Big Boys Gone Bananas!* – Film Review
Director: Fredrik Gertten
Starring: Fredrik Gertten, Alex Rivera and Alfonso Allende
Released: 21 September 2012
Oh my, doesn’t this film have a silly title?
Grow up children, Big Boys Gone Bananas!* is in fact a very serious Swedish documentary that explores the right to free speech for filmmakers and is currently available on DVD in the UK. The title alludes to director Gertten’s previous film, entitled, quite simply, Bananas!*. Before you start questioning whether or not this man has some kind of fruit fetish and a rather severe lack of imagination, there is a connection. Bananas!* is a documentary that highlights how the food company goliath, Dole, mistreated their workers on Nicaraguan plantations by using a banned pesticide that was known by the company to cause sterility. Big Boys chronicles the production crew’s attempts to screen the documentary and the legal battle with Dole that followed.
One time, I found a pair of sticky googly eyes in my kitchen, which I proceeded to attach to a banana. I then drew a mouth on this banana and named him Lord Henry Juicypops. I ate him shortly after that, but until seeing Big Boys, it was the closest bananas have ever gotten to engaging with me on an intellectual level. It’s the usual state of affairs, with a number of talking heads, occasional footage from the original film and so on, but it is the subject matter that is so oddly intriguing. The fact that Gertten and his wife, who also worked on the film, are such humane characters for us to relate to, as opposed to the demonized Dole company, who we rarely see other than through newspaper clippings, makes this something of a hero’s journey, an underdog for whom the audience can be satisfied to root for. Like an elderly gentleman at a wedding, hoping in vain that everyone else will start dancing if he gets the ball rolling.
Nonetheless, the film does come across as particularly one-sided, necessarily perhaps. This is obviously a companion piece to Bananas!* and the crew clearly wants to avoid retreading old ground. Watched in isolation, one may feel as though they are being withheld all of the facts. However, if political subject matter sends any kind of excitement scurrying about in your belly bag, odds are you will find yourself immediately seeking out Bananas!* after watching Big Boys, in order to explore this quite recent debacle further. It takes a somewhat rare mix of properly engaging subject matter and talented film-making to make an audience do this. Big Boys has both of these. It teases your interests with the cheese of intrigue before bashing your head in with the mallet of satisfaction.
Score: 4/5
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