Netflix Doc is convincing, then tiring

Before Charlie Sheen made his first appearance in the new three -hour Netflix documentation in two parts AKA Charlie Sheen,, Two and a half men Star Jon Cryer pours more than a few grains of salt over the entire effort.

“I had a certain apprehension about the participation in this, in part because a part of the Cycle of the life of Charlie Sheen was that he spoils terribly, he strikes the bottom of the rock and then he makes things move – he brings a lot of positivity in his life and it is at this point that he burns.

Cryer, who is easily the clearest participant in the eyes of the starry project, raises an impossible point to shake for the duration: is AKA Charlie Sheen An event of the recovery of Sheen or the last phase of his dependence? Put a different way, does the director Andrew Renzi does something that contributes to Sheen’s health or does it allow his illness? Is it important?

There will be no obvious or immediate response, and the truth is that many people will not care anyway, which raises some additional variants on these two questions: what does it mean to be “entertained” by the trip of Charlie Sheen at this stage? If you “like” AKA Charlie SheenDoes this make you significantly different from macabre people who spent several months saying “win!” And do “tiger blood!” Jokes during the last prolonged public crisis of Sheen? Is it a shipwreck that pretends to be an instructions for the maintenance of a particularly dangerous train? Does Renzi know that Renzi knows who is which one? Even more unfortunately, is it important?

I found myself thinking about these questions and feeling disturbed by the way the documentary really made me. Like the scanning of Sheen’s life in microphone, AKA Charlie Sheen Pass from fascinating to numb, numb to fascinating, sensational to desensitizing and not always pleasantly.

It is not all surprising that the Charlie Sheen who presents himself to us AKA Charlie Sheen is an ironic and honest storytelling of the highest level, because we have seen this version of Sheen several times during the five decades of its renown.

Sitting at a stand with what could be a restaurant or a game of restaurants – it is actually tokens in Hawthorne, but it is turned in a way that does not always feel real, adding to the artificiality / authenticity of the document – Sheen speaks Renzi through these decades of respect and notoriety.

With the frequently audible director alternating between the vertigo of brotherhood and the true concern of the buffoonery of Sheen, the actor appears entirely in control, a product of seven years of professed sobriety. Unlike his “winning!” Tour of the media, this sheen is introspective and unfortunate in the moments when he does not brake the legend of his different appetites, almost to the point that nothing seems spontaneous, putting the “preserves” in “the franchise”.

He crosses the climbing of his drug use, generally overlapping aspects of his sexual dependence, and although he is not as proud at the time of this shoot, he generally responds to the interviews and previous confessions in which the Trueggadocio was a determining characteristic. So what he sells here is contrast; He can always show how much he grew up by dealing with his consumption of cracks or the amount of money he spent on sex workers. In a documentary named according to the assertion that Charlie Sheen has always been a role that Carlos Estevez lives, it does not really matter that it looks like a variation in this role – a melancholic hamlet, rather than a maniac hamlet – instead of a complete elimination of a form.

All that matters and everything that is likely to import for most viewers is that it announces at first that nothing is prohibited, and when you reach the end, it is what it feels, even if it is not entirely true. Renzi makes a big show to ask the full crew to leave the interview space for several particularly personal questions. This takes place, however, as Renzi does for the benefit of the public, because Sheen does not suddenly become more comfortable in the allegedly more intimate framework.

The “private” part of the interview includes Sheen in a hurry closing an unpleasant recent accusation – then dancing obliquely around what I suppose that journalistic aggregators will deceive the greatest sexual revelation of the documentary, rather than wondering why it is the only thing he wants to dance. Renzi seems so happy that Sheen discusses this kind of thing that several apparently necessary follow -up questions are never asked.

The documentary is built around the cat with Sheen – which gives the impression of stretching over several days, on the basis of lighting choices – but Renzi has gathered an impressive assortment of key characters in Sheen’s life. The biggest absences are Father Martin Sheen and Brother Emilio Estevez, so before and center in the previous rooms of the Saga Sheen. Charlie is quite kind to wish that they spoke for the doc and understanding why they did not do it. Brother Ramon is kept in a way that is present as representative and not to give juicy quotes.

There is not such hesitation on the part of the ex -wives Denise Richards and Brooke Mueller, both aware of their participation – Richards says that his objective is to prevent this from being a “soft and shiny and coated with sugar” shit – but offering poignant and sometimes disturbing details. Friends for life like Sean Penn and Tony Todd are there to support each other. Heidi Fleiss is there, surrounded by parrots, to be less than possible, because she rightly feels betrayed by the man she calls “a crybaby pussy dog”. Cryer and Chuck Lorre are there to be magnanimous.

Instead of prolonged reconstructions, Renzi and his assembly team imitate the technique that worked so well on Always: a movie Michael J. FoxClips Clips of the scripted, cinematographic and television work of Sheen to recreate the biographical details and, in the process, illustrate how many sheen choices were autobiographical. The approach is supplemented by an intensive use of the films of the Super 8 childhood of Estevez Brothers, DIY productions which weigh on the genre that Charlie Note often has similarities with the films that their father made at the time.

It is by speaking of his youth and reflecting on the influence of his father that Sheen is the most relaxed and open, or perhaps Renzi is the most interested. Sheen has great stories about the first stages of his career – like having to refuse the head Karate Or a hilarious sequence has devoted a television force test between Charlie and Martin and Michael Jordan – but stories become more drugs and sex and therefore more repetitive and exhausting.

Counter -teethe, I think that if Renzi had let Sheen speak for 30 minutes more of his professional life – yes, I ask for the quality Eight men Stories, damn – the documentary would have felt shorter (or faster) because it would have seemed less monomaniacal. A large part of Sheen’s story focuses on how he continued to obtain new opportunities even after reaching new rock background levels, but he is not always clear why he continued to obtain these opportunities.

Put a different way, Charlie Sheen has often lost the thread of what was a talented actor Charlie Sheen and AKA Charlie SheeN also loses this reality, to the detriment of the documentary as a rounded portrait. Is Sheen an emblematic actor who was addictive or emblematic drug addict who started as an actor? He feels, especially in his second half, as AKA Charlie Sheen is fixed on the latter, to the point that I went from captivated to exhausted. The doc is not exploiting, but its merit or its absence can be more obvious in five or 10 years – because we see where it is part of the arc of the life of Sheen – than after three hours of observation.