Review of The Poker Film
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The increasingly bright spotlight currently shining on the subculture of online poker is producing an interesting array of often not quite ready for prime time ‘celebrities’, which makes sense when you consider that some of the most successful online poker players are young and slightly awkward. That youth and awkwardness is on display to varying degrees in a new documentary video effort over at thepokerfilm.com.
ThePokerFilm is a collaborative effort between Nat Arem of thePokerDB fame and Eric Strauss, with Arem playing the role of producer and Strauss of filmmaker. The project is apparently conceived as a series of small documentaries, with each individual projects focused on a single player or group of players.
The first installment focuses on four online players who live together in Georgia: Jeff “yellowsub86″ Williams, Nick “Stoweski” Stowe, Taylor “tbthanx” Bell and Taylor “tdomeski” Douglas. It’s broken up into 5 parts, each of which run under 10 minutes for a total running time of a bit under 40 minutes.
As for the quality of the documentary, it’s uneven. In spots, it’s a fascinating glimpse into a world of emerging adulthood that’s at once stifled and accelerated by the presence of large amounts of money. The focus is largely on the lifestyle that the four lead, and the interaction between them is pretty interesting when they’re shown, but a majority of the documentary is done as one-on-one interviews between subject and camera.
There seems to be a lack of any strong narrative thread throughout the video - it plays more like a ‘day in the life’ style piece, which would work if the subjects or the days were more innately interesting. The documentary seems to lose sight of the fact that the interesting thing about these kids is that they’re professional poker players, and while providing a few minutes on their normal (read: away from poker) lives makes for an interesting and informative contrast, focusing large chunks of episodes on the fairly mundane details of the lives of a few college kids is going to eventually get old.
Is it worth watching? Sure, and it may very well develop into a quality series once it finds a cleaner voice and perspective. Right now it’s just a little too much of a guy following around some other guys with a camera, and while that produces some interesting moments, I don’t know that it’s enough to sustain a film.
Check out ThePokerFilm here.
