Catfish- Yaniv Schulman and Henry Joost

The Gist

Catfish
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Yaniv Schulman(Nev) is your typical photographer living in New York City, this is until he gets one of his photos published in a common New York magazine.  Once published a young girl (8 years old) named Abby sends Nev an exact replica of his photo but in the form of a painting.  Flattered that someone painted a picture of his photo he e-mails Abby some thanks.  The next e-mail he gets back from her asks if he could send her more photos to paint.  Jumping at the opportunity Nev attaches some photos to the e-mail and patiently waits for the paintings to arrive in the mail.  As Nev grows closer and begins to learn more about her life, his friends decide that this is the perfect opportunity to make a documentary on his relationship with Abby.  Nev reluctantly agrees and just continues going about his daily business until he starts to add Abby's family as friends on the social networking site Facebook.  One family member in particular catches Nev eye, and that is her half-sister Megan.  Nev begins talking to Megan over Facebook chat, phone, e-mail and texting.  Their relationship quickly progresses and when Nev has a job close to where Megan lives he decides to pop-in to visit her.  When he gets there everything is not as he suspected....


What We Think
Reviewed by The North Star 
Run Time: 87 Minutes
Rating: PG-13
The first time that I saw this movie was on Ellen when she brought on Nev to do an interview with and from the second she talked about the story I knew that I was interested.  Ever since that episode had aired I wondered what the big secret was and resisted the urge to look up the ending on the internet.  I am so glad that I didn't.  When watching the movie I was constantly trying to figure out what the big secret was and as each minute went by in the movie my idea of what was it was changed.  My favorite thing about this movie was the fact that it was a documentary because I couldn't believe that any of this happened.  The film makers were very lucky to catch all of this on a camera because it truly made for a great story.
It is hard to discuss characters in a movie like this since it is a documentary but I am going to try to anyways.  I loved Nev even if he was a little naive (no pun intended).  He seems like a really nice guy and someone who makes friends quite easily.  A lot of the way he reacted to the situations he was in is the way that I would have reacted if I was stuck.  One of the filmmakers (Henry) was constantly making me laugh because he was genuinely a funny guy.  When they first showed him he was holding an Oh Henry! bar which for some reason made me crack up, so it was always interesting to hear the little comments that he throws in and also some of the logic he provides through out the movie.  The last character in the movie was Nev's brother Ariel.  He was my least favorite of the three but I still really liked him.  He wasn't afraid to prod his brother for answers to questions at 3 in the morning because they were siblings so Nev couldn't do anything that bad to him.  Ariel was also really funny when it came to the actual situation that they ran into because his reactions were just so ridiculous.  His reactions were the ones that everyone thinks in the very beginning of a bad or good situation but then never think them again because they are just to crazy.  With Ariel he would constantly think these thoughts out loud which made me laugh quite a bit.
There is one warning that does go along with this movie and that is do NOT look up the ending anywhere because the fun of the movie is learning with the filmmakers as secrets are unravelled.  If you look up the ending I guarantee that you will not like this movie as much if you know the ending.
I can see why this movie won a bunch of awards and I recommend it to anyone looking for a good movie to watch on a weekend or a week night if you have time. (:


Real Teen Rating~ A: You MUST watch this movie!!