Like most documentaries, "Hands on a Hardbody" will never play in most cities. My wife and I saw it in New York, in a nearly full theater, and the movie was an enormous hit with that audience. Too bad it won't get wider distribution. Documentaries also face obstacles to wide video distribution. So when it's about to be released on video, make sure you pressure your local video store to stock it. It's a wildly funny, yet sympathetic look at the 24 contestants in a Texas Nissan dealership's promotion in which the last person to keep a hand on a hardbody truck gets to keep it. The previous winner, who is interviewed for the movie (and is a contestant once more, much to the resentment of others), lasted more than 80 hours. When only a few are left and someone else drops out, he says it is an "exhilarating" feeling, one he can only compare to killing his first deer. He acts as though this simple endurance contest is the Super Bowl, saying, "If you can't play with the big dogs, get up on the porch with the puppies." Obviously, he's the villain of the piece. Everybody else is appealing in his or her own way. There are many memorable characters. Like the toothless guy who helped his toothless wife prepare for the contest by shutting off the air-conditioning in the house. He's got a 20-ton unit, big enough to cool a Kmart, he says. It can cool the house to 12-below-zero! As the credits rolled, my wife said, "That's the funniest movie I've ever seen."
Review of Hands on a Hardbody: The Documentary
