Review and news hub for movies, music and video games

Movie:		5.0
Picture:		5.0
Sound:		6.0
Extras:		6.0
Score:		5.0

Director(s):	Ron Mann
Writer(s):	Ron Mann
Starring:	Larry Evans • Gary Lincoff
Genre:	Drama
Website:	http://sphinxproductions.com/films/mushrooms/
Release Date:	December 15, 2009

List Price:	DVD - $24.49
Amazon:

You know the word ‘quirky’? It has no real definition (google offers up the following gem: ‘far out’), but yet nearly anyone at all familiar with pop culture can readily identify films, books, and fashion trends with that level. To that end, there are many people who identify themselves with that term, and will purposefully support media solely on the basis that it is quirky (I have mountains of data supporting this claim). Know Your Mushrooms seems to be marketed exclusively to this demographic. It’s not that it doesn’t contain information about mushrooms; it’s just far more concerned with the weird details of the people and theories (that’s right, theories) that are even peripherally connected to mushrooms than it is convincing us that mushrooms are an at all worthy topic for a feature-length documentary. It’s a work that’s all fringe and no center.

Opening at the Telluride Mushroom festival, Know Your Mushrooms quickly throws us into the world of people who are, in no small fashion, way into mushrooms, This world is dominated by figures such as Larry Evans (mushroom hunter), John Sirjeese (festival organizer), and Gary Lincoff (mushroom lecturer) who return to the festival year after year (in its 27^th year in this film). What do they do with mushrooms, exactly? Well, they hunt them, categorize them, identify them, and discuss how the mushroom industry ‘has a vested interest’ in suppressing education in wild mushrooms, and the documentary spends a good deal of its running time with these people as they do so. Since this only covers about fifty minutes or so, the rest of the time Ron Mann spends inserting stock footage of old documentaries about mushrooms, commercials for Campbell’s Soup, and various animations that straddle the line between passively funny and irritating (some squirrels eating poison mushrooms and dying falls in the former category; the small mushroom with eyes that accompanies multiple choice question graphics falls in the latter). A seemingly unhealthy amount of time is spent discussing Terrence McKenna, a man (described here as psychedelic) who insisted that mushrooms were in fact visitors from other planets. He is discussed here in tones that vaguely resemble admiration and agreement, without anyone ever taking the dive and trying to provide evidence that this is the case (kind of like the kids who are really into heavy metal music, but lack the discipline to actually read the Satanic Bible).

You know those characters in romantic comedies from the nineties that tended to be in the background? They were usually desexualized room-mates (if male) or sassy best friends (if female), but tended to get the better lines, and were always there without inner lives in case the protagonist needed them. If they were male, they tended to be really into something that most people like to some degree, but not to a life-consuming degree that these dudes are (case in point: that guy who was really into jazz in Jerry Maguire). It was a way of introducing character to an otherwise bland situation, without having to take any attention away from the lead. Now that the romantic comedy has mutated into the indie comedy (where pretty much every character falls into the two above mentioned categories), something like Know Your Mushrooms doesn’t seem all that out of place, but it’s still throwing off the formula balance. The reason that those movies weren’t about the goofy friends was because the goofy friends were always pretty happy with their lives being into the weird little things that they’re into. The overarching message of Know Your Mushrooms (explained rather clearly by the film’s title) is that it’s safe to eat wild mushrooms, and most of the people shown in this documentary would like for you to know that. But they never make any plan of action, never reveal any internal memos from major mushroom companies, and never even identify any specific figures that they’re fighting against; it’s not a particularly compelling saga. Since the running time is so short, neither does the piece work as a character study, as we never know anything about these subjects other than that they are into mushrooms.

In the final analysis, Know Your Mushrooms is inoffensive, but sorely lacking in a raison d’etre. If the goal was to educate us about mushrooms, it didn’t need a feature-length documentary to get as far as it did. If it was just to make something funny, one can’t help but think that there are funnier topics out there than this.

Bonus Features

-Welcome to the Fungal Jungle - A short educational documentary on wild mushrooms.

-Gary Lincoff Lecture - One of the film’s characters discusses mushroom poisoning (he happens to look almost exactly like Michael J. Fox as Teen Wolf here).

-Deleted Scenes - A few scenes that are actually more interesting than plenty of the material that made it into the film.

-Interview with Ron Mann - Pretty standard promotional interview for the film.

-Mushroom Clubs in North America - A listing of mushroom clubs and their contact information.

-Fun With Fungi - An extension of the kind of irritating quiz questions from the movie.