Name: Feels Good Man
Genre: Documentary
Released: 2020
Duration: T1H34M
Cast: Matt Furie

A not-so-typical documentary biopic on Pepe the Frog, the indie comic character warped into a massive white supremacy meme, and its creator Matt Furie - who fought the internet to reclaim his drawn creation. Winner of the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award.

U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award winner at Sundance Film Festival 2020

2020Rating: 1594 minsUSA

Documentary

All Reviews (9)

Director:: Arthur Jones (feature debut)
Cast:: Matt Furie

Streaming (2 Providers)

Feels Good Man / Reviews

Flicks, Daniel Rutledge

Feels Good Man is an extraordinary documentary that taps into this insanity in an insightful, meaningful way. It’s a crazier-than-fiction tale that all started with an artist flippantly drawing a comic about a stoner frog who likes to pee with his pants pulled all the way down. Thanks to the random nature of the universe, that cartoon frog was eventually officially recognised as a hate symbol and associated with some of the worst groups on the internet, before the artist embarked on an impossible quest to claim his creation back. This film is not trying to broadly explain the internet, of course; but it does a great job of encapsulating the current zeitgeist with this one specific, unique, unbelievable situation.

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Associated Press

Because seeing what happened to Furie and his chill stoner frog dude — spoiler alert, he became a hate symbol of the alt right — will likely make your blood run cold. It sure makes for a chillingly effective internet-era cautionary tale.

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Slash Film

Feels Good Man is, in some sense, a horror movie about the legacy of images, the ownership of images by their creators, and the lives they take on outside of the artists who make them. In particular, it’s a horror story about the life of one particular image: Pepe.

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A.V. Club

Pretty darn entertaining.

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The New York Times

At its best, the movie is a vertiginous, head-slapping examination of the tangible, unpredictable consequences of making art.

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San Francisco Chronicle

Jones uses Furie’s story, and some gorgeous animation, as a wonderfully succinct window into the way social media has changed the country. By letting 4channers speak for themselves, the film also puts a face to the bad actors without ever letting them off the hook.

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Hollywood Reporter

Buying Pepe as misunderstood and buying Pepe as a character destined for redemption are two different things, and it's the argument after the buildup where Feels Good Man stopped feeling persuasive for me. Your hopefulness may vary.

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Newshub

It does a great job of explaining why much of the world is the way it is right now. I mean, things are completely, unbelievably crazy out there, right?

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RogerEbert.com

“Feels Good Man” is more about a developing meme language in general. And just like Pepe becomes far more than just a lackadaisical character created by Furie, the movie is far bigger than Pepe, unveiling itself to be a vital document of our new language of meme culture.

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