Catfish

What do I say about this one?  One of Alice's friends suggested that this was a great movie to watch so we rented it and watched it.  I confess.  It was a little strange.  I had trouble getting into the movie but it compelled me to watch.  Maybe that's the whole point.  It was some kind of reality show documentary (or pseudo documentary) about this man (Nev Schulman) who gets into a Facebook friendship with Abby Pierce, supposedly an 8 year old child prodigy artist.  She sends him paintings and they have phone conversations.  As it unfolds, all of this is being taped by camera.

Nev questions the reality of Abby (and her sister, Megan) and decides to visit Ishpeming, Michigan, to meet the family.  Abby really exists but is not really a painter and her mother, Angela, has created a number of Facebook characters and also "talks" for Abby and Megan.  Her husband has two profoundly handicapped sons from a previous marriage and she cares for him and them as she also paints very well but attributes all the paintings to her rather ordinary daughter, the real Abby.  She also claims to have uterine cancer.

Whoa!  Is it a reality show or is it real life.  Is it real or is it Memorex?  The title of "Catfish" comes from a brief story that Angela's husband, Vince, tells.  Years ago when live cod fish were being shipped to other countries the meat was bland and lifeless and, I guess, tasteless, until the shippers included Catfish in the tanks with them to keep them lively and on edge.  Then the meat was much more tasty. 

I guess I learned a lot from the movie.  Trouble is, I was a reluctant learner...but I did learn to appreciate Angela, her made up world, her daughter and step sons and the whole reality that not everything is real.  Some, I'm sure, would even question if this real-life documentary was real.  In that sense, it reminds me of the movie "True Stories" which was not really true. 

I probably won't forget the movie but I'm sort of glad our rental cost was only 85 cents.