This documentary examines the impact of steroids on, first, American culture, and second, an American family of five. The family in question has two parents and three sons. The parents are overweight and very normal, the brothers are beefy and spent a good part of their developing years building muscles. One of the brothers, Chris Bell, is the documentary’s director. He doesn’t use steroids, but his brothers do. Bell’s older brother, Mike Bell, is a failed professional wrestler, and his younger brother, Mark Bell, is a failed weightlifter. Both turned to the drug to give them the edge they needed to reach the top. The drug gave them more muscles but the world of sports gave them little or no success. Because Mike and Mark are not where they want to be in life, the documentary is about failure, and specifically, American failure. In one scene, Mike, who is crowding his 30s, confesses that he still wants to be famous, loved, and on posters—he’s a special person. In the way professional wrestlers make spectacles out of their defeat or fall, Mike makes a spectacle out of his failure.

The best parts of the documentary, however, are found in its investigation of the history of performance drugs in American sports. The facts and information that Bell presents are consistently fascinating. Though he is not a user of steroids, he is very critical of how his culture codes them. The culture wants you to be bigger and better and faster, and at the same time it marks the use of drugs that make you bigger and better and faster as wrong. The contradiction results in all manner of absurdities, a number of which Bell exposes. If failure is the subject of the documentary’s American family section, then stupidity is the subject of its American culture section.

BIGGER, STRONGER, FASTER* DIR. CHRISTOPHER BELL | RATED PG-13 | AT SELECT THEATERS

Tags: bigger stronger faster, Film, Reviews, steroids