The idea of First is great, everything else is awful. In an hour and forty minutes, First tries to do way too much and end up really not doing anything. The goal is to cover multiple first time Olympians, but we cover so many that we get almost none of their story and learn nothing about them, it gets to the point that they don't even tell us their names, you kind of just have to piece that together yourself via scoreboards and their uniforms. It'll say "Zagreb, Croatia" but not who we are seeing and it takes quite a bit to even figure out what their are competing in. Honestly, if you don't already know the athletes, you still won't when you're done. As many other reviews have said, this feel more like an advertisement package for the Olympics than a documentary about the Olympics. If I showed a three minute clip, I could probably convince you it's a car commercial or something. Imagine the kind of hype packages you see for contestants on American Ninja Warrior or a show like that before they get their turn, that's what this feel like. The only person that I was familiar with that they cover was Missy Franklin and she gets maybe ten minutes total. In that ten minutes, we get maybe 3 minutes of footage of people talking about her, 4 minutes of her talking about the Olympics, and 3 minutes of very short clips of her competing. This is indicative of all (of the many) subjects the film covers. We never see an entire competition (and what we do is often presented with no context. We have no idea which round this is or even which competition it is. Are we seeing the finals of the relay race or the quarter finals of the 500 meter?) and we don't get any real information about anyone or anything. It's all "This person has always dreamed of wining an Olympic Gold medal. They've been training their whole lives for this. They are loved by their community and have the full support of their home country. Oh, the won/lost. What a journey it's been." an then on to the next person. Usain Bolt isn't even an official subject (because it's not his first Olympics) but he gets more than almost all of the real subjects. All of this is presented with no artistic flair and surrounded by generic or comically bad pop songs. There is a woman from England competing (couldn't tell you which event she was in because we saw her for three minutes in the first part of the doc and then didn't come back to her for an hour when we got another five minutes) and while she's doing some kind of bike race they play an upbeat pop song about being in love with a London girl. Is she from London? Fuck it I know, but the song has no other relation to what's going on on screen. It's like if during Floyd Mayweather's boxing exhibitions they played "Money" by Pink Floyd. His nickname is "Money" Mayweather, so let's just Google songs about Money and pick one at random; it's goofy as fuck and makes it seem like the producers don't care about the material of their documentary. Honestly, it feels like a robot made this; there is no style and clearly no passion. The director only has this documentary as a credit and it shows that they got a first time director to direct First. This has no real reason to exist.
The idea of First is great, everything else is awful. In an hour and forty minutes, First tries to do way too much and end up really not doing anything. The goal is to cover multiple first time Olympians, but we cover so many that we get almost none of their story and learn nothing about them, it gets to the point that they don't even tell us their names, you kind of just have to piece that together yourself via scoreboards and their uniforms. It'll say "Zagreb, Croatia" but not who we are seeing and it takes quite a bit to even figure out what their are competing in. Honestly, if you don't already know the athletes, you still won't when you're done. As many other reviews have said, this feel more like an advertisement package for the Olympics than a documentary about the Olympics. If I showed a three minute clip, I could probably convince you it's a car commercial or something. Imagine the kind of hype packages you see for contestants on American Ninja Warrior or a show like that before they get their turn, that's what this feel like. The only person that I was familiar with that they cover was Missy Franklin and she gets maybe ten minutes total. In that ten minutes, we get maybe 3 minutes of footage of people talking about her, 4 minutes of her talking about the Olympics, and 3 minutes of very short clips of her competing. This is indicative of all (of the many) subjects the film covers. We never see an entire competition (and what we do is often presented with no context. We have no idea which round this is or even which competition it is. Are we seeing the finals of the relay race or the quarter finals of the 500 meter?) and we don't get any real information about anyone or anything. It's all "This person has always dreamed of wining an Olympic Gold medal. They've been training their whole lives for this. They are loved by their community and have the full support of their home country. Oh, the won/lost. What a journey it's been." an then on to the next person. Usain Bolt isn't even an official subject (because it's not his first Olympics) but he gets more than almost all of the real subjects. All of this is presented with no artistic flair and surrounded by generic or comically bad pop songs. There is a woman from England competing (couldn't tell you which event she was in because we saw her for three minutes in the first part of the doc and then didn't come back to her for an hour when we got another five minutes) and while she's doing some kind of bike race they play an upbeat pop song about being in love with a London girl. Is she from London? Fuck it I know, but the song has no other relation to what's going on on screen. It's like if during Floyd Mayweather's boxing exhibitions they played "Money" by Pink Floyd. His nickname is "Money" Mayweather, so let's just Google songs about Money and pick one at random; it's goofy as fuck and makes it seem like the producers don't care about the material of their documentary. Honestly, it feels like a robot made this; there is no style and clearly no passion. The director only has this documentary as a credit and it shows that they got a first time director to direct First. This has no real reason to exist.
