Some how, some way the director manages to bored you with people eating bugs. How do you mess up bugs getting eaten as a major shock while viewing?
Bugs
Rent $4.99
It should be no surprise the reviews on Amazon for this film are:
"Bugs originally aired several years back on Sci-fi Channel (back when they offered some watchable films ... too bad they lost the formula). Is it great? No."
"Now this one I loved! The plot was good. The actors were good, and lots of insects crunching on people! My kind of movie! Will watch this one again."That's because Amazon screwed up and has the reviews of another film named Bugs, sci-fi in origin, on the page for the Bugs doc. So the publisher of this film was too lazy to get it changed and no one else has cared to tell Amazon and I won't either, because it's funny.
Unlike the sci-fi movie the reviews are for, people don't get munched on by bugs in this movie, bugs get gobbled up by Chef Ben Reade and Josh Evans a food-science researcher. You sadly have to go with these two, who just come off as pretentious when talking with others about how bug food should be distributed or as freaking weirdos as they gobble up bugs like they're their last meals. Seriously, the look like drug addicts getting a hit while eating bugs. It's never delightful to be with them. Ben Reade is the worse of the duo, but eventually he quits his job and leaves the Nordic Food Lab, which funds their look around the world. It's somewhat bittersweet, because he talked so big and left and doesn't stay to the end of the film and is replaced by a Chef who has zero personality, the intern.
On paper it sounds fantastic following two young researchers to see what bugs are eaten and how around the Earth. Yet, visually it's just a tepid adventure of someone following them around eating some bugs and there is no elegance, there is no moment of presentation to the audience that shows the director tried to both inform and entertain the audience.
It would have been better if it was tackled by a travel or food show. And there are some interesting moments or places ruined by the unlikable hosts or boring camera work.
It ends on a sad note, which there are quite a few, of the food researcher Josh in front of some sort of very small assembly of the UN in Switzerland, I mean a lot of empty seats, where he puts out the message that big business sucks and people can eat bugs for food.
The film could have given its concise point from the start instead of the utterly boring scenes of Josh and Ben confronting their employers, colleagues and friends about how bugs and big business are bad. Making them come off as jerks.
Mainly, the director just loses everything with just how boring he makes bug eating. Eating bugs fresh from the ground and on your plate, come on, how do you ruin that?
I'll stick for meat and potatoes a little longer.
