Movie Thoughts: Louis Theroux: Shooting Joe Exotic (2021)

• Released: April 5, 2021
  
• Directed by: Jack Rampling
• Running time: 1 h 29 min
• Rating 3.5/5

Synopsis

In this documentary, Louis Theraux delves into the situation around the "Tiger King" Joe Exotic, who became a sensation a few years ago.

My Thoughts

Like or hate the series, everyone heard of Tiger King by now. It came out at exactly the right time, the start of the pandemic in many countries when the first lockdowns were happening and people were stuck alone at home. 

This is also why I started to watch the series to kill time. And while it's certainly a quite bonkers and memorable series...I wouldn't call it good. Despite being a documentary series, a lot of the information seems to be heavily exaggerated to the point it almost feels like reality TV in some places, probably just to be outrageous and garner more views. 

The documentary series didn't really pick a side, which can be good, however I did find myself rooting more for Baskin during the run of the show. Exotic is clearly a bit unhinged to say the least, and genuinely I did believe that he did those bad things such as trying to get someone to kill Baskin and euthanizing several healthy tigers. However, he also got a lot of supporters due to the Netflix show.

In this documentary, Louis Theroux explores the subject of Joe Exotic once again. He flashes back ten years ago, back when he visited Exotic's zoo and it was still running, and also interviews people in the modern day (such as Carole Baskin and her husband, and Exotic's relatives). Due to legal reasons, he couldn't get into contact with Exotic or several people close to him themselves. However, for what he managed to get done, I really like this documentary and it actually does its job way better than the Netflix series, despite this being only the length of about two episodes of that series or so.

Theroux tries to relate all the information we know in the present back to his interviews with Exotic from a decade ago, and some things really do put things into perspective. There's even a clip where Exotic more or less admits to wanting to kill Baskin, basically what ended up putting him in jail in the end. So yes, Theroux does end up picking more of Baskin's side, but honestly with how things are presented here without needless sensationalism, I genuinely think this is the better documentary. 

Even if you want to pick Exotic's side, this documentary that is much more dedicated to telling the real story than sensationalism has some evidence in it that makes it very hard to, at least for me. The Netflix series was definitely entertaining for how wild it was, but when it comes to telling the real story and taking the subject matter seriously I feel this comes much closer.