Is Catfish a Shaggy Dog Story?

I have to admit the movie Catfish has left me stumped tonight. For starters its going to be a bugger to review. Yes it slots straight into my top ten of 2010, as the other great movie that's not really 'about' facebook, but the less you know about it the better. I'll go further, you may almost need to know nothing about it to appreciate it. The more I want to rave about this movie, the more I want to shout: DON'T GO RUNNING TO Imdb.

So what can we say? Well first off, it doesn't contain either of the two fellas above carrying the fish, especially the one who looks like a Winklevoss brother. What it does is follow a guy called Yaniv who's starring in a documentary he seems reluctant to take part in, following up a random connection he makes that's either too peculiar for the filmmakers to have invented, or part of an elaborate screenwriting wheeze that's so brilliantly hidden in truths - you can't tell the difference.

There's something deeply disturbing about Catfish, something truthful about the way we use social networks, there is also humour, pathos, and storytelling which uses technology in a very clever way, with terrific editing and pacing. It also escapes the usual hollywood, pitch-it-on- a-post-it note pidgeonholing, it's not really something meets anything.

It is an original and I can't stop thinking about it.

At the back of my mind though I'm thinking about Orson Welles' F for Fake and
that a shaggy dog story told on digital cams, with iPhones, facebook and SatNavs
............is still a shaggy dog story.