Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997) User Reviews

Delightful Surprise.

[gromero001 · 8/10 · 20 June 2005]

Encapsulated reviews are misleading. I had several times bypassed "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control" on IFC for more lively sounding fare on movie channels. When I finally selected it as the least boring of an afternoon's TV movie offerings, I regretted not having picked it sooner and seen it more often.

This documentary delighted me! Interviews were enhanced by display of the works of four brilliant practitioners, fanatical about the unusual focus of their work or study. We are introduced to naked mole rats, robots as the next stage in evolution, wild animal training and a visionary handicrafter/topiary designer. Each professional provided unusual insights to their efforts and perhaps to our own natures as human beings.

The documentary seemed designed to hold even those with the even shortest of attention spans. Rather than engaging each subject in depth as a single segment, the interviews are presented in approximately one minute scenarios, often with a montage of old film footage relating connections and historical ideas about some of the subject matter. Just as a viewer's mind might start to drift during a segment, it collides with the next subject, often forcing mental connections that may not have come naturally.

After watching this one, I felt compelled to find and view the other productions of Errol Morris, and I shall keep an eye out for his future works. I believe that its audience should comprise anyone with a spark of interest in the world around them and the desire to be entertained. Whether you are fond of documentaries or not, I think this one will offer a pleasant and quickly passing ninety minutes.

Gene Romero [e-mail]

Less than the sum of its parts

[FlickMan · 6/10 · 3 February 2007]

Hiding within this movie are four fairly interesting mini-documentaries about four men, each with a vision - perhaps even an obsession - about one particular facet of life. The common thread uniting them is that each of the four is fascinated by the ways in which animals, men, plants, and even machines evolve, learn, and grow. A recurring theme is training or control.

Unfortunately, these four interesting stories are chopped up and interwoven in ways that often seem arbitrary and pointless. Plus, about 25% of the movie is made up of clips from other, mostly bad, movies... and the soundtrack music is often intrusive and annoying. So I'm mystified why a number of critics thought this was the best documentary of 1997. Maybe there were just a lot of bad documentaries that year!

Worth watching if you have nothing else to do, but nowhere near great.

fascinating

[SnoopyStyle · 8/10 · 6 September 2021]

Errol Morris interviews four people with unusual jobs; a lion tamer, a robotics expert, a topiary gardener, and a naked mole rat specialist. Dave Hoover trains lions in a circus. George Mendonça is a gardener who has worked on a topiary garden for decades. Raymond A. Mendez is an insect expert who became fascinated with mole rats which have many of the same characteristics as ants. Rodney Brooks is a robot scientist who finds inspiration in the insect world. Fast, Cheap & Out of Control is his catch phrase which he uses to describe his robots unlike the expensive solo designs that are being used.

Errol Morris uses his filmmaking skills to connect these four disparate people into a central theme about nature, the animal and insect mind, and our drive to control them. It's fascinating. One learns something. It's almost hypnotic and one can reach a different plane of understanding. Opening the viewer's eye is always an achievement for a documentary.

Emergent Systems

[epiphone62 · 1 May 2004]

In science, there is a property of any complex system, that more complexity and subtlety will result with each added component. This, in my opinion, was the subject of "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control." The parallels drawn between AI, societal mammals, commonality of life (the lion tamer) and art (topiary gardener) flesh out a world where the idea of "God" can well be reduced to a simple inherent property of existence. Mole rat societies are not so far from human societies; humans are not so different from animals; robots are not so different from animals; and each individual represents a unique degree of specialization that proves important to the greater society it exists in. I found this work elegant, subtle, and even-handed, not to mention completely unique in its structure and faith in the audience to decipher an individual meaning from the context provided. Each person interviewed is wholly engrossed in their craft, something for which no other human can be substituted, and that exuberance shines in their eyes. It's a strange ride that inspires wonder in trusting viewers, exactly the way that the experts' wonder has motivated their realization as truly unique humans.

Disappointing

[mcnally · 7/10 · 26 May 2003]

This was a little bit disappointing. I'd seen Errol Morris' later film Mr. Death (1999) and found it fascinating. In this film, though, even though he has four eccentrics to follow around (a lion-tamer, a topiary gardener, an expert on naked mole rats, and a robotics scientist), he mostly just conducts talking head interviews, and cuts in shots of the circus, and of a laughably bad B-movie starring famed lion-tamer Clyde Beatty. I just didn't find the subjects all that interesting, and Morris never really explores their motivations or their lives outside of their careers, interesting as those might sound. (7/ 10)

A fascinating study of the nature of life and intelligence

[day v · 9/10 · 4 September 1999]

Don't believe the folks who say this film is about the thin line between genius and madness. That may be part of it, but it's far from what's important here. The real loot here is FC&OOC's exploration of the "other", and our attempts to understand, shape and control it. Humans have a fascination with the nature of life and intelligence--whether it comes in the form of wild animals, plants in a garden or robots developing in a lab--and the ways we approach these things reveal as much about subject as object. This film does a beautiful job of highlighting the mystery inherent in living and/or intelligent things, evoking the awe we feel when we regard them, and the questions that arise when we attempt to study, cultivate, contain or "tame" them.

Blogspot Reviews: Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control

[TimeForChillie · 6/10 · 15 July 2006]

Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control, 1997 A documentary that aims high and doesn't quite make it. It's about four guys that have achieved great things in very unussual fields. The director was trying to make a point about what it takes to be a success. He tried to make the argument that although the mens fields were very different (robot designer, mole rat expert, lion tamer, gardener) they succeeded for the same reason. He did this by first introducing the men, than interviewing them, than having the answers of one play while he showed the other working. It was a pretty well made movie and shot pretty well, but it just didn't quite do it for me. It was a well made movie and I enjoyed it, but I feel that it could have done a lot more.

6/10, 23rd best of 1997, 250th of the 90s, 627th overall.

A work of genius. No one can sculpt the documentary form as brilliantly as this man

[mattg-9 · 10/10 · 26 June 2000]

This movie is a work of genius. It asks as well of answers to some degree most major questions of life as we know it (and don't know it) all through interviews and visual juxtapositions. The real-life people are astoundingly interesting and passionate and when Errol distorts our minds using subjective imagery such as old 40's films and intercutting between interviews to enhance its meaning, he conjures welcome associations of human nature. No one can sculpt the documentary form as brilliantly as this man.

Fast, Cheap & Out of Control

[jboothmillard · 6/10 · 2 April 2020]

I found out about this documentary film as it used to be listed in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, I had no idea about it prior Reading about it, it did sound like it could be worthwhile, directed by Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, A Brief History of Time). Basically, it profiles four men with extraordinary (unrelated) careers. Dave Hoover is a retired professional lion tamer, he formerly worked in the circus training lions to do tricks. George Mendonça is an elderly topiary gardener, working to create animal-shaped shrubs at Green Animals Topiary Garden in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Ray Mendez is a naked mole-rats expert, a specialist who studies the hairless burrowing creatures. Rodney Brooks is a scientist working at M.I.T. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), he specialises in designing bug-like robots. Besides their interest and enthusiasm for what they do, these four men have nothing in common. They narrate the film in their own words, making eye contact with the audience, with a camera technology called the Interrotron, the invention of director Morris. As they are explaining about their professions and what goes into them, these are overlapped and interrelated to one of the other professions, using archive footage. Archive footage seen throughout includes the four men working in their professions, related material of their jobs, television and film footage, news reports and more. A musical score, from composer Caleb Sampson, and performed by the Alloy Orchestra, is heard throughout. The four men, all quirky with eccentric characteristics, make what they are talk about, even if it is either strange or unrelatable, surprisingly interesting. The use of overlapping and other editing techniques throughout are clever. If you are looking for a different kind of documentary, this is certainly one to be seen, an interesting and worthwhile film. Good!

