Tribeca 2019: "Ask Dr. Ruth"
Saturday, April 27, 2019 at 10:30AM Team Experience reporting from Tribeca Film Festival. Here's Jason
A personality-based crowd-pleaser similar to what we saw last year with Won't You Be My Neighbor and RBG, only with heaps more clitoral commentary, director Ryan White's Ask Dr. Ruth doesn't break any documentary molds. It's content to merely bring us the life story and work of itty bitty sexologist Dr. Ruth Westheimer. And Dr. Ruth's too warm-hearted (not to mention itty bitty) to go about straight-forwardly smashing molds anyway. The iconic personality is more content to sneak in, make you comfy, offer you a cookie or two, and ease all of your deepest secrets out first...
We see that time and again in this entertaining documentary. Dr. Ruth is never gonna let us forget the cameras are there because there are people behind the cameras and she is relentlessly fascinated by people, of every shape and size and quirk. All the standard documentary tropes can't help but get a little slid about as she reshuffles things to her particular suited purpose. She might be small but she fills a room with her inquisitive gregariousness, and righteously so. Her agenda is total openness and she's gonna get there any way she can.
It was clearly never going to be small-time for a personality this charmingly infectious. Even while Ask Dr. Ruth sorts out the sad aspects of the good doctor's history -- she was sent off to school in Switzerland during World War II never to see her family, who were exterminated by the Nazis, again -- it never fails to deliver what we came for. That's to gape in wonder at this wunderkind of a woman changing the world, one sharply enunciated erection at a time.
"Ask Dr Ruth" plays 4/28, 5/1, and 5/2 at the festival
Ask Dr Ruth, Tribeca, documentaries
Reader Comments (5)
I love Dr. Ruth. She's so full of life and energy. Plus, I bet she's still a freak in bed.
Off topic...
... after watching Avengers: Endgame, and the critical and b.o. reception, we can allready call this film a LOCK for...
PGA nomination
Oscar Nominations galore, including Best Picture
I think this can be as huge as The Godfather, Return of the King and Titanic. At the very least, it will go the Avatar, Star Wars: A New Hope or ET.: Best Picture, and multiple nominations, multiple technical wins... but I got the feeling they simply can't deny Kevin Feige.
I forgot: the only way, I think, to deactivate this time bomb: "Achievement in Popular Film" award, brought back
I forgot: the only way, I think, to deactivate this time bomb: "Achievement in Popular Film" award, brought back
Jesus Alonso. Codename: Volvagia.