Review: I remember starting to watch Ondi Timoner’s great documentary Dig! and wondering if I was going to encounter something terrible and mindless. Thankfully, I was proven wrong and found a gem of a film. It was everything that could go right for a foray into struggling, underground bands looking to make it big. I had the same excitement for We Fun because it appeared to have all the same elements. Unfortunately, for every masterpiece, there is a total and utter failure; and Matthew Robison’s film is everything Dig! desperately tried to avoid. Point blank: We Fun happens to be one of the worst, if not the worst, documentaries I’ve ever seen. It provides little to no basic information for its audience, poorly shot video, personalities that are little more than children on drugs and it flat out lies about the importance of ever making the film in the first place. Frankly, it’s appalling to viewers how haphazard this documentary was made. Above all, We Fun lacks characters audiences can connect with, or at least want to understand. The best description of these ‘rockers’ is as undeveloped juveniles hell bent on using drugs and making members of the Jackass team look like decent individuals. I’ve heard it said that the best bands found talent before they found drugs, but it’s clear these bands found drugs and alcohol and just gave up on searching for the talent. And what is worse is the documentary claims these are world renown bands. I’ll admit that I probably am not an expert on the underground music scene, but when I see footage of bands playing in bowling alleys or skating rinks, I begin to question the number of followers they have. And after reading a summary that claims these acts have reached “international prominence,” I wonder if Robison just went to Amsterdam and handed out demo tapes to stoned hippies in order to meet such guidelines. So yes, I’m being harsh, but this is a waste of time. Worse, it’s full of deceptions any viewer can uncover just by watching this documentary- making the Robison just as bad at lying as he is at developing a film. But above all, the worst part is knowing that no matter how you slice this documentary, you wind up with a crappy film. We Fun frankly has no redeeming quality. Like a movie that crams all the great parts into the trailer, this one loses out on an idea that at one point sounded extremely entertaining but ultimately imploded on itself. Review by Matthew Abshire Informative: 1- pretty much needed to be a band member to understand anything that happened Entertainment: 1.5- you’ll just wish the whole thing will go away Technical: 1- ‘try’ is not in these filmmakers vocabulary Overall: 1- not even pity can save this anti-Dig! film
 
Format: Theater Year: 2009 Running Time: 70 Min Distributor: N/A Producer: Matthew Robison Director: Matthew Robison Date Reviewed: 5-20-2009 Story: We Fun is an insider's look at a small group of Atlanta-area bands that have come to international prominence in the last year. It is also a portrait of how a scene develops, in this case the Atlanta indie rock scene. It starts as simply with talented musicians who just want to play their music with no compromises, followed by venues that make themselves accessible to new and rising acts, and fans who take ownership and pride in helping to nurture a burgeoning community (from AFF website).