While the topics tend to cross paths thanks to some fancy editing, the film ultimately feels uncomfortably disjointed. Robert Richardson shoots some memorable imagery, at least.

"Retarded, Gay & a Waste of My Time."

The robotics engineer was fascinating (I wanted to see more of those robots!), the mole rat specialist was also really interesting, the bits with the topiary gardener would have been boring if they didn't seem so ridiculously lame, detached and unrelated (inducing some laughs even), and the animal tamer I just wished would get eaten alive for his distasteful practice and the miserable condition the lions were in. I think Morris hoped everything would get pulled together by analogy.

Reminded me of Errol's first film, Gates of Heaven, but this time he had much more interesting material to work with. The soundtrack was a bit overbearing and he added a lot of stuff in with stock footage just to make it feature length, some of it was unnecessary. Pretty interesting but a forgettable film from the legendary documentarian.

Inspired madness abound!

Almost comes together well enough, just almost. It should have been exclusively on the robotics and mammal man, with the horrid animal trainer cut right out, despite the synchronicity of it all. And I kept forgetting the gardener was even in this until another of his small segments regrettably resurfaces. The flow is just not right; a good 5-10 minutes must have been used on the superfluous circus stunt shots.

Errol Morris is best when keeping to one subject rather than sewing together a wayward cinematic quilt constructed from his cadre of nefarious weirdos. However, there's still some real fun in this film, particularly as it pertains to the life of the bow-tied child snatcher.

Those poor lions :( Son of a bitch, I wanted to hear more about naked mole rats.

I LIKED IT WHEN KITTY PUT ITS PAW IN THE WATER AND THEN LICKED IT.

Editing together four rather unrelated pieces into a pretty coherent whole like this is rather impressive, and having found three of the film's four subjects to be thoroughly intriguing I quite enjoyed the experience. Even so, it doesn't always fit together as well as I would have liked, sometimes feeling unfocused or repetitive.

A study in how powerful editing is. Creates a lot out of a little.

A deceptively profound film.

Occasionally interesting, but on the whole not really worthwhile. The topiary guy was especially useless, contributing almost nothing of substance. Morris went overboard with the stock footage, bloating the movie by at least 10 minutes, perhaps closer to 20. The musical score was also annoyingly intrusive.

Another of Errol Morris's refreshingly unconventional documentaries

One of the few documentaries that has managed to hold my attention. The four men initially seem completely unconnected to each other, but through some brilliant editing a much deeper, much subtler picture emerges. A must-watch.