STORYLINE: Two half-brothers, one Indigenous and one white, embark on a journey through time and place. They travel from their remote home in Shamattawa to the vibrant urban landscape of the 1980s. (IMDb)

  Family is a part of life, for better or worse.  It can be complicated, 

pleasant, or something you’d rather not talk about.  Some people you consider family, others you don’t, and vice versa.   Spielberg made the biopic, The Fablemans (2022), about his family. Stories We Tell (2012) and Three Identical Strangers (2018) are fasinating, for completely different reasons, documentaries, on the subject.  Endless Cookie, a recent feature length documentary, tells of two half brothers with a world of difference between them.  One brother is indigenous, all the other is white.

   The documentary is made of stories the brothers recollected.  These stories sre interjected byother family members. They sometimes provide commentary on events, other times add a bit to the story, but mostly they are there adding noise to the feature. Endless Cookie also features the odd insight into how the movie came to be. This is then all animated.

   Endless Cookie had the potential to be fascinating, look at two different cultures, within the same family.  Instead it ends up being a disjointed documentary, that is sloppily animated. Some of the stories were irrelevant, and the behind the scenes aspects of the film shown, seemed to be featured in the film to explain why those stories were in the movie.  

    This is the kind of feature film that could have very easily been a round table discussion, with the odd B roll footage. The film took a chance and missed its mark. That round table discussion style film would have given Endless Cookie much needed focus.  

   Endless Cookie add the potential to be interesting movie about family dynamics, and different cultures.  Instead it ended up being it, just joined feature film, that felt like a kindergarten arts and crafts project.

    Until next time, I will see you at the movies!