Fantastic!

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Once, nominated for Best Documentary in the 2011 Academy Awards. This documentary is one of the strangest documentaries, I watch, in a long time. It's surprising that this film got even made. The film's editors had to sit through over 10,000 hours of tapes just to get a few minutes' worth of usable footage. While, the movie says, it was filmed by mysterious graffiti artist, Banksy; most of the filming seem to come from an eccentric French shop keeper and amateur film maker, named Thierry Guetta who transform himself, from an Average Joe into a semi well-known street artist named Mr. Brainwash, in which, this movie covers. However, there has been much speculation, in Thierry's quick artistic metamorphosis evolution that a lot of people, doubt the particularly with regards to authorship and authenticity within the art of this film. Many people believe, that this film was just an elaborate ruse on Banksy's part to cover up that Thierry Guetta is not the artist of his own work, but it was the director that did it, all. It could be, true. After all, Mr. Brainwash's works seem to carbon copy emulate the styles and concepts of Banksy. Plus, there has been some strong speculated that Mr. Brainwash is just another pseudonym outlet for Banksy who remain, very much hidden from the public eye. It has been stated that the reason for this secrecy is that graffiti is a still a crime. Also, since, America has a bigger art market than United Kingdom, but has harsher laws; he would make sense, that Banksy would use, an elaborate public surrogate, just in case, if things go bad, over there. Some suggest, that famous artists, Shepard Fairey and Banksy have been artificially inflating the sales of Mr. Brainwash's work for their own gain. According to some critics, Mr. Brainwash's work hasn't sold as well on independent forums, and I do somewhat believe them. Who knows, if any of this, things are true or not. In the end, it doesn't really matter, to me, because, in my opinion, 'Exit through the Gift Shop' is still entertaining enough, not to care. However, I do believe that the film, portrays Thierry Guetta such a negative light, that it's kinda damaging to the point that many people couldn't take him seriously. He's portray as a mental unbalance comical tool here, rather than a creative artist. I know, Guetta's unhealthy obsession of filming everything is a bit disturbing, but his 2006's short film, Life Remote Control isn't that horrible. Don't get me wrong, it's bad, but it at least, isn't as bad, as the street artists, make it out to be. In my opinion, Guetta still, has some semi-good creatively ideas, when it came to art. Guetta's uniformly subversive pop-art style isn't that amateurism as it looks. So, it was a bit mean-spirited for other street artists to think, they're so much superior to him, and lampoon him, like that. That's one thing, I hate about this film. Everybody in the film acts so pretentious and snobby, when it comes to art. It's such a turn off. However, for the most part, the movie paint the graffiti artists in a good light. Still, I wish, the movie tackle, more of the bad side of graffiti artists as well, as a couther argument. Not all graffiti artist paint their art on abandoned buildings or obvious bland-looking public structure like the movie does for safety reasons. Some, do publicity deface, public property, such as corporate & government building, as a way to promote anarchy and chaos. These acts, can be seem, as disrupted, from the social norms. Others, really go out of their way to vandal, public place used as memorials or worship, as a way to promote hate and discrimination. Other do it, as a way to troll, the public audience, by showcasing hateful or too vulgar or distasteful. Me, personally, I have a love/hate relationship when it comes to those type of graffiti. I do understand, how all graffiti can be represent as art. I can understand, how this type of art, could be misinterpreted and misrepresented by the mainstream media, as gang tagging, or offensive defacement, but there are some truly some artwork isn't that appealing to the eyes, nor wanted. These are it! This can barely be, represented as art. I think, anybody who is a respected graffiti artist can understand, why certain places shouldn't be defacement, by art. After all, I really doubt, that they're willing to have, their own house, graffiti by somebody else. It's way too expensive to clean. I do have to say, I really didn't like that part of the film. Another is the scene where Banksy puts a mannequin dressed like a Guantanamo Bay detainee in the middle of Disneyland. Honestly, what does Disneyland's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad have to with a Guantanamo Bay detainee? I really don't get that message. How is that art? I would, really be mad, if I was, riding that ride, and they close the park, because of that stupid publicity stunt. I would ask, Banksy to repay me for the time, lose. Overall: Graffiti is seen as art to some people and as vandalism to others. It is all based on perspective. As a film, the movie was very interesting. Lots of twist and turns, make this film, a great watch. The future of graffiti looks bright even with all the negative influences it has on it. This film is worth checking out.

This whole mockumentary or whatever you want to call it is just Banksy's huge slap in the face to modern art and the stupid people who fall for it. Especially in a certain part of our country. Fake people buy into fake things. The image that is created around an object is more important than the object itself. These are some of the messages Banksy portrays in this film. He's giving everyone the middle finger while he's laughing all the way to the bank. Most of what you think is "art" these days is really just clever graphic design then repackaged to look like "art". A lot of what you think is "street art" or underground street companies that started from nothing are really hugely financed business tactics. It takes money to make money. If you market enough the sheeple will follow. Art is dead. This was all so well done and clever I just had to give my respect.

Originally this movie was conceived as a project that was supposed to show the life and work of street-artists from the inside. But in the end this film is perceived as a comedy about contemporary art.Parts of the movie, which were dedicated to Banksy's works, are really interesting. You become a witness of the process in which the art was born. The film is interesting in a sense that you can better understand works of street-artists, not only can you see the result of their work, but you can also feel sharp social motives encouraging them to create their paintings.However, the storyline is turning an ordinary American man of French descent, Terry, into a "popular" contemporary artist. He can't draw, doesn't have clearly defined social or other reasons for creativity, he just wants to be popular, wants to be part of this creative community. Why did I call the movie a comedy about contemporary art? Because the main purpose of this latter-day "creator", in my opinion, is self-PR, enrichment at the expense of popular art direction. I would call Terry a generator of ideas . But as a street-artist he is still a fake. He pays people to realize his ideas into life and calls it his own art? I don't agree with this course of things.

Exit Through the Gift Shop - This was pretty entertaining. The movie starts out as a documentary of Street Artists. The stuff these guys were doing was pretty cool and I would have happily watched 90 minutes worth of that. At some point in the film there was a switch and instead of following around the street artists, we started following around the original documentarian (Thierry Guetta).If you haven't seen this, and plan to, stop reading now! I started to get a little suspicious around the time of this twist. First, when Thierry turned in his first cut of the documentary. They played it off as a completely unwatchable - to me it looked like someone with talent trying to make something unwatchable. Seemed a little odd. The second was when Thierry allegedly got detained at DisneyLand. There was no footage of that. We had to totally take is word about being grilled for hours - and the Disney police examining his video camera.This suspicion did not, for one moment, lessen my enjoyment of the movie. It may have even made me more interested! As Thierry turned into Mr. Brainwash, it was fun to watch. The show he put on was pretty insane and I found myself doing some research on the web to see if it really happened. I did have to question if one person could really put out all that work in such a short amount of time. I know he didn't do the work - but even coming up with that many ideas would take a lot of time.I could keeping going on about this flick. It was something else and I highly recommend a viewing.