UnHung Hero

Maybe size is correlated to emotional maturity? After seeing this documentary the woman who turned down our minus-size "hero" must have fully realized the immature bullet she dodge live on a Jumbotron. In fact after watching Patrick Moote drag this thin concept out to nearly the requisite 90 minutes, one imagines the likelihood of his getting a yes at the basketball (or whatever) game was probably largely in his under-developed mind. He minces, he whines, he asks him mother about his penis size(seriously, dude?) and generally gets on everyone he encounters nerves. In between not much happens. He goes to the adult video convention one imagines more for his own prurient interests that anything having to do with the stated reason for the "cockumentary". He goes to Asia for more genital-oriented nonsense and eventually makes it back to the U.S. where he ends with some bad stand-up. How someone makes a whole documentary solely about themselves where they still come off unattractive and irritating is almost difficult to believe. In short, there's not much here.

I had the pleasure of seeing the world premiere of Unhung Hero at Austin's SXSW Film Festival. Unhung Hero provides a really humorous look at professional comedian Patrick Moote's struggle to deal with the angst of having a small penis. His neurosis and insecurity translates into a very humorous, entertaining and simultaneously provocative documentary. He raises many issues such as whether the proliferation of pornography has led to the exaggeration of expectations and increased our sexual insecurities. He takes on a humorous worldwide journey asking whether his penis is too small and what he should do about it. In the process he explores many bizarre techniques for increasing penis size. While the film is humorous, he uses a comedian's insight to explore humanity's obsession with the size of genitalia. In so doing, he literally probes many hard questions about our attitudes towards sexuality. Unfortunately, the film's subject might make it difficult for it to gain the mainstream audience that it deserves. Anyway, Unhung Hero is recommended to anyone who is willing to think about our sexual mores with an open mind and a sense of humor.

There's something so icky about Patrick Moote and his false-feeling and false-sounding voyage of pseudo-discovery that it's hard not to be merely insulting about this documentary. Suffice it to say that virtually nothing about Moote's quest for a larger penis, nor his superficial exploration of why his "low average" endowment matters so much to him, is satisfying. Rather, so much of the documentary comes across as insincere and staged (though it professes to be an "as it happened" record of a sort of Super Size Me experiment in living) that the main reaction the film provokes is exasperation. For example, though the film is billed as a "sometimes painful search to find out whether penis size matters," it is patently uninterested in that question, a few desultory, unrevealing interviews with a few random women respondents notwithstanding. Anyone with a brain knows the answer to that question: Penis size doesn't "matter" (whatever that means) to the vast majority of people. To the people to whom it does matter, however, penis size matters a very great deal. Moote is one of those people to whom it matters, or such is the conceit of the documentary, so the only real question of the film is "Why does it matter so much to Patrick Moote?" But Moote sidesteps that question because answering it might have required him to be genuine. Rather, Moote takes the viewer on an odyssey of penis therapies, gets some very good advice along the way (which he appears to discard), and learns exactly nothing that might put a dent in his scorching self-obsession (and I'm not counting the hallmark sentiments hurriedly expressed at the documentary's end, the conclusion of a shaggy dog story if ever there was one). What becomes clear instead is the extent of Moote's masochism and the degree to which he must have eroticized the humiliation he supposedly feels. In other words, his shame and penis-related self-esteem issues become both his favorite topic and a kind of weapon that he wields against others. (That's most clear in the scenes in which he discusses his under-endowment with his parents and his ex-girlfriends; if you're not careful, you'd think Moote was being vulnerable and candid. Another likely interpretation, however, is that Moote draws pleasure from making people squirm.) I never believed his fiancée turned down his marriage proposal because of his penis size (there are so many other reasons why she might not have wanted to marry him, his fulminating neuroses and Olympian narcissism among them, that she'd never have needed such a superficial motivation). I never believed he seriously intended to try most of the treatments he supposedly considers. Mostly, I never believed that Moote was actually naïve enough to believe that pills and penis pumps (both of which he does try) would have any effect on the size of his junk. In other words, he depicts fake angst for fake impact. As a prolonged, Borat-like publicity stunt, it's certainly original. As a documentary, it never measures up.

"UnHung Hero" charts a humiliated man's fact-finding journey as he consults porn stars, doctors and anthropologists to learn whether the size of one's manhood matters.

I must say the sexologist is highly entertaining, explaining why he does not let people urinate in his establishment. He seems very laid back, very knowledgeable, but still is basically the keeper of a brothel. Not sure how you get to be the person who runs a house where people sit around and play with themselves.

Seeing Jonah Falcon was cool, as he is a very strange guy. I love that the world's largest man is not remotely a good-looking fellow. Not grungy like Ron Jeremy, either, but just dorky and undesirable.

UnHung Hero (2013)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Mildly entertaining documentary about Patrick Moote, a man who gets on the jumbo screen at a sporting event to propose to his girlfriend but she rejects him. We learn that it was because of his small penis so Patrick goes around the world trying to make it bigger. UNHUNG HERO kept me mildly entertained as I watched it but I had a hard time viewing it as a documentary. For starters, there's never any proof that this girlfriend dumped him because of his penis size. I mean, perhaps she was just embarrassed at the time? Perhaps she just wasn't ready to settle down? Perhaps hearing from her on if she walked off because of his penis size would have helped things. Also, a lot of this just seems to be done for humor as Patrick is constantly talking about his small penis. We never really see it either so who knows what the truth is. With that said, there are some funny moments scattered throughout and especially when he goes overseas to see how those men handle having a small penis and see what they do to try and make it bigger. We get a few doctors and sex experts talking about sizes and the history of men worrying about it. Again, if you've got nothing better to do then this is something worth watching. However, it's certainly not a well-researched or detailed film.