I was expecting this little film to be a superficial hero worship of a man that made entertainment for kids worldwide for quite a few years, especially as it was produced by his youngest son, Jamie.
However to my surprise, Jamie (who is presenter and co-producer) allows this interesting documentary to get quite dark. He is more interested in the man behind the legendary productions like Thunderbirds, Stingray, Space:1999, Joe 90 and Captain Scarlet than the actual productions themselves. It is a calculated gamble that the audience would be too but it pays off in spades.
We learn another side to his father, some of which we already knew, some of which we didn't. The driving force behind his incredible imagination, his miserable childhood of near poverty, a manipulative and bitter mother, his sadness at how it affected his relationship with his father, a terrible family tragedy in WWII, being a victim of anti-semitic bullying at school and how it affected his education and how he struggled with his relationships with women and his deep regrets at the carnage of his first two marriages. Whilst Gerry portrayed a fun world for children in his legendary television series, he himself had a childhood to forget.
This film pulls no punches, with Jamie's own memories of his father (Gerry was 57 when Jamie was born) being a mixture of fun but also sadness as he saw his own dad fall victim to dementia and robbing him of his own memories to a point where he didn't recognize people anymore. There are also archive clips from people who worked with Gerry who are openly critical of Gerry's personality and what they thought of him. Much like Willie Wonka in Roald Dahl's book, beneath the fun surface of the man there lurks a deeply troubled person.
It can't have been easy for Jamie to learn that not everyone thought his father was wonderful but fair play to him for sharing it with us. If anything it humanizes him . We learn that although Gerry was a very innovative, forward thinking and creative man, he was also a lousy businessman. He got lucky in that he made his biggest shows for impressario Lew Grade and his ITC company. Grade cut Anderson a lot of slack and showed faith in him but even then he would pull him up if he wasn't happy over some of Andersons decisions. Anderson also had a nasty, expensive and vicious divorce from Sylvia that dragged on for years. That too is addressed here and this is one of the few flaws in this film as I felt it a little bit one sided. As Sylvia died in 2016 and her daughter from her first marriage refused to be interviewed it obviously wasn't possible to obtain her perspective but I would have liked to have heard more from someone who knew her as there are always two sides to an argument.
The documentary uses A I generated scenes to animate audio taped interviews that Anderson had recorded a few years before his death. This is the other issue I had with the documentary as although the filmmakers tried to do something different in order to use these recordings, I felt that the A I was a bit obvious, despite them trying to disguise it. However that was a minor quibble in comparison to the mine of information in this documentary.
All in all this is a warts and all film that fleshes the man out and shows he was actually a far more complicated man than I guess most fans realised. He as both a pioneer but also very naive too. He had huge success but then lost it all. Jamie addresses the fact that the successful 'Terrahawks' TV series (1983) led to a resurgement of interest in the man and his back catalogue and he was able to get his life back on track after a decade where the offers had dried up. Anderson wasn't a big fan of Terrahawks but it did his career a power of good.
All in all, a bold but worthy watch with a very moving last half hour.
