Bigger

Huge bb fan and in the industry so I was excited for this movie. Just felt like there was no crescendo. Interesting story however accurate it actually is. Would have been fun to see more of the Arnold/frank/Sergio competition. It was just a blip in the movie. I know it's about Weider but still that time was defined by the Oak.

Now I know about the sport of bodybuilding as I have trained in gyms in and off since the eighties and used to buy the Weider magazines.

So I was looking forward to this film to see old time bodybuilders. The film had a few in there but nothing as I thought there would be.

So the film itself was good but nothing special, I felt it played it safe, nothing controversial in it. I was waiting for a strong punchline, something that would say it was in the Raging Bull side of movies not Driving Miss Daisy side of films, it sided with the latter.

So I enjoyed but left disappointed with it.

Overall a good film but nothing special with it.

I just saw this movie on opening day at the only theatre in the Bay Area that was showing it (in San Francisco).

This movie is excellent. Well paced, excellent editing; it tells the story of the Weider brothers as they lay the groundwork for what would become the fitness industry.

Anyone who grew up idolizing Arnold or any of the other body builders will love this too. The actor who plays Arnold is phenomenal - he looks, sounds, and acts like him.

My only complaint is the movie wasn't long enough. It ended a bit abruptly. But this movie is a solid 7.5 - 8 in my book. Engaging throughout, great acting, choreography, etc. I hope it gets the praise it deserves.

As a biography, Bigger hearkens back to the days when Hollywood biopics cranked out knights in shining armor using whatever mixture of fact and fiction they thought would fill the seats and send everybody home happy. Joe Weider is a presented as a blemish-free altruist who only wants to help the world become a fitter place; various inconvenient aspects of Joe's private and professional lives - including the timing of his two marriages and the existence of his daughter, legal difficulties stemming from highly exaggerated claims of his products' effectiveness, questionable treatment of business partners, and strong presence in the gay-oriented "beefcake magazine" market of the 1950s and early 60s with titles like Adonis and Body Beautiful - are either glossed over or ignored completely. Meanwhile, the villainous foil "Bill Hauk", officially claimed to be a composite of several real-life characters but pretty clearly a representation of U.S. Olympic weightlifting coach and rival muscle mag publisher Bob Hoffman, is a cartoonishly evil, racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, violent thug. Exec produced by nephew Eric Weider, the film plays like the Weider Empire's bid for Joe's sainthood.

Historical inaccuracies and omissions aside, as a movie it just isn't very satisfying. The years flip by so quickly it's difficult to build up much momentum, and we're often left wondering exactly how last year's big dilemma played out. Tyler Hoechlin as Joe does a capable job mimicking Weider's distinctive Polish/Yiddish/Quebecois accent but tacks on an awkwardly stilted manner of speech; oddly, both of these are absent in the always-classy Robert Forster's portrayal of Joe as an old man. The labored delivery combined with Joe's single-minded obsession with fitness makes him appear to be a sort of Rain Man of bodybuilding, and only succeeds in distancing the audience from the character. Repeated anti-Semitic attacks and accusations of homosexuality fail to build the viewer's sympathy after the first few instances, with a mounting array of epithets not heard for a while in a non-Tarentino movie.

The film tries hard to present Joe Weider's life story as a classic David-versus-Goliath struggle. But given the ending we already know, it's pretty clear that this David's goal all along was to become an even bigger Goliath.

So, I think the totality of the user reviews here suffer from two things, one, sampling bias, and two, biased judgment about the subject matter. Sampling bias I'm referring to the fact that the few people (in the world) who watch this and able to write a review are from the bodybuilding community, who knows a thing or two about the actual history, so they are not necessarily the best "movie reviewers" and probably think too much about how it matches real history, biased judgment goes to the reviewers who has some negative opinion about bodybuilding in general. In any case, if you forget all that, this movie is actually a well paced, fun and moving film to watch in its own right. For sure, one may ask "What's the higher cultural and social significance here?" Answer is maybe not much, but, the writers know that, and they have done a good job dramatizing the series of mini/focal conflicts and struggles, so each one of them is fun to watch as they occur. Overall it's a linear and straight to the point "documentary" of probably made-up series of failures and successes, and the character background (mother wanted a girl, mother against weight lifting, being a jew, weak) are not beefy enough, it managed to capture attention and when Joe struggled to show emotion in front of Betty, it worked. Overall, the acting and constructing of a character who's almost possessed and highly focused on one strange thing stands on its own and makes the character fun to watch, the acting is pretty good too. One last point I want to make is "so what it is about boasting the success of the Weider empire?" aren't all biopic success stories about boasting the protagonist? Watch it as a motivation story.