Dreams with Sharp Teeth is a frustratingly adequate documentary that wastes its outrageous subject on mundane execution. Viewers hoping for a fresh, inventive look at a provocative author will be sorely disappointed.
The film is interesting enough, but that was inevitable. When you let acclaimed writer and notorious belligerent Harlan Ellison tell his uncensored story, you're going to get audacious footage. A wise move on director Erik Nelson's part, but that's where the ingenuity ends. After a brash beginning with Ellison being interviewed by pal Robin Williams, things settle down quickly.
It's as if Nelson sat down and came up with a magic storytelling formula: interview famous fans/friends, show old footage, read Ellison excerpts, let him rant for ten minutes, repeat.
Perhaps "magic" is too generous a word for this unimaginative approach. "Easy" is more like it. If memorable films can be made from global warming PowerPoints (An Inconvenient Truth) and an hour or so of tightrope-walking (Man on Wire), surely the same can be done with the life and times of Harlan Ellison.
Don't get me wrong: Dreams with Sharp Teeth is not a bad movie. It's a fun and concise illumination of a dynamic man. But in Ellison's story there lies a great documentary, and unfortunately this isn't it. It's just not focused enough. If one thought popped in my head more than any other while watching, it was: What's the point?
The film is all over the place, narratively speaking. One minute we're learning about Ellison's childhood, the next about his detractors, the next his views on God... Why? Where is all of this going?
Nowhere.
One might hope to learn about Ellison's work through the film. One would be let down. I knew very little about his writing before Dreams with Sharp Teeth, and I know very little about it after. Let's hope literary education wasn't the goal.
As a detailed biography chronicling Ellison's rise to prominence, the film is slightly better but still too sparse to be labeled comprehensive. Uninformed audiences will learn Ellison became popular in the '60s and subsequently won lots of awards and adoring fans -- and a few enemies, too. You want to know more? Too bad.
If it's not about his literature and it's not about his life, what are we left with? His big, bold personality. But a personality, no matter how shocking or abrasive, is not a story. It's an element of a story. It seems the filmmakers forgot this.
The whole thing feels unplanned, not at all fleshed out. Like a series of semi-informative Youtube clips feebly strung together with okay editing and a quirky score. That's not a terrible thing. Such clips can be magnificent time-fillers. But don't we want and expect more from a documentary?
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