Trainwreck: Balloon Boy

The Train Wreck series is pretty cheesy. The documentaries and sensationalistic and tacky. This one, Balloon Boy, goes above and beyond.

The father is clearly manic and is basically a clone of Cody from Sister Wives in temperament and ego. He is screaming for attention 24/7, even whwn he already has it.

The mother is clueless in every way a person can be and is completely controlled by the father. I don't know what happened to her that makes her that subservient, but it's pathetic to witness.

The sons are misogynistic tools, programmed by daddy. Beware.

Watching the documentary, and especially the father, made my skin crawl.

Yes, yes, Richard we were entertained. However, everyone knows you lied and that the whole family was in on it. Think its about time to give up the ghost. Kind of crazy how this one little stunt affected the way the entire family acts. There's a certain greasiness about all the kids now, sort of slimy attitudes you can't really trust due to this ingrained behavior brought about by this story their father told them they had to always stick to no matter what. They all sort of have that Wolfpack vibe now too, arrested development type thing. No surprise at the end that they are live in this gated compound now, afraid of the world. Hopefully that pardon makes them all less paranoid. I will give props to the wife though. That man found a woman that will stick with him through all of his crazy antics. Got to appreciate that I guess, he's found himself a real one. Also thanks to Netflix for not dragging this one out too long.

I like the Trainwreck series. It's kinda cheesy but fun to watch. But this... this is a disaster.

I'm sorry, but I won't buy it. It's clear every second of this is a script the father has concocted, forcing every family member to act. Absolutely bad acting, to boot. It's a terrible way to garner attention, and everyone noticed it, and they didn't give them the attention they wanted. But then years later, Netflix comes around and says, "Here's the attention you ordered." It's a huge disappointment that Netflix would give something like this a run for its money.

I feel bad for the kids, Richard and his wife are showing us what bad parenting is, moment by moment. And the man shamelessly acts like the victim, oh my God, how is such shamelessness possible?

Keep in mind, before seeing this documentary I knew NOTHING about this story, not one thing. So I went into this documentary the same way I try to go into a lot of them, with a neutral mind and I prefer not to immediately judge.

From the moment the 9-1-1 call started, I felt something was off. I'm not a parent but if my child snuck into a balloon that went up like that, I would be in hysterics. I know everyone reacts differently so I put that to my mind and gave Richard the benefit of the doubt. But when I saw the video of Falcon actually "going up" and the rest of the families reaction, particularly Richards when he was told Falcon was in there, that was some of the worst acting I've seen since I saw 2003's movie The Room. That's when I got major red flags in my mind but again, I wanted to see how this played out. There was also just something about the interviews from Mayumi and Richard that felt very disingenuous for some reason. Then I felt the same thing from Falcon when he came around. I found it interesting that they evidently couldn't afford cable but they could afford, as Richard stated himself, "Hundreds of dollars" to build that balloon. I found it interesting that Richard evidently didn't want to do anything with the media but he chose to do an interview with one of the biggest talk shows in the world, and I emphasize "the world" as Larry King Live was global. I'm sure he regrets that after what happened during that interview, let's just say "The cats out of the balloon".

I could go on about how full of it Richard is but I don't want to ruin it for those that want to watch this dumpster fire of a story. But for someone that knew nothing about the story and doesn't like to be too skeptical, its amazing how on point my feelings were about this. Shame on this family for wasting all those police resources and messing with the emotions of so many people that genuinely cared about Falcon's wellbeing. Also Netflix? Please stop giving fame seekers like this a stage to continue their fictional performance, it's beneath you.

The interviews with the family throughout were not useful in any way. They talked about this as if we already didn't know they were all bs artists. They were still sticking to the story that this was all true. It was bad and I am dumber for having watched it. One of the kids just swears constantly just to hear himself swear. The mother saying she didn't know what the word "hoax" meant just put this over the top. That her "confession" wasn't really a confession because the officers confused her. It was all silly. The conversations with the police and neighbors brought some information to the documentary. But that was about it.