Best movie ever!

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Once, nominated for Best Documentary in the 2011 Academy Awards. This documentary is one of the strangest documentaries, I watch, in a long time. It's surprising that this film got even made. The film's editors had to sit through over 10,000 hours of tapes just to get a few minutes' worth of usable footage. While, the movie says, it was filmed by mysterious graffiti artist, Banksy; most of the filming seem to come from an eccentric French shop keeper and amateur film maker, named Thierry Guetta who transform himself, from an Average Joe into a semi well-known street artist named Mr. Brainwash, in which, this movie covers. However, there has been much speculation, in Thierry's quick artistic metamorphosis evolution that a lot of people, doubt the particularly with regards to authorship and authenticity within the art of this film. Many people believe, that this film was just an elaborate ruse on Banksy's part to cover up that Thierry Guetta is not the artist of his own work, but it was the director that did it, all. It could be, true. After all, Mr. Brainwash's works seem to carbon copy emulate the styles and concepts of Banksy. Plus, there has been some strong speculated that Mr. Brainwash is just another pseudonym outlet for Banksy who remain, very much hidden from the public eye. It has been stated that the reason for this secrecy is that graffiti is a still a crime. Also, since, America has a bigger art market than United Kingdom, but has harsher laws; he would make sense, that Banksy would use, an elaborate public surrogate, just in case, if things go bad, over there. Some suggest, that famous artists, Shepard Fairey and Banksy have been artificially inflating the sales of Mr. Brainwash's work for their own gain. According to some critics, Mr. Brainwash's work hasn't sold as well on independent forums, and I do somewhat believe them. Who knows, if any of this, things are true or not. In the end, it doesn't really matter, to me, because, in my opinion, 'Exit through the Gift Shop' is still entertaining enough, not to care. However, I do believe that the film, portrays Thierry Guetta such a negative light, that it's kinda damaging to the point that many people couldn't take him seriously. He's portray as a mental unbalance comical tool here, rather than a creative artist. I know, Guetta's unhealthy obsession of filming everything is a bit disturbing, but his 2006's short film, Life Remote Control isn't that horrible. Don't get me wrong, it's bad, but it at least, isn't as bad, as the street artists, make it out to be. In my opinion, Guetta still, has some semi-good creatively ideas, when it came to art. Guetta's uniformly subversive pop-art style isn't that amateurism as it looks. So, it was a bit mean-spirited for other street artists to think, they're so much superior to him, and lampoon him, like that. That's one thing, I hate about this film. Everybody in the film acts so pretentious and snobby, when it comes to art. It's such a turn off. However, for the most part, the movie paint the graffiti artists in a good light. Still, I wish, the movie tackle, more of the bad side of graffiti artists as well, as a couther argument. Not all graffiti artist paint their art on abandoned buildings or obvious bland-looking public structure like the movie does for safety reasons. Some, do publicity deface, public property, such as corporate & government building, as a way to promote anarchy and chaos. These acts, can be seem, as disrupted, from the social norms. Others, really go out of their way to vandal, public place used as memorials or worship, as a way to promote hate and discrimination. Other do it, as a way to troll, the public audience, by showcasing hateful or too vulgar or distasteful. Me, personally, I have a love/hate relationship when it comes to those type of graffiti. I do understand, how all graffiti can be represent as art. I can understand, how this type of art, could be misinterpreted and misrepresented by the mainstream media, as gang tagging, or offensive defacement, but there are some truly some artwork isn't that appealing to the eyes, nor wanted. These are it! This can barely be, represented as art. I think, anybody who is a respected graffiti artist can understand, why certain places shouldn't be defacement, by art. After all, I really doubt, that they're willing to have, their own house, graffiti by somebody else. It's way too expensive to clean. I do have to say, I really didn't like that part of the film. Another is the scene where Banksy puts a mannequin dressed like a Guantanamo Bay detainee in the middle of Disneyland. Honestly, what does Disneyland's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad have to with a Guantanamo Bay detainee? I really don't get that message. How is that art? I would, really be mad, if I was, riding that ride, and they close the park, because of that stupid publicity stunt. I would ask, Banksy to repay me for the time, lose. Overall: Graffiti is seen as art to some people and as vandalism to others. It is all based on perspective. As a film, the movie was very interesting. Lots of twist and turns, make this film, a great watch. The future of graffiti looks bright even with all the negative influences it has on it. This film is worth checking out.

By far my most favorite documentary. I probably saw it 10 times already and every of my friends who haven't, I force to watch it with me.This movie gives a perfect view behind the artist and art scene, not only regarding street art but in general. It shows what it needs to be a successful artist today and how art gets commercialized through media and crazy people who only want to be 'in' and therefore try to follow the crowds as much in front as possible.It also shows how much real artists suffer under the hype they unchain themselves because people need heroes and so put the artist on top of their art, while the real artist wants his art to be recognized but not himself.Who wants to get a picture of the different personalities artists can have, this is an excellent example as well. While some want to stay in the shadow, others are narcissists and feel well in the spot lights. But at the end the audience may understand that the guys in the spot lights are the great pretenders (as was Andy Warhol for example), while the real artists prefer to stay unknown (as Banksy).However - since I saw this movie the first time, I changed the way to walk through a city, opening my eyes and finding many interesting things I would have simply overlooked before. So I can say - this movie brought some new value into my life - Thank you guys!!

I don't know if there is any definitive proof out there to suggest that this in fact a "mockumentary" or a "prankumentary", or whatever else it has been coined by critics for that matter - but - hoax or not, I thought it was well worth the watch! I personally believe it is fake. Straight from the off I began to to question aspects of the story; the validity of the storyline, the authenticity of the characters, and in particular, who was doing the filming when it was the film-maker in shot!? Anyway, that aside, Banksy does make a pretty convincing movie, and after surfing the web for just a few minutes, my findings have proved that many (dupes?) still firmly believe the material is 100% authentic.For me, this takes little away from my enjoyment in watching the film. Towards the end, I did feel a little cheated, as documentaries have traditionally been based on reality, and therefore a non fiction documentary does seem a little pointless. But like I said before, it is still worth watching.Admiring the many pieces of street art, alone, make the film worth a watch for me. Don't expect to be blown away, because this after all is just a documentary, (and lets face it, no documentaries are that exciting!) but it certainly does enough to maintain my interest throughout.I doubt this is ever going to exist as somebody's 'favourite movie ever', I think I can say that with conviction, however, it is one of those films that I recommend you watch - If only once.

Exit Through the Gift Shop - This was pretty entertaining. The movie starts out as a documentary of Street Artists. The stuff these guys were doing was pretty cool and I would have happily watched 90 minutes worth of that. At some point in the film there was a switch and instead of following around the street artists, we started following around the original documentarian (Thierry Guetta).If you haven't seen this, and plan to, stop reading now! I started to get a little suspicious around the time of this twist. First, when Thierry turned in his first cut of the documentary. They played it off as a completely unwatchable - to me it looked like someone with talent trying to make something unwatchable. Seemed a little odd. The second was when Thierry allegedly got detained at DisneyLand. There was no footage of that. We had to totally take is word about being grilled for hours - and the Disney police examining his video camera.This suspicion did not, for one moment, lessen my enjoyment of the movie. It may have even made me more interested! As Thierry turned into Mr. Brainwash, it was fun to watch. The show he put on was pretty insane and I found myself doing some research on the web to see if it really happened. I did have to question if one person could really put out all that work in such a short amount of time. I know he didn't do the work - but even coming up with that many ideas would take a lot of time.I could keeping going on about this flick. It was something else and I highly recommend a viewing.