My opinion of genius

[Cu-Top · 10/10 · 24 August 2001]

It's amazing how one film can warrant such diverse audience opinion about "what it all means". That which I took away from this movie is a concept of God's existence that is nothing short of genius. I'm not saying that this is the director's intention...it's only what I took from it.

Four Gods absorbed completely and differently in their four worlds:

1. Artistic God - the gardener - the God who spends his days creating the world for man to live in. "This is my world. I don't care how you live in it, but don't mess it up." Because man has freewill, God is uninvolved in man's evolution.

2. The Bully God - the lion tamer - the God who rules the world with discipline. "This is my world. Do as I say and nobody gets hurt." God won't let man evolve out of fear of losing physical superiority.

3. The Control Freak God - the mole rat scientist - the God who controls man's life. "This is my world. Live in it, but I will observe, limit, and dictate what you do." God won't let man evolve out of fear of losing mental superiority.

4. The Free Thinking God - the robotics engineer - the God who aids and improves man's life with only one commandment/program...respect. "This is our world. We share it. Live in it as you please. I am not expecting you to be perfect. All I am asking for is that you treat each other with mutual respect." Together, we evolve into our creation.

This is the God which I prefer.

bizarre

[catneedsabath03 · 6/10 · 13 May 2008]

This was an interesting film,that would attract the attention of all ages for its bizarreness, and its uniqueness. It doesn't have the normal plot of most movies but contains an interesting unexpected list of characters which all pertain different jobs that are often not recognized and are found rare in the world. This movie will attract the interests and will possibly help and open a new range of career opportunities to the world that most have failed to recognize. These jobs not only take patience but passion, and willingness to go outside the box, rather than sit at work in your small cubicle watching the clock tick till you get off. This movie might create a greater desire in you to want to know more about this random jobs, which have now been introduced to you.

Regardless of the link between the four people, this is a neat documentary

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 18 July 2008]

This documentary from Errol Morris is about four people and their jobs. They all share some common interest and I think Morris intended this to be "mankind's control over nature", though to me the connection was much simpler--all four had neat jobs and all four had an intense passion for what they did. Rarely have I seen people who love their work as much as these four men and because of this I found that there was a very likable sort of nobility about them. Some of the jobs seemed more exciting than others, but all four seemed intensely satisfied with their own particular job. There jobs were lion tamer, robotics professor, naked mole rat curator and master gardener/topiary expert.

As for the style of the film, some of the negative criticisms others level against this film I just didn't agree with, though one I certainly did. The connecting archival film clips sometimes worked well and fit what was being said and done, though some just looked cheap and out of place--particularly the movie serial clips. However, despite this possible unfortunate choice, I loved the music, way of interconnecting the stories and overall format.

Interesting and well worth a look if you like quirky documentaries. I liked this far more than Morris' first film, GATES OF HEAVEN (which was very stark and aimless compared to this one) and not as amazing as MR. DEATH--one of the best documentaries I have ever seen.

Lesser Morris but still masterful

[faraaj-1 · 7/10 · 30 December 2007]

Errol Morris is arguably the greatest storyteller alive today. He saved an innocent death-row victims life with the harrowing Thin Blue Line and created a historic document of the lifework of one of the most influential figures of the 20th century Robert S. MacNamara with The Fog of War. His documentary Fast, Cheap & Out of Control dealt with a subject matter I was not so interested in but which I began to have some appreciation for when I finished the film. The entire credit goes to his superb storytelling skills.

Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (I still don't get the reason for the title???) tells the story and professional interests of four disparate people, none of them rich, famous or successful in the parlance of today's society. Workers, not Managers, all four have a passion for their chosen calling, are very good at what they do and share a common thread. They are: a lion-tamer at a circus; a mole-rat expert; a topiary gardener (did you know it takes 15 years to make a bear!); and a robotics expert. In some way, all four are dealing with and admire the wonder that is the animal world.

The subject matter is quite distant from my experience and life and frankly I didn't think there was anything in a mole-rat or the construction of a robot and how it moves that could interest me. But I did find the enthusiasm of the four subjects under study infectious and I remained interested throughout the documentary.

