Fyre

Documentaries by nature are utilitarian, telling a story from real events as they happen with little expectation of aesthetic value. Once again, Smith ups the ante, delivering a film that is not only intellectually stimulating but visually as well.

Chris Smith’s documentary about the 2017 Fyre Festival implosion resists the urge to revel in cheap social media schadenfreude.

You leave this movie knowing exactly why it never should have happened in the first place.

Fyre allows you to marvel, and to feel – how spectacular the hubris, how gross the unfairness – while reminding that whether you bought a ticket or not, you were the audience the whole time.

In Fyre, Mr. Smith tells a story of character, or lack thereof.

Fyre is primarily a journalistic exhumation of the Fyre Festival’s ridiculous excesses. But via interviews with both dissatisfied ticket-buyers and nervy ex-employees, the movie also scrapes away the sheen of the flamboyant “influencer” lifestyle that McFarland leveraged to sell tickets and hook investors.

A bit more investigative work on the part of the filmmakers might have gone a long way, especially because there is something of a black hole at the center of Fyre: McFarland is depicted as ground zero in terms of responsibility, but we never get a real sense of who the guy is, what drives him, or how he was able to pull the wool over so many eyes.

A good doco on the mess that was the Fyre festival. Did have a good chuckle about some of the people getting scammed by a post from a C grade celebrity on instagram though.

While the "Fyre Festival" itself isn't particularly interesting, the story surrounding it, is. This documentary really shows how easy it is to manipulate people through social media and how much power celebrities really have. If you're interested in the Fyre Festival story or if you're just looking for a decent, entertaining documentary, you will probably enjoy this one.

The movie is very interesting, but also not as entertaining as expected. The documentary showed what happened at the Fyre Festival and how it failed, along with the festival goers reactions to the mess they payed for. The beginning was actually a little boring, but the middle included stuff I didn’t know about the Fyre Festival that I found was interesting. The ending was actually pretty good too. I recommend it, even if the beginning was not very good.

Since the two Fyre Festival investigative documentaries came out within days of each other I'm briefly reviewing both here. Fyre (Netflix) was a decent enough documentary of grand-fraudster Billy McFarland. It presented a fairly chronological accounting of events, ending with the legal consequences of the fraud. Fyre Fraud (Hulu) was less chrono, at least to begin with, and spent much more time describing Billy's childhood, college days, and the genesis of his fraudulent ways. In fact, I found Fyre Fraud to be more informative and entertaining. Fyre (Netflix) showed more of their social marketing photos and videos, but that wasn't as satisfying. Fyre Fraud also did a better job of describing the fraudsters' legal consequences, too, so my recommendation goes to Fyre Fraud (Hulu) if you only want to watch one of them.

I'll be honest, it's a good documentary, it's well done but to a certain degree it wasn't that interesting. Rich people got scammed. No big deal if you ask me.