“The film was searingly honest”
“Documentaries about addiction tend to follow a similar script. We see the addict at home with their loving family, then comes their painful backstory, then the science bit to show how pleasure receptors in their brain are different to those of non-addicts, there will be therapy and finally the addict will reveal something they have learnt about themselves. Matt Willis: Fighting Addiction followed exactly this drill. It was fascinating.”
Carol Midgley, The Times
“TV schedules are jammed with celebrities sharing their pain and trauma. Fighting Addiction, however, cut deeper than other examples of the genre. For most of its run time, it was easy to forget that Matt and Emma were famous and wealthy (though they did have a pretty spiffy kitchen). If there was any glamour in their life, it was off camera. The film was searingly honest, too.”
Ed Power, The i
RELATED: BEHIND THE SCENES ON MATT WILLIS: FIGHTING ADDICTION
“Celebrity addiction is a well-trodden subject, but less explored is its devastating impact on families. Willis’s film, in which he sets off around the country and into his own past to try to find out why he is as he is, is in equal parts Emma’s film. His last relapse happened when the youngest of their three children was 10 months old. His first words to camera are about his wife: “I’ve hurt her so many times I don’t know where to begin.””
Chitra Ramaswamy, The Guardian
“I’d far rather hear how Emma and the thousands of other mums like her find ways to cope — much more useful than another round of therapists assuring addicts that they’re not responsible for their own actions.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail
“This excellent series was traumatic to watch because we were basically witnessing mass murder in real time, captured on people’s phones during panic and chaos, and it didn’t spare the detail. How strange it must feel for them now to witness their own hell, their own screams. A coping mechanism for trauma is to forget, to dissociate, but here was the full replay.”
Carol Midgley, The Times
“With so much documentary time to convey such brief real-life events, the effect is gruelling. Seconds are stretched into minutes. It’s obvious many – if not most – of the interviewees will be traumatised by the event for the rest of their lives. As is fashionable today, the documentary – directed and produced by Jeff Zimbalist – shies away from naming the shooter for fear of lionising him and encouraging imitators. But its focus on the minutiae, while effective at building a sense of the terror of the time, comes at the expense of context.”
Ed Cumming, Telegraph
“Mobile phone footage of the panic and confusion gave the narrative a compelling urgency. But the most incredible pictures came at the end, from police bodycams, as officers prepared to storm the hotel room where the killer was shooting from. The video was as astonishing as their courage.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail
The Family Stallone, Paramount+
“Sly himself is reality TV gold. He has classic movie star charisma, plays into his own mythology with myriad references to Rambo and Rocky, and gathers up pals Al Pacino and Dolph Lundgren to add to the Hollywood glamour of it all. He’s eccentric, quick-witted and delightful in every scene or confessional. But there is also the added unintentional humour that the confessionals have been staged to make him look as youthful as possible, with a soft-focus lens that is less convincing than the average TikTok filter.”
Leila Latif, The Guardian
“What stops this from being a soullessly cynical enterprise is the sheer likeability of Stallone himself, and the fact that the family plainly adore one another. Stallone’s wife, Jennifer, is also in it, and you’ll need a moment to get your head around this because she looks almost the same age as her three daughters. That’s the California lifestyle for you.”
Anita Singh, Telegraph
No comments yet