10 Bullsh*t Documentaries That Aren't Worth Your Time

4. Catfish

Look, we love Catfish: The TV Show as much as the next guy who sat on his sofa all day watching the marathons on Viva and getting way too excited whenever the episode about the crazy internet vigilante who used to be homeless comes on (we were that person, in case that wasn't clear). We also loved the original documentary when it came out, doing our best to avoid spoilers and going in blind, being both shocked and ultimately moved by the twists and turns the real-life story of filmmaker Nev Schulman entering into an online relationship with a woman who turns out to be more than meets the eye... that is, she's actually an overweight, married mother. She's not a Transformer. So far as we can remember. We can't, however, recommend the film to anybody in good conscience since certain things came to light. Ever since the movie first screened at festivals there has been speculation as to how "real" it all was. Why were Nev's brother and his filmmaking partner bothering to document him hitting on some girl over Facebook from the very start, before anything (cat)fishy had started happening? Why would such media-savvy young people not have done more Googling about the whole thing before heading out on a roadtrip across the country? And why do none of their blogs or social media from the time document their movements? Most damning of all, however, is that due to lawsuits the film will never be profitable; the source of these settlements? The unauthorised use of two songs which weren't attributed to their creators. In most documentaries they'd be covered as fair use, but the lawsuit clearly states that the film is fiction...