Reflecting on the supersize pursuit of an American dream

June 06, 2008|Ty Burr, Globe Staff

Very late in "Bigger, Stronger, Faster," a hugely entertaining personal documentary about what steroids mean to American pop culture, director Christopher Bell thinks to ask the simplest question of all: "What's the problem with being a normal guy?"

The film as a whole struggles to provide answers, but at that point Bell just cuts to George C. Scott as "Patton," barking that "America loves a winner and will not tolerate a loser." Sometimes it's as easy as that.

Because "Bigger, Stronger, Faster" views the issue through the filmmaker's own family, it intermingles emotions and facts, clarity and sympathy, in enlightening, mostly useful ways. This is certainly not the documentary on juicing some audiences will want, since it doesn't condemn the use of anabolic steroids outright. Instead, Bell hops over the wall of media outrage and tries to parse the hypocrisy behind it. Why, he wonders, are Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire accused of cheating when our entire culture rewards winning at all costs?

This isn't just theory for the director. In a very funny opening montage, Bell shows the heroes of his early-'80s childhood - Hulk Hogan, Rambo, Arnold Schwarzenegger - and then himself: "a fat, pale kid from Poughkeepsie." Because he and his brothers, Mike (a.k.a. Mad Dog) and Mark (a.k.a. Smelly), bore no resemblance to the ripped gods of professional wrestling, they all remade their bodies lifting weights, starting with a Christmas gift of a Hulkamania workout kit. "By the time I was a senior," says Christopher, "I was one of the strongest kids in the country."

His brothers chased dreams of musclebound glory - both aimed for careers in pro wrestling and came up short - and used steroids as a matter of course. Christopher dabbled and quickly stopped; he just felt it was wrong. That's the dichotomy the movie explores. The director wants to know: Are his brothers crazy or is he?

And so "Bigger, Stronger, Faster" embarks on a merry, fretful trip through the chemical underbelly of American sport. Bell tracks the morphing of baseball players from the scrawny wonderboys of yesteryear to "guys who were jacked," and finds anabolic ground zero in the US-vs-USSR Olympic weightlifting competitions of the late Cold War, when so many athletes on both sides were juicing that one grizzled coach calls it "even steven."