Subverts ironically.

[Polaris_DiB · 3/10 · 24 December 2006]

This makes the third Errol Morris movie I've seen, and I'm increasingly not liking his style. He seems to find very interesting and varied characters, great personalities to create documentaries for, and then with tongue-in-cheek editing make fun of everything they are about. It's never really a direct caricaturation of them and Morris seems most of the time to be saying, "But no, no, these people are really fascinating, really!", but there's always these subtle little canted angles and not-so-subtle editing techniques that show that Morris seems to be mocking them behind their back.

This movie tracks four people who break the traditional boundaries of organic separation... a man who studies African hairless molerats to find that they are amazingly ant-like, a lion tamer, a man who keeps a garden full of animal-shaped shrubbery, and a robot designer. The general theme of the film seems to revolve around the question of what designates animal, human, and life features? So the title of Fast, Cheap, & Out of Control doesn't really seem to mean anything in terms of the movie... right? Except of course Morris seems just a little disturbed by these individuals' passions (he might call them "obsessions") making synthetic designs on life. I share not that fear and honestly don't appreciate some of the connections Morris makes in the film.

But I stress his subtlety. With no voice-over narration and leaving the words entirely to the interviewees, it's not as if Morris ever pounds that anxiety onto the spectators' collective head. Instead he mixes circus footage and ant footage together often at times when they're taken out of the context of the circus and the ants, showing a sort of collective absurdity behind what all of these people are talking about. I don't find them absurd, I find them all very neat and interesting individuals.

Unless, of course, he didn't intend such juxtapositions, which means he's just a bad craftsman instead of a silent subverter. Considering none of this films I've seen so far have particularly impressed me, I don't really care to find out what he's trying to do.

--PolarisDiB

Morris focuses

[Spearin · 1 December 1998]

This was easily the best film of 1997.

Morris has tried it all; one camera documentary, for Gates of Heaven; Rashomon tinged storytelling, with The Thin Blue Line; and now, finally, the beautiful and moving Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control.

In the earlier films, the viewer's left with the task of sifting through lots of unedited information to put together his own story from what's been gathered, rather like Ed Wood going through rolls of archival footage to see if there's a movie there. In this one, Morris had a story to tell, and he goes after it with aplomb and purpose. His camera angles are ingenious, his use of slow motion masterful, and the story--that the personality traits that lead to success are the same, regardless of the stripe of the pursuit--comes along gently. Once the connection's been made, he overlaps the voice of one participant over the work of another, and the resonances between all of them become more and more apparent.

Watching Morris come along as a filmmaker is a little like watching a favorite cousin come of age. This movie makes you want to cheer, not only for Morris, but for the cast of misfits he's put on film who've taken their lives and made something of them. These four men are workers. They're not managers, not victims of dumb luck. They're doing these jobs because they love them, and because they love them and work without pause, they've become successful. They're not geniuses. Like Morris, they've merely managed to focus. Morris shows us what a rare thing that is. Bravo.

a documentary that isn't

[bforbetty · 9/10 · 7 April 2004]

The first thing to note about this title, is that it's so entertaining it doesn't feel like a documentary.

Morris very effectively uses a great deal of stock footage (circus footage mainly), to break up the four interviews. Cheesy though it may be, the footage of Clyde Beatty is amusing and all footage is well placed to illustrate Morris' not-so-underlying themes.

Morris unashamedly puts across pre-meditated themes, bending the interviews to his will. Nonetheless, these ideas are worth consideration, and the interviews don't come across as contrived, just heavily edited (admittedly, some simple questions are left unanswered)... but let's face it, even Reality TV isn't real, right??

Well worth the watch.

Categorize, sterilize.....

[petros-5 · 9/10 · 10 February 2000]

Simply brilliant. A film that presents some extremely interesting characters and their individual (yet strikingly similar) searches for understanding. Understanding. (That great philosophical goal that runs away from us as quick as the constant speed of light.) See it now!

