FANTASIA 2020 | "Feels Good Man" Examines Pepe The Frog's Legacy In Ribbetting Detail
9/12 ForReel Score | 4/5 Stars
The culture of internet memes seems like a topic big enough for a feature length documentary to cover. But a 90+ minute doc about one specific meme...that’s not something I would imagine being interesting or entertaining. That is however, until I watched Feels Good Man. This bizarre story of how a comic book character was morphed into a symbol he wasn’t intended to be is fascinating. And while I wish the film had more emotional value, there’s a lot of information and enough entertainment to make the experience worthwhile.
Pepe the Frog has had a colorful history in mainstream media and culture. Feels Good Man is a documentary directed by Arthur Jones that tracks the evolution of this anthropomorphic amphibian created by Matt Furie in his comic series Boy’s Club. At some point, one frame of the comic illustrating Pepe saying the phrase “feels good man” ignited an internet phenomenon that spiraled out of control.
Matt’s passion for his work as an artist is one of the primary reasons Feels Good Man is such a captivating story. And it’s because of that passion that it’s so disheartening to see what became of Pepe as he went from being a comic book character to internet meme to hate symbol. The doc is great at being informative and meticulous with exploring the details of Pepe’s rise to internet stardom then fall to the dark side of the internet.
But if we’re talking about “feeling”, Feels Good Man didn’t quite hit that emotional component hard enough for me. The doc is expert at cultivating empathy for the Boy’s Club artist, but there’s an endearing component to Matt’s work that occasionally glimmers yet never shines through the bothersome and frustrating components of the latter half of the doc and Pepe’s story.
Regardless, Feels Good Man is a good documentary, especially considering this is Arthur Jones’ directorial debut. It’s a doc that demonstrates how appalling media can be, how vile the internet can get, and how ugly some people are. But Feels Good Man combats all of that with optimism as the project becomes one more major step towards redeeming Pepe’s reputation. And that, at least, feels good man.
Acting and Casting - 2 | Visual Effects and Editing - 2 | Story and Message - 2 | Entertainment Value - 1 | Music Score and Soundtrack - 1 | Reviewer's Preference - 1 | What does this mean?