A Crazy and Wild Time
"Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films" is a look behind the scenes of Cannon Films which changed cinema for ever. It all started with Menahem Golan and his cousin Yoram Globus who loved movies and having made movies in their native Israel headed to America and took over the financially in trouble Cannon Films and unlike other studios made movie after movie after movie, selling movies before they were even made and daring to do things differently to the establishment.
Most people who are passionate about cinema love it when documentaries are made about cinema because not only does it allow them to understand what things were going on behind the scenes but also give them a huge dose of nostalgia. That nostalgia was the first thing to hit me as I watched "Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films" because suddenly on my screen were movies which I hadn't seen in 30 years, movies from my teenage years which formed my love of cinema and even though seeing them now they were ridiculous it made me wish I was young again. Trust me when I say that if you really love cinema you will enjoy "Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films" as much for all the clips as you will the behind the scenes.
Of course those old clips are often used to establish a point about how crazy Cannon Films were at the time. Take a series of clips they show from "Superman IV" we learn that originally it was meant to have a budget of $30 million but had it slashed in half and when it came to Nuclear Man there is interviews with those who couldn't believe they hired a former Chippendale for the role. And so it goes on as we learn that almost every production had its craziness from Sharon Stone being wrongly hired for one movie whilst Michael Winner's love of gratuitous violence and nudity upset many. Trust me when I say that by the end of "Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films" you will not only have a big smile on your face but you will have learned some things about the insanity of Cannon Films for a time.
What this all boils down to is that "Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films" is one of the most entertaining documentaries about cinema you will come across. But it is entertaining because of how wild and crazy things were at Cannon Films rather than because they do anything differently with this documentary.
