Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers (2018) ⭐ 5.6 | Documentary (original) (raw)
1h 37m
In 1989, physicist Bob Lazar broke the story of Area 51 and the US government's work on alien spacecrafts. He blew the whistle, shocked the world, then went silent - until now.In 1989, physicist Bob Lazar broke the story of Area 51 and the US government's work on alien spacecrafts. He blew the whistle, shocked the world, then went silent - until now.In 1989, physicist Bob Lazar broke the story of Area 51 and the US government's work on alien spacecrafts. He blew the whistle, shocked the world, then went silent - until now.
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Interesting story, Lazar is fascinating. But the documentary is edited horribly with painfully Corby narration. The director has awful sections of himself pretending to perform real time phone calls (the doc starts with slo mo footage of himself in flashing pink light...). In one scene, Bob goes into great detail about how the gravity thrusters work, corbell follows up with "so this is an alien ship?"... Great extra insight there
A must watch - but a poor one.
First, this is a must watch for anyone who isn't aware of Bob Lazar or the story of Area 51. There's important information exposed that will leave you with questions, and maybe some answers.
However, the style of the documentary is a big letdown and distracts from the content and overall quality. Too many poorly done effects and phone calls that appear (although probably are not) staged. The documentary has a cheap, cheesy and almost sales-pitch like feel to it at times, which makes the story seem less genuine.
I'd still suggest watching this, but overall it suffers from trying too hard in the wrong areas.
Some parts of the documentary were cheesy. Was there really a need for the filmmaker to express his ignorance by trying to show depth in prognosticating about the nature of reality? And production value was low as we are made to watch the director and the producer have extended telephone conversations about Bob Lazar.
That said, this documentary does feature current interviews with Bob Lazar and allows you the viewer to come to your own conclusions about the man. And the whole point of making this film was to allow viewers to judge for themselves what kind of person Bob Lazar is. He does not come across as one of those self promoting UFO types who will soak up every last drop of attention the rest of the world offers them. Instead, Lazar is presented as someone who might be your nerdy uncle - a little eccentric perhaps but otherwise like everyone else.
There were no hard questions asked in this film. For instance, Lazar says he attended MIT and Cal Tech but cannot name a single person whom he went to class with or who taught him nor has anyone stepped forward to say they remember him from his time there. The filmmakers did proffer some support by saying that they interviewed people who say that they dropped off Lazar at these institutions and makes the point that if these people were telling the truth, then either Lazar went to MIT and Cal Tech or was making one hell of a show of it. Lazar also stuck to his story in the face of a criminal conviction even though both MIT and Cal Tech have gone on record stating that Lazar never attended.
While it is possible that Lazar was ghosted in order to discredit him, it is still very odd that no one who attended MIT or Cal Tech can corroborate his claim. The point was gently raised but Lazar was never challenged and was instead allowed to brush aside the issue by asserting that the importance of what he had to reveal about Area 51 has nothing to do with his academic credentials. Lazar must have had his conditions before agreeing to the interview, not answering questions that might have been uncomfortable could have been one.
Is Robert Lazar telling the truth about aliens in S4 of Area 51? While he does not seem to be a conman, at least not one who has made a nice bundle from peddling his story, not everything he says is logically consistent. For instance, he tells us that the state of physics today does not understand how gravity is generated, which is true; and yet later in the film he goes on to speculate how the alien technology he purportedly studied uses a gravitational field to create propulsion. Does Bob Lazar know something about gravity that the best minds do not?
If you are looking for more tidbits about what Bob Lazar had to say about Area 51 then there is nothing new here. In fact, the same old footage from 1989 is used to tell viewers what he had to say. What is new is that this is a current interview of Bob Lazar and it is the closest most of us will ever get to knowing the man.
Style over substance and the style isn´t very good
Again this is everything you expect from a Jeremy Kenyon Lockyer Corbell production: Lots of archive archive footage and a few interviews that hype how awesome the subject is (in this case Bob Lazar) but have no new information whatsoever. What distinguishes this from a 15 minutes clip on Youtube is that this is augmented with lengthy introduction scenes, glitch vfx and "mysterious music" . I felt especially annoyed by the reenacted phone / sms scenes that just went on too long and you could tell it is an attempt to stretch this to feature film length. To me around 80% felt as "filler". Only thing worthwhile are the recent interviews with Bob Lazar even tho they just repeat what he already talked about before.
For a believer it's interesting to watch.
I'm just going to rate this documentary for the story it tells about Bob Lazar's life from the moment he came out with the alien story until thirty years later. Other reviewers gave some very negative ratings whilst I don't think that was justified. If a story about Bob Lazar is told by Bob Lazar himself I find that interesting rather than boring. Before even watching a documentary about aliens eveybody already has an opinion wether they believe or not that there is extraterrestrial life. So if you're believer you will believe everything Bob Lazar tells, and if you're a non-believer you will think he's a scam. Personally I'm a believer, as I once experienced an UFO sighting for myself, so there is no doubt in my mind that there is life out there. That governments would keep this information secret, especially the USA, is absolutely normal as the whole economy of that country relies on fossil resources and weapons. Remove wars and oil from the American economy and the whole system crashes. So of course they won't tell you about a spaceship that doesn't need fuel as that would destroy their own system. The documentary is far from perfect though. The narrator Mickey Rourke is unpleasant to listen to, but luckily he doesn't have a major part in this documentary. The film maker is also a bit boring to watch so that's a second bad thing about this documentary. But the explanations and interviews with Bob Lazar are very interesting and even for someone who doesn't understand that matter it's still explained so that everyone could understand. Bob Lazar as the alien whistle blower, deserves respect, just for telling the truth and that after being harassed and watched for his entire life. The fact that his house has been raided by every possible agency tells enough about him telling the truth. They wouldn't do all that fuzz for a liar. Just leave the guy alone and tell the world the truth.
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