1/4th of it was cool. And of the footage Herzog shot himself and the people he interviewed, maybe 1/50th was interesting and/or necessary for the film.

I dont know if a different director could have done a better job but after watching this I dont think it was fit to be a documentary. There just wasn't enough stuff. Timothy was fascinating with his interactions with the bears and he was also insane as well.

There was some great footage that captured all of this...but not 1 hour and 40 minutes worth of footage. Herzog's inability to cut and his ability to drag everything on killed this documentary. I would have enjoyed it much better if it was a 30 minute special on tv or something.

Watch the 3 minute trailer of this on YouTube and you will see all you need to see.