- Location: The Grand Cinema
- Louie Schwartzberg's documentary Fantastic Fungi reminded me of a marijuana legalization campaign in that it overemphasizes the role of mushrooms in medicine, anthropology, and psychology, as if to counterbalance the fact that they are more famous for getting you super-duper high. Not that fungi haven't contributed significantly to humanity, particularly in the development of penicillin, but the film's claims that the ingestion of hallucinogenic fungi drove the evolution of the human cranium or help to treat cancer fall about as flat as the cap of a Western Flat-Topped Agaricus.
- The film trots out a stable of talking mushroom heads ranging from Dr. Andrew Weil to Michael Pollan, but the fundamental force behind the narrative is Paul Stamets, who never met a task that he thought a mushroom couldn't accomplish. With an appearance and voice that recall one of the shaggier Muppets, Stamets excels at storytelling, gleefully relating how mushrooms helped him to conquer his stutter when he got really high and climbed a tree in a thunderstorm. Later on, he tells an audience that mushrooms helped to cure his mother's breast cancer and even trots his mother up on stage to prove the point. I have no reason to doubt Stamets' sincerity -- the man clearly loves mushrooms -- but many of his claims rely a little too much on his charisma to be fully believed.
- Regrettably, Fantastic Fungi doesn't really delve into the most interesting aspect of mushrooms, namely that they form mycorrhizal networks that transport nutrients and facilitate communication between plants, preferring instead to show CGI renderings of this process while making the laughably trite claim that "everything is connected." (The narration by Brie Larson is generally inoffensive but certainly not strong enough to sell lines like that.) The scene most emblematic of the film's approach to its subject, however, features an early hominid getting stoned out of its mind and waving its hand in front of its face, complete with kaleidoscopic effects. I half expected Jefferson Airplane to start playing right at that moment, and that was even before the Woodstock scenes. Maybe I should have popped a few golden tops to get in the right state of mind for this one because honestly the whole experience left me feeling a little low.
