Catfishing is only fun when it's with fish

   The movie Catfish is a documentary about the experience of being catfished. Nev Schulman is the focus of this movie and his brother, Ariel Schulman, is the reason behind it. The movie follows Nev's relationship with a family that lives in Ishpeming, Michigan, whose daughter Abby sends him paintings that she made. Eventually Nev is introduced to Megan, Abby's fictional older sister played by her mother Angela. Nev and Megan eventually form a relationship together, and this is where the catfishing comes in.

   First of all, I don't know why Angela would go through with something as crazy as she did. She ran several different accounts just to support Megan's existence.The amount of time she must have had to dedicate just to keeping up this lie is staggering. This had to have been hours of her life, spent selling something to herself and another that wasn't true. Not to mention she has two disabled children that she needs to take care of, what about them? How many responsibilities did she have to ditch just to keep this up? Of course, I see why she'd want to ditch her responsibilities, taking care of three kids is difficult without having two of them mentally deficient. This doesn't fully excuse her actions, but at least she wasn't doing this solely out of malice.

   An act of this magnitude has to be stressful on the family. As I said, just how many responsibilities was she dropping just to talk to Nev on the phone? I really don't like how she wrapped her daughter up in it also. She really didn't have too. I'm positive the only reason she did is because she wanted a scapegoat to get her artwork praised through. That's about the only reason I can think of for her to lie about her daughter's abilities by making them up entirely.

   All her stories came back to haunt her when Nev showed up at her house. When he arrived I was honestly hoping for more of a show. The only really dramatic part of this whole movie was when Nev very gently let her know that he knew she had been lying. I had been hoping for more of an explosive ending, it'd have made watching that hour and thirty minute tease worth it. Really, they drove all the way up to Michigan, the state on the bottom of the vacation list, just to softly get on to her? Why even bother.