My Amazon DVD Reviews: "Exit Through The Gift Shop"

Trading Places, Street Art Style 
4 Out Of 5 Stars

What starts off as a documentary about notorious London street artist/prankster Banksy doubles back on itself and becomes a documentary about the documentarion, one Thierry (Terry) Guetta. Thierry is a Frenchman who emigrated to Los Angeles and started a used clothing shop. He also has some sort of weird Obsessive/Compulsive disorder with video-recording every waking moment he possibly can. Somewhere in the camera ear of Thierry's life, he becomes obsessed by street/graffiti artists and begins to tape them and their nocturnal activities. As he climbs the strata of artists, he eventually encounters Banksy. Voila! A film is born.

Only one problem. Turns out Thierry is a complete dud as a film maker and Banksy takes over the tapes and editing. This is where the film gets interesting. After watching Banksy throw a huge and profitable opening in Los Angeles, Thierry takes Banksy's offhand comment about creativity (Thierry has developed some street art and a personna of his own) to mean that Banksy is approving of Thierry's work and should become the next big name in the artist community. Before you can say 'spray paint,' Thierry is overhauling an old network studio and planning his own, major coming out exhibit.

The question is, can art be made just by sheer force of will? Thierry seems like such a savant that his ascension into a world-class artist seems hard to swallow. Even the artists he was filming on his camera seem dumbstruck that this "character from the 1860's" could launch himself without much experience; there are some who believe the whole "Mister Brain Wash" (as Thierry has now dubbed himself) is one of Banksy's elaborate pranks on the creative universe. That's not to say the film is not without entertainment value. Thierry is, despite his loopiness, a charming eccentric, his own determination to hype himself into a success supplies "Exit Through The Gift Shop" with humor and interest. The gray area the film treads between creativity, hype and scam is so blurry that the DVD becomes its own circular argument, and a heck of a lot of fun.