
Netflix fans obsessed with wild documentary dubbed their 'best one yet'
Netflix fans are 'obsessed' with a new documentary dubbed 'wild' and is said to be the 'best one yet'.
The latest feature film doc in the Trainwreck series was released on the streaming platform earlier this week. Available for streaming from Tuesday (July 15), it has already proved popular among subscribers.
At the time of writing, the film has surged right up the charts to instantly become the most watched title among UK users. It has leapfrogged ahead of new releases K Pop Demon Hunters, Brick and is proving more popular than Oscar winning Oppenheimer.
According to the synopsis, the documentary takes viewers back to October 15, 2009, when a father in Fort Collins Colorado calls 911, claiming that his home-made flying saucer has escaped from the family's back yard.
However, he believes that inside is his six-year-old son. This stranger-than-fiction claim is backed up by footage from a news helicopter, which catches up with the balloon and is live-streaming the chase.
What starts as a local story and unusual emergency situation quickly escalates into a national one, as everyone from the National Guard, to the Sheriff, and Homeland Security, struggles to come up with a plan to safely rescue the child who is quickly named Balloon Boy.
As the balloon eventually lands, people praying for a miracle but instead something else and very unexpected is revealed. Public sympathy quickly turns into righteous outrage, as Balloon Boy and his family become one of America's most infamous, and bizarre news stories.
Balloon Boy is the latest in Netflix's Trainwreck documentary series that explores various modern disasters and media-fueled events. Previous instalments have focused on the Astroworld tragedy, the rise and fall for American Apparel and Canadian politician Rob Ford.
The latest feature film examines the extraordinary story by looking at archive footage. It also interviews some of the key people involved including authorities who attended the incident, reporters who covered the story and the family at the centre of it all.
Fans have been quick to react to Balloon Boy on social media, with one posting: "Obsessed with Netflix Trainwreck.. but the Balloon Boy episode has me thinking.. how awesome would a giant Spacex Starship balloon be."
Another simply stated they had put this latest Trainwreck instalment at the top of their list. They said: "New Trainwreck on Netflix. Balloon boy, best one yet."
Someone else added: "Watching this wild documentary on Balloon Boy on Netflix, this is craaaaazy wild."
One critic recommended that viewers should definitely stream it. In their review, they pointed out several issues that the doc seems to highlight and multiple viewings could reveal some thing new each time.
They wrote: "Questions spring out of the narrative about child manipulation and the ethics of media frenzies, fringe thematics that might take deeper root in a documentary series that's more concerned with journalistic integrity than Trainwreck's pursuit of amusement."
Another reviewer said: "So why do we need to see the Netflix series if the story was so well reported at the time? For one reason: Balloon Boy is the first time we're getting an in-depth look at the full story from the family's point of view. We're getting sit-down interviews with them all, including the now grown up Falcon, who still seems pleased that he was once at the centre of a national news storm as a little boy."
They continue: "I can't wait to get the inside story straight from the source. If you're wondering what to stream this week, make it this as it has the potential to be one of the best Netflix shows."
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The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
I hate to be the scowling lesbian at the feast – but here's what worries me about the new Austen adaptations
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Not very romantic, huh. None of this is Austen's fault, or Dunham's, and in fact I would say that Dunham's engagement with romcom history is shot through with a sensibility I'd call gay-adjacent. (This in stark contrast to most writer/directors in the Austen film and TV space who – how to put this – are so straight they probably enjoy the window displays in Oliver Bonas.) Meanwhile, the greatest irony of all is that Austen, who remained unmarried, intended her novels to espouse a philosophy of only-marry-for-love, not marry-at-all-costs. Then, as now, that message buckles under a different value system, one that balances a woman's worth on whether she has kids or is married. But as we look forward to a bunch more products driven by Regency-era values that are also our own, it's worth remembering the flipside to the insistence that every good story ends with a wedding. In Wood's case, the greater deception was not that she was taken in by a conman, but that, because of the excessive pressure on her to find a man, and in defiance of every instinct in her body telling her to run, she happened across a dangerous loser and – romcom-primed – conned herself into falling for him. Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist