Critic Reviews

Strauch creates enormous drama from the clips at her disposal — not just the Boenish material, but movie clips and found footage, all of which is deftly handled.

The exhilarating documentary Sunshine Superman, which melds gorgeous aerial photography of Boenish’s jumps with sublime musical cues, finds in Boenish a kind of poet-adventurer, equal parts pixie and desperado.

Interviews with Boenish’s wife, Jean, give his life story perspective and heart.

Sunshine Superman, a portrait of BASE jumping founding father Carl Boenish, effectively captures the irrepressible energy of a man who never tired of taking flying leaps. But it also does something even rarer for the documentary genre: It demands to be shown on an IMAX screen.

You may not leave Sunshine Superman wanting to emulate Carl and Jean, but you will feel like you've vicariously bonded with them.

While this buoyant account of his brief but eventful life might feel like a rock climber's "Man on a Wire," the Oscar-winning 2008 documentary about tightrope walker Philippe Petit, director Marah Strauch gives the film an exhilarating uplift of its own.

First-rate assembly has a real dramatic grip as well as considerable lightheartedness, the obvious standout element being the large chunks of startling freefall and helicopter camera footage, both new and archival.

It depicts counterculture where those stranded outside the barriers of conventional society seek to push past natural boundaries to intermingle with the metaphysical in midair.

The footage is striking, the memories of the man vivid, and the finale, a tribute to the next phase of the sport, winged suits, which Carl didn’t live to see, still stuns you.

Sunshine Superman might seem like a niche story, with its focus on stunts that most people wouldn’t dream of actually doing, but the documentary feels universal. It’s simply an examination of how one man fully embraced life while charting his own path.