Fast, Cheat, Out of Control

[jones81291 · 8/10 · 13 May 2008]

How can a creative writing teacher entertain her class of seven students while educating them? Show them Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control is how.

I found this movie very entertaining. As a Junior who is about to get out of school for the summer, its hard to keep my attention but I found myself unable to fall asleep during this movie.

Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control was quite random and amazing. I would recommend this movie to anyone. It made me laugh and showed me how compassionate people should be about their jobs.

Whats the point of going to a dead end boring job you loathe when you could be out there doing what you love and getting paid for it? There is no point.

My hope is that when I have a full time job, I love it and look forward to it just as much as these men do with their jobs.

I think all you workers should do the same.

Strange, powerful, touching and deep

[jf-olson · 9/10 · 12 January 2008]

This is one of my favorite movies of all time. The movie appears to be simple, just these four men speaking by turns into the camera about their lives and their eccentric work. Each of them is an interesting person, each of them does extraordinary work, but so what? There are lots of interesting people and strange jobs.

What makes this film transcendent is the absence of a narrator. There is no voice-over to tell you what to think about these men or their work or why the director thought they belonged together. It's presented more like a set of clues, and the viewer is invited to enter into the puzzle and draw their own sense from it. I found myself musing about what it means to be a man, what it means to be human, what it means to be alive. Whenever I watch the film, which I have done many times, I am moved to tears at the end--and often I can't say precisely why, only that I have been lifted up and changed.

The score, by Caleb Sampson, is a miracle of invention and wit. It is a character in the movie almost as much as the four interviewees. While there is no narrator, the score underlines and comments upon the words of the four men. It is one of few soundtracks I have ever purchased to listen to on its own.

"Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control" is average

[Estelle1323 · 5/10 · 14 May 2008]

This was a strange film, one that I'm not sure I completely understood. The editing was a little "out of control" all on its own. This is a review of four seemingly different careers- An animal trainer for the circus, a topiary gardener, a naked mole rat specialist, and a robot scientist. The film tried to find similarities between these three unique jobs. While this was interesting, informative, and slightly satirical, I did not find this a film that I would race to see again. My lack of total enthusiasm in regards to something like this may be only an individual's preference, so I cannot say I detested this movie, and not to see it.

Fascinating Representation of Contrasting Subjects

[angdev · 2 March 2000]

I was amazed at how Errol Morris abstractly tied together four people with such contrasting occupations. I was skeptical before seeing the film--after all, how on earth would anyone relate a lion tamer, topiary gardener, mole rat specialist and robot expert--but Morris pulls it off excellently. The ties between certain details of each interview either tie visually or conceptually with one of the other interviewees, and the beauty is in the way the ideas are strung together. The quirky soundtrack is fantastic, giving a twist to circus music that carries the mood of the film, as well as help Morris to make serious comments about life. At any rate, this is a very enjoyable documentary, even to those who strongly dislike documentaries.

the stories of four men who, in their own simple paths, head on to the nature of the beast, as it were

[Quinoa1984 · 9/10 · 21 May 2007]

The stories of these four men as the subject(s) of Errol Morris's ultra-quirky and intellectually/purely humanely stimulating documentary Fast Cheap & Out of Control would be sort of too simplistic for one documentary by themselves. Each one has a fascinating profession, with some personalization coming in, naturally, by way of what each profession carries with it: lion/other animal tamer in the circus, robot designer, topiary gardener, and mole-rat scientist/specialist. They're dedicated to their profession 100%, and keep getting genuinely surprised by what they discover through trial and error, either through science or in dealing with elements in nature head on, be they a turn of an electrical screw or an extra clip on the hedges. This might be enough for interest as a documentary, switching between perspectives on people in professions that get taken for granted, in some ways, when compared to those of usual-minded business drones and other people who go about more banal affairs in American life.

