Very well executed

One of my all time favorites.

Good movie but grossly overrated

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

I don't know how Errol Morris ever became so respected when he produced garbage like this.This movie jumps from person to person, never making much sense.It's basically just a record of stupid people saying stupid things.The first idiot was a pear shaped loser with the IQ of a pear.The man is 48 years old and doesn't look a day under 100.He said things like "worsh" and "they don't waste nothing" multiple times.His only purpose in the movie is to try to make the guy from the rendering plant(the only guy in the movie with a functioning brain)look evil and he fails consistently.So he mentions being charged with a crime and then they just move on and we never find out what happened to him.The focus then moves on to another mental midget.This guy blames the "pet explosion" on human birth control.He says birth control makes women get jobs and if they don't have a baby they need to get something to "fondle".He goes on to say then the woman's parents need to get pets because the lack of grandchildren leaves them nothing to "fondle" and "rear".With thoughts like that rattling around in his empty head, you know his offspring are going to be real winners.Those fools are the next to grace your screen.They are both college graduates who couldn't function at real jobs.The older one was too stressed out to sell insurance and the other one got dumped by his girlfriend so they both had to move home and let daddy support them.The older son goes on to explain how a graph chart works and how hard it is to drive to vet offices, no wonder insurance was kicking his ass.The other one babbles about music and we are treated to way too much of his terrible guitar playing.At one point he plays a recording of his noise while we are treated to a view of his pot plants.And I didn't even mention all the idiot pet owners.One old lady cries about how she raised her grandson and he doesn't do anything for her.She claims to have bought him a "real nice" car but later admits she only gave him $400.But what would you expect from a person who doesn't even realize they had to raise their grandson because they failed at being a parent the first time?The rest of the pets owners can't shut up about how they will see their pets in heaven and it's just so sad that people can be that stupid.The only reason to watch this is the guy at the rendering plant.

A documentary about a pet cemetery in California, and the people who have pets buried there.Roger Ebert wrote that the film is an "underground legend," and in 1997 put it in his list of The Great Movies. This is a very strange film to have on the Great Movies list, especially considering it is probably not generally thought of as Morris' best. He is much more well known for "Thin Blue Line" or "Fog of War", for example.But everyone has to start somewhere, and he started off with some quirky people. We see that here, and we see that with "Vernon, Florida". The Criterion collection was wise to package the two together, because they are very much the same sort of story in a way. Is it America or just humanity in general that has these oddballs?

The film starts with an man talking about his journey to achieve his dream of opening a pet cemetery in the south bay of San Francisco. We meet the people who help him: investors, friends, pet lovers. We also meet the guy against him, the guy who makes a living out of disposing of dead animals. This is the first part of the film. The second part of the film we meet a family that runs a successful pet cemetery, called the Bubbling Well Pet Cemetery. We meet the father, the head of the business, his wife, the moral supporter, for a lack of a better definition, and we meet the two sons involved in assisting in operations, one is a former insurance worker, the other is a business admin college grad. This is the basic outline of the film. And this sounds kind of boring, maybe. But boring it is not. If anything, slow at times. Thats because the camera is usually completely still and people are positioned in front of the camera, talking into it. What is interesting is how when these characters talk they let loose and go on tangents, exposing their world views, usually in the context of pets, and what we see is the humanity of these seemingly regular people, their musings on life and death, companionship, love, filial duty. For instance, the first man with the pet cemetery idea talks about how you can't trust people, how if you turn around they might stab you in the back, but his dog would never do this because you can trust your dog. The dead pet disposal guy rants about, and is surprised at the emotional connection people have with pets, as though it was something he just discovered in his line of work, and his line of work is treated by him as just a job, not anything controversial. And the sons of the successful pet cemetery owner, one is a motivational speaker. He talks about projecting ideas of success and refraining from using negative words with his little daughter, when she has done something wrong. And the other son talks about his musical aspirations and how he found out what love is in college and then found out about the hard break up afterwards. Erol Morris succeeds at exposing the layers of peoples in a real light, sometimes showing the contradictory and absurdness of peoples personalities and yet also showing the genuineness of people and their intentions. At times the film is comical, at times very serious, and other times sad. Morris is a keen observer of human behavior and this film illustrates this very well. For some local history from the southern SF bay area, for an interesting look at peoples views on very common human issues we can all relate with and of course on pets, see this nice movie. 8 out of 10.

Ebert put this film on his top 10 films of all time list. Now for this film to be up there with Citizen Kane and The Third Man, I was expecting to be thrown from my seat... that didn't happen. I don't know how to rate this film. All throughout the doc, I didn't know what to make of it. The people were strangely saying very, very profound things, but I had to try hard to discard their appearance and mannerisms. I have a fear that the antics of Christopher Guest among others mocking simple people puts this film as a disadvantage. Halfway though I asked myself "Is this a comedy that I'm just not getting?" It had a Guffman air to it, which is to simply let the people talk and expect you to laugh. But is wasn't. I listened extra hard and started to see that it clearly did not show any comedic elements, but I still didn't know what to make of it. This film requires multiple viewings, but I don't really wanna see it again.Ebert is right, this film is about much, much, much more than a Pet Cemetary. However, it is no where near one of the 10 greatest films of all time. Ebert must have lost a lot or pets or have a fixation on that movie theater in the sky.