Critic Reviews

The film is certainly interesting, despite the fact that it's a glorified promotional video for Muniz's installations.

The journey, an exploration of the passion for soccer that evolves into a history of the ball (a sort of film version of the anthropologist John Fox’s 2012 book, “The Ball”), is somewhat illuminating, often indulgent and never wholly satisfying.

Muniz uncovers a raft of intriguing people and stories, with subjects ranging from sports to astrophysics, gender politics, history and developmental psychology, but he never sits still with them long enough to ask any probing questions, and the film never arrives at any real point.

There’s certainly an interesting documentary to be made about soccer, the world’s most popular sport by far, but This Is Not a Ball isn’t it.