The Last Blockbuster

When you hear the concept of this doc, you might think there’s a fascinating story behind it. After all, Blockbuster as a corporation has been dead for years, and here’s this lone bulwark against time in a small town in eastern Oregon, refusing to die. It stands in defiance of logic, and yet it’s embraced and beloved. There MUST be a story about it, right? Yeah, that’s the problem. There isn’t a story. I mean, yea, there’s a story about the rise and fall of Blockbuster the corporation. But that’s covered in the first half of this movie (and really only part of that). So, if 90 minutes, maybe 20 of it are devoted to the company. That means 70 minutes are about this store. That means they have to fill time. Oh look, here’s a parade of celebrities who worked there to reminisce about those days. And reminisce about renting movies. And reminisce about their first movie. And just being nostalgic and cursing streaming like it’s the great Satan (which is ironic, considering this is on Netflix). And when they finally get to the store, they talk about celebrities talking about the store staying open … or the manager doing interviews … or people coming from all across the planet just to see the last Blockbuster. And that’s the problem with this doc. There is so little story to be told, a lot of the doc is fluff and filler. And it can’t even tell the story in a linear sense; the rise and fall of the company is broken up in pieces. A narrator comes and goes, disappearing for almost half the movie. Lloyd Kaufman is censored when he swears, but Kevin Smith isn’t. It’s all haphazard and feels amateurish. But then again, what should we expect for a topic that has the depth of a teaspoon? There’s just not enough here to fill 90 minutes. 30, maybe. But this is 90 minutes of fluff that can be summed up in one sentence: “yup, there’s still one, and it’s exactly as you remember it”. Now you can move it out of your queue.