2 out of 5

Directed by: Allison Otto

Documentaries are not not documentaries. That is: they’re not action movies, or thrillers, or comedies, and I don’t expect them to operate as such. Still, I find it in bad form when documentaries don’t try during their openings: when they assume you’ve already bought in to the subject. I mean, it’s a fair bet, and it’s why I made my dumb statement – non-docs have to entice viewers at a high level, and sometimes require you to not know details, i.e. this is a horror movie, let’s flash some visuals in a trailer to get you in the door, but you won’t know if you like this or not until we make a funny joke or do or say something particularly interesting before the credits. Docs can do this by outlining their mission statement; what they’re exploring. Or, like The Thief Collector, they can assume you already read a book or a wiki, and so don’t even bother giving you context at the outset. Don’t even bother cutting to credits after anything compelling, whatsoever. We do get a funny reenactment of something starring a pantomiming Glenn Howerton and Sarah Minnich as The Alters, our couple-in-focus, but then we cut to the real life footage of someone reading a passage from a book that is hardly interesting unless you already know what the film’s about.

But, rewind, fair enough: maybe you already heard a bit about The Alters, a quirky but otherwise “normal” couple living in Mexico, in whose estate a million dollar stolen painting was discovered, and maybe / probably you know they’re the subject matter, so the book passage carries more weight. Even then, it’s a poorly punctuated scene. I knew the subject matter, and I felt my spirits dip: I suspected that writers Mark Monroe and Nick Andert. and director Allison Otto, not only would make this kind of assumption throughout The Thief Collector – that they don’t have to earn your interest – but that they would feel the concept was already so fascinating that discovery beyond the subject line wouldn’t be needed.

Yup.

Some further confessional bias: when I read about the subject matter, I supposed that the filmmakers pursued it because there was more to the story. While it’s rare to steal art-for-art’s-sake – to not sell it; something admittedly commented on in the film – it still has to end up somewhere, so if it ended up with The Alters… that can’t be the story. There’s got to be more to it.

Maybe! I mean there is, and The Thief Collector touches on it, but in the most backwards, ineffective way possible. The basic structure of the film is: let me tell you the conclusion so as not to get your hopes up, then let me rewind and build back up to that conclusion – suggesting a twist is forthcoming – and then wind up back at the same conclusion. Only let me add some completely deflating, forced “humanity” in there, that just dumbifies the whole thing. Also, I like to do swoopy, artsy moves with the camera, completely unmotivated.

The reenactments from Howerton and Minnich are fun, if a little mismatched in tone. However, when we finally connect to the title and the purpose of these reenactments, you get a late buzz as to how much interesting stuff there is actually kicking around this tale. And it’s not as though the doc is poorly technically made, or completely ignorant of that interesting stuff; we find some nice people connected to the painting’s discovery. Overall, the filmmakers just got excited by other parts of the story, but forgot to translate that excitement to the screen.