Tales of the Rat Fink (2006)

Too much of everything

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

This is the story of famed hot rod & custom car designer Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, the creator of Rat Fink. It's a generally chronological description of his journey. It's style is mostly derived from the outsider art that he had such a hand in building. For a general documentary of everything hot rod, this one touches on all of it. It's not that personal of a story. It's not like it gets into his life or anything. It's all about the cars, and the art.The movie has a lot of animation based on his style of outsider art. It has a lot of stock footage and narration. In fact, the cars get their own voice in narration. Like most car guys, they're trying to give personality to each car. However they all start to sound the same and not that individualized. There's a lot to like, but it's mostly for fans. We don't see anything personal, but we do see a lot of pretty cars.

As a fan of Kustom Kulture, I enjoyed this unique collaborative as a tribute to one of it's most influential and commercially successful icons. While it was not a complete biography, it did capture the spirit of Ed Roth which lives on through his work and his fans.There are so few of the original "kings" of Kustom Kulture living today (like master pin striper Lyle Fisk shown on the film's "bonus features" and kustom builder George Barris) while most of the kulture's founders (Von Dutch, Boyd Coddington and many others in addition to Bid Daddy) have passed. I would love to see a feature-length documentary on the history of Kustom Kulture and how that kulture is alive and well today.

Lovers of hot rods and Ed 'Big Daddy' Roth are definitely the audience for this film, so the fact that I wasn't particularly enamored by the film is mostly because I am not a fan. Keep this in mind when reading my review--it's not for the hard-core fans but for someone who just likes to watch documentaries.From my outsider point of view, this was a pretty weird documentary because of it's style. First, because Roth was dead by the time they made this film, John Goodman narrated the film as if he were Roth. And, other celebrities (such as the Smothers Brothers and Jay Leno) also lent their voices--so it's pretty unusual from the outset. Second, many of Roth's designs (especially his famous 60s "Rat Fink") were animated and many old clips were pieced together to make up the film--so you really didn't get much new content. Finally, the film tried very hard to be funny--with talking cars (like you'd see in "My Mother the Car") and rocking campers with personalities that DIDN'T make me laugh. Again, none of these are necessarily "bad", but a bit unusual and hard for non-fans. However, I have to give the film its due--it certainly was innovative and the sound was exceptional--with a great surround-sound quality.Still, given my predisposition, the film didn't win me over because I just didn't get hooked by all the excitement. It wasn't me.

The creator of Rat Fink was one of my graphic heroes when I was younger, I tried to emulate his style, and now, because of the movie, he still is. Rat Fink rules, and so does the director of this Documentary, Ron Mann, who has given us rockin'docs about comic books, the twist and poetry in motion. Ron is one of the rare filmmakers who manage to preserve and capture important sections of American Popular Culture. He does so with wit, incredible attention to detail, music tracks, graphic presentation and engaging editing. He also seems to capture the zeitgeist in a way that no one else does in documentaryland. Who would've guessed that a film about Rat Fink could be an artful metaphor for many of the issues that define America today? I say 10 outta 10.