50
Strauch’s direction, in contrast, is numbingly uninspired, adhering stringently to the Doc. 101 assembly-line template cultivated by the film’s executive producer Alex Gibney.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
83
Entertainment Weekly by Chris Nashawaty
Interviews with Boenish’s wife, Jean, give his life story perspective and heart.
80
Sunshine Superman, a portrait of BASE jumping founding father Carl Boenish, effectively captures the irrepressible energy of a man who never tired of taking flying leaps. But it also does something even rarer for the documentary genre: It demands to be shown on an IMAX screen.
50
Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern
The film, like its subject and everyone who talks about him, is frustratingly short on analysis or insight. It’s as if BASE jumping had been invented and psychology had not.
80
Los Angeles Times by Michael Rechtshaffen
While this buoyant account of his brief but eventful life might feel like a rock climber's "Man on a Wire," the Oscar-winning 2008 documentary about tightrope walker Philippe Petit, director Marah Strauch gives the film an exhilarating uplift of its own.
70
The New York Times by Neil Genzlinger
Glorious daredevilry is wrapped in a slowly evolving ache in Sunshine Superman, a bittersweet documentary about Carl Boenish, who looked at very tall things and saw an opportunity to leap.
75
It depicts counterculture where those stranded outside the barriers of conventional society seek to push past natural boundaries to intermingle with the metaphysical in midair.
75
The footage is striking, the memories of the man vivid, and the finale, a tribute to the next phase of the sport, winged suits, which Carl didn’t live to see, still stuns you.
80
You may not leave Sunshine Superman wanting to emulate Carl and Jean, but you will feel like you've vicariously bonded with them.