Ronaldo

Having just watched de la Iglesia's Messi documentary, I thought of going all in and looking at Ronaldo's as well. And although this one tries so hard that it frequently seems inauthentic, at least it provides direct feedback from the horse's mouth: there are no doubts about what Ronaldo feels and believes - but only concerning carefully selected themes that build up his persona.

The film follows the Real Madrid star for parts of the 2014 season, in between his two Ballon d'Or wins. Given that it was one of the most successful years any player has ever had in club football, the timing is just right for Ronaldo. We get a glimpse into his past, his circle of friends, his family, the relationship with his son, the ambitions driving his career. It is a competent, well structured documentary, even if it fails to inspire. That's already more than can be said about the Messi docu - both released in a (suspiciously) narrow time frame between each other.

Ronaldo's directorial control over the final output here feels heavy handed. His story, like most rags to riches stories, lends itself to dramatization, but without a wide-angled perspective from a neutral third party, much of this comes across as a vain attempt of self- aggrandizement. The absolute low is probably the World Cup episode, where claims like "I'd feel better if we had three Cristiano Ronaldo's" surface, all the while justifying the team's failure with Ronaldo's injury. The good thing is that the more you want to control something, the less you actually manage to control it, because the orchestration required to do so renders you myopic to the meaning of what you are putting out there. It takes a very talented filmmaker to run such a tight ship in an artistic fashion.

What I do appreciate is the no-crap attitude towards how important his goals are for him. Sure, one can always judge it and dislike such a cynical approach towards achieving something for one's own sake, but you can't ignore the success story and the reality that magnanimity isn't objective. A 360 approach to the professionals around Ronaldo would have made for an interesting case study in an ideal world, but the odds of acquiring something authentic would be very low at the curated pinnacle of the football world.

This is the paradox: while the movie feels directed, the amount of direction is a means of characterization. And this will always trump reconstructions and a lot of the time it will be superior to third party fables about the man. The superstar cult lives and breathes here. So for all it's worth, Ronaldo's docu tells a story about him. Also, we actually see original Messi footage in it, something "his" own documentary fails to include.

For this half of his life I gave it a 5. Would love to see the other half of his life...

I would have gave it a 10, if the other missing half would have been included in this documentary.

But anyway, I guess it would have been close to impossible, to talk about the other half which may not be so appealing, and disturb some of the people who think or want to think that, what this documentary showed is pretty much all the truth about his life and the other persons involved in it.

IMHO he is one of the best football players of his generation!

Actually wasn't that good. Was hoping to get some insight on the daily life of a world famous footballer, how they combine/balance their work life with family etc. Was hoping to see more of day-to-day stuff and really what was going on behind the scenes. Wasn't really that much of an insight, everything is mostly known from the documentaries released before and didn't really have very much new footage or info(when there should be, freaking camera crew has been following him for 14 months). Seems more like a marketing stunt than a documentary, it really didn't offer anything new or exclusive. Quite disappointed in the outcome in many ways.

The only really new part was knowing that he had daddy issues and that's it. Feels like the movie is more focused on dumb and irrational fans seeing their hero on the big screen.

This is a very good documentary about Cristiano Ronaldo. It is very interesting and easily to get stuck into.

Being a lifelong United fan, I had always had a soft spot for Ronaldo even if he did leave us and go on to be even more successful for that Spanish circus. He did remarkable things for us and it was always clear he was to leave us for Madrid, it wasn't a question of if, it was a question of when. Over recent years my soft spot for him has dwindled, of course you cannot question his ability and professionalism, he is a fantastic player who can do fantastic things. Of late though he seems to have become a parody of himself, he's always had that arrogance and it is warranted, he's that good he can carry that trait and pulls it off. Over the past few years though it has gone to new extremes, when he celebrated over the top when scored the 4th goal in a 4-1 Champions League win a few years back yet hardly joined in the celebrations of the much more important equalizing goal or the second goal, simply because he has no part in them. That is just one example of how he has gone too far with his arrogance, this 'documentary' is on another level yet again though.

The opening scene shows Messi winning Ballon D'or after Ballon D'or, Ronaldo speaking over this essentially spits his dummy out, traumatised and heartbroken. This sets the tone, Ronaldo doesn't care about team glory if he doesn't have the personal, individual glory to go with it. Winning the Best Player in the World award is all he wants, his success within teams is nowhere near as important as that to him, and in a team sport, that is a really negative, delusional trait to have.

Its labelled a documentary but its hardly that, its essentially a VLOG or Ronaldo's year leading up to his Ballon D'or award, covering the world cup and the Champions League final. Sadly we get to see minimal back story from his child hood, Lisbon or Manchester United years. He touches on these times but we get no depth to it and we are not shown anything new or interesting. Nobody talks directly down the camera, instead we have Ronaldo narrating scenes of himself being vain and obnoxious or filming of his life in his home which gets repetitive from the 1st minute as he doesn't show us anything important at all.

The film seems to advertise his Son just as much as it does himself, the scenes with his Son are somehow all about Ronaldo as well. 'Drink that drink and you will get strong arms like Daddy', he then flexes his biceps. Yawn. Or when he gets his Son to do 5 sit ups, only for Ronaldo to then start working out. His Mother features heavily in this film and she seems much more humble and down to earth. However Jorge Mendes, Ronaldo's agent is also featured often and he is a close runner with Ronaldo for most arrogant man on the planet. What a slime ball he is, and the sucking up to Ronaldo that he does is some of the most cringe worthy things I have ever had to witness.

One scene that completely epitomises Ronaldo Is when he opens his Garage, which is bigger than the average house, to show his Son that one of his cars is missing as it is having some work done. Ronaldo's Son is then forced to guess which one is missing, 'The Rolls, The Porsche, The Ferrari?' his Son guesses as he walks around the garage surrounded by super cars. 'No' says Ronaldo, 'The one that goes even faster than that'. How can you even film that and not feel like a complete and utter narcissistic moron?

Another thing we have to endure is his inability to take any blame for his actions. His never criticises himself once during the whole documentary, he genuinely believes that he is faultless and failures are not down to his ability but rather his team mates, injuries or other irrelevant factors. His unhealthy desire to be the best at everything he does is choreographed perfectly in this movie, everything is done dramatically and with utmost bias towards him and his career.

There are some positives though, I liked to see his house, his lifestyle, private jets and behind the scenes at award shows. His general arrogance often annoyed me, but looking past that and seeing how these multi-millionaires live is quite surreal. The scene where his Son spots Messi and is star struck is a great scene as it shows us how lucky we are to have these two great footballers playing at the same time in the same era.

Overall the movie offers nothing of great interest to the average football fan or even fans of Ronaldo. It will of course be lapped up by the teenage fan boys, making him a ton of money in the process. It would have been nice to see a documentary which shows us his past, gets in touch with his emotions more and provides more depth to his life. Instead it is simply a 90 minute video of Ronaldo telling us how he wants to always be the best and showing us how flash his lifestyle is, he's a man who has everything yet seems incredibly lonely and often unhappy.

4/10