The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

The title and previews to this documentary made it seem a bit haunting and eerie. It's about a man-wife dance team (over a 30 year span) who decided to add cats (tigers, jaguars, leopards, etc.) to their act. It's billed as a tragedy as well as a weird love/sex-triangle, so that offbeat oddness drew my curiosity.Overall, the show felt a bit voyeuristic - I felt that I was peering in on the personal lives of some odd show-biz people. The grainy, old film clips of them just added to that imagery. There were ultimately 3 of them (a young fellow later joined them) and their lives were centered around entertaining, caring for their exotic cats and living with each other.Besides the feeling of voyeurism, I'm not sure what I ultimately got out of the show - besides the obvious idea that dealing with wild cats is dangerous ... and that the ménage à trois lifestyle was alive and well with these people. It was interesting, but felt a little too long (too many unnecessary details) for the story that they were telling.

We happened to stumble upon this film a few evenings ago and I have been haunted by Ron Holiday's hair ever since. While this film is in many ways sad and poignant, it's greatest asset is that it is an unintentional comedic masterpiece. Had the credits rolled and I saw that it was directed by Christopher Guest I wouldn't have been surprised. Cod pieces, extended ass-shots, and the precursors to Sigfried and Roy--Will Ferrell couldn't have done a better job himself."Excuse me..." "No you're not excused" will go down in the history books (for the uninformed that is the line that snowballed into the greatest menage a trois of all time.)

I'm so glad that I stumbled across this documentary without having seen any of the advertising for it.At first I was a little put off by the strange appearance and the sexually-charged comments of Ron Holiday, but ultimately they contributed to what makes this story so interesting. This isn't a story about Hollywood-perfect people living scripted lives but very real, very unique people.I won't give away any spoilers but only say that there is an air of foreboding throughout the film that lets you know all did not end well with the trio of performers who were the Cat Dancers.The filmmaker and editors did a fabulous job with the old footage. A lot of post production houses only wish they could make video look like that, and the soundtrack was perfect.I didn't cry until the end credits when the song "I want to be a lion tamer" (I think it was) began.I hope to see more by this newcomer!

I happened to catch this documentary this morning while I was getting ready to go to work. The archival footage isn't of the greatest quality, but as most of it is home movies, that's to be expected. I love cats of all sizes, so I really enjoyed seeing the video of the cats performing as well as hanging out at home.As anyone watching this will figure out long before the end, two of the three main characters in this documentary are no longer with us. That leaves just one to tell their story. It's interesting, but I found myself so distracted by Mr. Holiday's hair and plastic surgery that I couldn't really pay attention to what he was saying some of the time.The main problem I had with this documentary isn't its style or quality -- it is the actions of Mr. Holiday. At the end, a screen card comes up saying that the place where he boarded his last two tigers evicted everyone, so rather than turn them over to a refuge or investigate other boarding places, he had them put to sleep. These were older animals, yes, but they appeared to be in good health. After listening to Holiday talk for an hour about how much he supposedly loved the cats, I found it horrible that he chose this option for them. Animals should never be put to sleep unless they are a danger to others or are very sick. That wasn't the case with these two. I found it jarring and unexplainable, and immediately lost any sympathy I might have felt for Holiday.