Becoming Cary Grant

Disappointing doc. Doesn't really tell us anything new about Cary Grant. The filmmakers had access to his private films, but present no context for us to interpret them. (Mostly shots of pretty actresses. Was he auditioning future lovers?) The footage of his mother is interesting. You can't help but look at her footage for signs of mental illness. He had serious mommy issues, but why didn't he have serious daddy issues, too? (His dad had abandoned the family and started a new family with someone else.) Betsy Drake recommended LSD treatment to him, which gave him great insight into his relationships with women. (i guess old-fashioned "talk therapy" wasn't cool back then?) When his Eureka moment happened, we aren't told WHEN. Before Dyan Cannon? Before his last marriage to Barbara?

I would recommend this documentary to people who don't know nuttin' about him. For people familiar with his films and biography, not so much.

Interesting psychological and existentialist documentary on Hollywood star Cary Grant. There is some about his career, including the very begining as an acrobat in England and singing in Broadway. However, the great enphasis lies on the obscure man beging the glamourous Cary Grant: Archie Leach. Serious family problems, LSD treatment and other experiments and therapies, a bad "serial" husband, dubious sexuality and potential mysoginy... many issues are explored in varied depth in its less than one hour length. With lots of grrat footage, the film also highlights his roles in cinema in which Cary Grant faces somehow Archie Lech, the man behind the mirror.

Lets get the first thing out of the way. Cary Grant is one of the performers I admire greatly. I have not researched his career in depth but I was aware of his real name. Learning about his troubled childhood and his relationship with his mother and women was enlightening. I was shocked to find out he used LSD, under medical supervision, to better understand himself and was more shocked to find out about his weaknesses. He did turn those weaknesses into a strength though and became a better performer by understanding himself.

Recommended viewing for his fans and amateur shrinks.

Becoming Cary Grant (2017)

*** (out of 4)

This here is like many recent documentaries where the subject themselves tells their story. The subject here is the one and only Cary Grant who we hear from interview clips as well as actor speaking from an unreleased autobiography.

If you're familiar with the life of Grant then I seriously doubt that you're going to learn anything new here. We start off hearing about his LSD trips later in life and then we bounce back to his troubled childhood, which includes losing his mother to mental illness and then reaching out to her decades later. We cover his move to Hollywood, his rise to stardom as well as various roles throughout his career.

Other documentaries have covered this stories several times before, which is why I say there's really not too much new stuff here. What new stuff there is includes some home movies that Grant filmed, which are quite interesting and towards the end there's an interview with his last girlfriend as well as his daughter. Truth be told, I would have preferred more to do with these two ladies as I'm sure they had some great stories to share.

As it is, BECOMING CARY GRANT does a nice job for those unfamiliar with the life of the actor but at the same time I wasn't really bowled over by the structure of the film. I think some of the visuals go a bit too far as the story itself is strong enough to hold the viewer's attention. Still, fans of Grant will want to check this out.

Not every movie is for everybody. If you're a die hard Cary Grant fanatic and wanted it to be just documenting everything he did in life, you're gonna be disappointed. This is merely exploring his pursuit of happiness. It's fascinating hearing about the things that had happened in his past and how they shaped him to become who he was. It's also very meaningful to me to have movies like this. It's a unique perspective and it made me think and feel heavily. Which is something I really love from a movie, and if you do too then you might like it.

I hate not giving it 10 stars, but definitely as far as film making goes it's not award winning. Still great nonetheless.