But Morris is too impulsive an editor and archivist to just let the interviewees say everything there is. His style comes in full-tilt by the way he captures these mole-rats, these large robots of the future, and the towering creatures fashioned by large shears ala Edward Scissorhands, in the shooting style- never in one mold but all over the place, experimenting, catching things as they might come by for someone looking around and in-depth at the subjects- as well as in an editing style keeping one ready for what image comes next. Entertainingly, Morris throws in, as part of the animal tamer's stories of daring-do (however 'daring' being around a system that has worked for him all his life to stay alive), and how he was inspired by a movie-star from the golden days of B-movies to push forward in a profession that takes more common sense than dumb guts, we see clips from these old movies, sometimes as if right from the movie theater. Then, as if out of science-fiction, Morris combines the images of the mole-rat with that of the robots, each given direction by their 'supervisors', into a kind of strange miasma that works sublimely.

What helps, aside from the typical Philip Glass music, is that Morris understands how these people are connected and how they're unique all the same. They're involved, to differing degrees, the world of animals, in controlling them, fashioning them, and using them as bases of comparison for big leaps into fields ambitious (those robots couldn't do what they do without those ants) and more traditional (the topiary fields are like works of art unto themselves). There's also the subliminal connection of each profession acting as much living as thrill-a-minute idealism. Finding something in the environment or framework of a rat is not much different, at least psychologically, from finding a new way to get a robot to walk around. Yet all the same, all four men have their niche cut out as if there could be nothing else for them in the world. Being content with what you do with your life is one of the essentials human beings strive for, and if nothing else Fast, Cheap and Out of Control is an essential and rare work of weird genius as it makes it exhilarating to see people who, through personal and professional follies, are not disconnected from their lives via work. If anything, they make most of us seem dull and lifeless by comparison.

We're All Fumbling for Meaning

[anatomyoffear · 8/10 · 3 March 2023]

Follow four men who walk the fine line between genius and obsession, and then occasionally dive headfirst over the line.

Of course Errol Morris directed this film about oddball eccentrics who nonetheless capture our interest and somehow convince us they're changing the world for the better.

The doc deftly cross-cuts between four talking head interviews, those four men doing their actual jobs, and classic black and white footage of old movie serials, and the montage effect spins us into a fervor and reminds us that everyone here is exploring the same thing: their own outer limitations.

It's a marvelous accomplishment, and perhaps if more people knew of it and shared it, the future of documentary storytelling would be very different and exciting.

brilliant

[pinhead33 · 10/10 · 31 January 2001]

4 people who LOVE what they do, and whose work is wonderful to watch. naked mole ratter pricelessly funny, as are the mole rats themselves...jaw droppingly interesting and bizarre. [mammals who live in insect like colonies] the film is exquisitely edited and shot [aside from highly annoying tilted camera angles in the gardener's case]

Slow, Expensive (waste of time) & Ridiculous

[Mustang92 · 1/10 · 27 July 2012]

There are so many problems with this so-called documentary I don't know where to begin.

For starters, this is really a fake documentary. There is so much stock footage and scenes from an old film strewn throughout, one wonders if the title Morris came up with for this film actually refers to his OWN film and how he made it. He probably shot this very quickly, very cheaply, and is just plain out of control as this story is a big mess.

Most of this film is entirely boring, and most of the anecdotes the 4 subjects relate are boring. This film is also filled with scenes that have nothing to do with the story being told and it shows. How Roger Ebert and some other critics could have listed this in their top 10 the year it came out is shocking.

One of the biggest problems, is that none of the 4 people being interviewed are very interesting. In truth, they probably could be, or likely have interesting things that could have been related/shown, but they all come off boring... and this is clearly Morris' fault, not the 4 people's. The lion tamer is the more interesting of the bunch, but he still is pretty boring in Morris' hands. What a shame. What a waste of celluloid. I really expected a better film, because I recall some of the critical claim it had gotten 14 or 15 years ago. But now that I finally saw this on one of the movie channels, those critics must have been on drugs. Actually... that might be the way to view this film... if you're high, you might actually like it since it's all over the place with weird, non-linear footage. And then if you fall asleep, you won't miss anything.