When MoviePass originally came out, I didn’t bite due to the “high” costs. Then they went mad and offered the $10 a month plan and I figured they were absolute lunatics. But eventually I shrugged and said, “Hell, it’s your money. I’ll ride this plane right into the dirt”. And I did. Burn, MoviePass, burn!

This (HBO) Max documentary is about the MoviePass service and how it started sane, went insane, and then went out of business. They get a lot of execs, peons, and fans to talk about it… and throw each other gleefully under the bus.

I wish I liked this doc more but it doesn’t really reflect the daily chaotic madness of having been part of the service. Or being as gleefully wicked as some YouTube videos were as they tracked it as actively crashed in slow motion. I wouldn’t say its a dry and boring doc, but it focuses too much on the execs and “business” moves outside of our daily nightmare of trying to (ab)use the service. Or, frankly, the poor schmos in tech support who must have taken the abuse… or the devious imps who kept fiddling with the algorithm until we all went insane (or cackle with fascination at the inevitable).

But, hey, I guess I learned some things I didn’t know… about influencers and basketball players and Coachella and other random things. And it’s not like they don’t talk to former users or that IT staff. There’s some schadenfreude embedded here but not nearly as much given the shitshow.

Plus, well, the end lets us known the original creators (who bare some blame, no matter what they say) have relaunched the service.. and it suddenly feels like a 90 minute ad for everyone to re-up. Eh… I know they’re back. They won’t stop sending me email.

Oh, and hey, apparently if you have an old MoviePass debit card it might be worth something on eBay. I will neither confirm nor deny the presence of such a card in my life… mainly because I forgot where I put it. And maybe I shredded it. Who can remember?

This isn’t a bad documentary even if you lived through this particular madness season. It has some good high-level stuff but some of it was kind of dry given the narrative and self-destructive zones. It’s worth checking out maybe if you are interesting in a slice of movie history.

Score: 77