The Last American Freak Show

This is a great film that breaks with the conventional portrayals of disability in the media.

Fun to watch and as haphazard as the tour it documents. It is honest and thoughtful and gives each character more room to define themselves than TV normally allows. It is as much about disability as it is about creating our own identity through the relationships we make with others.

Butchins has accomplished an amazing feat, keeping structure in mayhem and challenging our perceptions of disability as often as the freak show changes vehicles.

This film tells you about a group of indigent disabled Americans travelling in a self styled freak show. Its shot in a rough and ready manner by an English disabled filmmaker who travels along with them across the western states of the USA.

It's a sort of 'magic bus' type journey except with no magic. The troupe are drunken and disorganised. the leader a non-disabled woman spouts all this PC crap whilst blatantly exploiting the members of the group. The films style matches the content and is skilfully edited to give a sense of disorientation. There are some nice touches with the music and the end credits are over a very bizarre screaming opera singer.

I know the film caused some controversy in the UK because of its unsentimental and ruthless portrayal of the reality of disability. It's not always an easy watch but who said all film has to be entertaining although it does have it's funny moments and it's worth the journey to the end.

check it out if you get the chance

After seeing an advertisement prior to the airing I felt quite intrigued by what I thought I was going to see.... but unfortunately it all fell flat.

A freak show run by, a few individuals who are classed as "able bodied people" do nothing more than exploit the people with the real disabilities. The freak show in itself is a farce, it's far from a freak show. It's basically a hillbillies travelling show, a group of people who are very little talent but want a stage to play on. They use the "freaks" as a way of marketing their poorly crafted show and to some extent it works.

Throughout the whole movie you can't help but dislike the creators of this show, they come across as being nothing more than complete losers who want to live life in such a carefree way they have no regard for anyone else.

Not only is the show and organisation of the freak show a complete pile of, you know what, the documentary in itself is also a poorly made piece. The creator seems to have very little direction with this, at no point to you really get a sense of what he's trying to get out of it. Usually a documentary has an ultimate goal, whether it be getting a message across or showing the audience something in a new light, whatever it is generally there is always a motive in making a documentary. The Last American Freakshow totally fails, in the creators introduction there is no mention of a goal and even in the end there is no kind of a conclusion. Pretty much all he shows is a group of people who have nothing else to do in life other than tour around being layabout bums.

Overall this was a very disappointing documentary, I was expecting something which would open my eyes, or at least be interesting but unfortunately after about the first 15minutes I was already looking at my watch. It was tempting when the commercials came on to switch channels and not return but I wasn't sensible enough to do that. If you missed this when it was aired on TV count yourself lucky as it's really nothing more than a waste of film.