Review by gethys-60258

I watched this to learn about "the Villages" and figured it would certainly hit on the dirty side of things but this doesn't cover any of that. It follows the lives of four people, one of whom doesn't even live there but is living in his van in hopes of finding a sugar mama. One couple is a guy who is painted as crazy but is likely in the beginning stages of depression and his overwhelmed and sad wife and the fourth is a recent widow who is lonely. It is clear that the director looked for pathetic people to make it seems like a miserable and pathetic place. There is no real discussion of what it is or what real events/activities they offer. The transitional clips of events are always of small groups of people in homes or small areas to create a "pathetic" look. Pulling up images of the villages; it looks like they actually have some great and impressive entertainment and activities but you wouldn't know it watching this thing. The lighting/or lack thereof casts everything in shadows and fluorescent light to make it less appealing (for a professional production, wouldn't you think they would do stage lighting for interviews and such??). To further the sense of it being "dystopia" they do close or of facades that don't look nice or show scenes with broken stuff (like the one of the street lamp with one light hanging over) vs showing the full street and overall feel of the place. I've never been to the actual place but this "documentary" (if you want to call it that) is a depressing dystopia that seems to intentionally want to create a negative perception of a place that probably is actually a nice place (I have to assume older people flock there for a reason). Avoid it or watch it with skepticism.