‘Too Much Sugar’ Review: Robert Greene’s Hybrid Portrait of Rural Life

Director and editor Robert Greene continues to intriguingly blur the lines between fact, fiction and filmmaking in his new hybrid feature, Too Much Sugar, which premiered in Venice’s Orizzonti sidebar.

Like his precedent efforts, Bisbee ’17 and Procession, Greene’s latest is an exercise in collaborative directing that employs real people to both be themselves and perform in movie-like reenactments, creating a unique form of cine-therapy that has become the indie auteur’s trademark. Here, he turns the camera on a pair of friends from the tiny rural enclave of Moberly, Missouri, revealing working-class men marked by euphoria and heartbreak, love and family trauma, pranks and pathos in a seldom-depicted pocket of small-town America.

The star and co-creator of Too Much Sugar, which forms a loose trilogy with the previous movies (and is also linked to Greene’s meta-take on suicide and primetime sensationalism, Kate Plays Christine), is a buffed up and charismatic 40-something dad named Ryan Holliger, aka “Holli-wood,” aka “Toe Tags.” Early on, Greene explains he first encountered Holliger at their sons’ basketball games, during which the latter would rant and shout so much that the director couldn’t stand him. (We’ve all been there.)

The two eventually became friends, and then collaborators, with Greene deciding to make a feature about Holliger, his sizable family and his best friend and fellow carpenter, Michael Midgyett, aka “AccRite.” You can see what the director found appealing about such a character: Raised by a single mom, the former convict spent four years in jail before becoming a manual laborer and amateur boxer. He now dedicates his life to being the best father possible — no easy task when taking into account that he has six children from five different mothers.

Per his own words, Holliger excels at “making bad decisions that turn into great kids,” and such energy and positivity seem to rub off on his many offspring, who range from ages 8 to 24 and whom Holliger coaches through various sports (basketball, baseball, boxing and soccer) while also housing and feeding most of them with the help of his current partner, Amanda.

The concept behind Too Much Sugar, whose title is taken from a comment Holliger’s grandmother made about his hyperactivity as a child, is to have the father, his friends and family each conceive of a movie in which they’re both star and co-auteur. Ideas include an action-packed thriller for son Wayde, who wants to be an actor; a mom swap flick for Amanda; a horror movie for Holliger’s mom (she claims one of her favorites is Terrifier 3); and a dad-com that Holliger imagines as a way to celebrate his long-term friendship with Midgyett.

At some point the latter’s story takes over the narrative when we learn that his 16-year-old son was killed in a mass shooting at a party, prompting Greene to direct Midgyett through dramatic scenes that allow him to purge his grief, which he does quite movingly in front of our eyes. His performance, as well as that of Holliger, is as authentic as they come — to the point that we can’t always tell if they’re acting or just being themselves.

But that’s one of the facets of Greene’s homegrown style, which exposes the way movies always involve some form of manipulation — as a seasoned editor, including on several features by Alex Ross Perry, Greene knows all the tricks — while attempting to create a transparent work that turns each character into an active participant in the filmmaking process.

In Too Much Sugar, such an approach coaxes Holliger and Midgyett into facing some of their many demons, revealing themselves to the camera in ways they haven’t necessarily done before. Their machismo gradually gives way to something more disarming and sincere, culminating in the production of Holliger’s buddy comedy (also called Too Much Sugar), a goofy if heartfelt ode to friendship and family that brings everyone together during a faux happy ending.

“We’re not perfect people, but we’re perfect for each other,” Holliger lovingly says about his extended clan towards the end, and although that dialogue doesn’t actually appear in his movie within a movie, it’s as perfect a line as any Hollywood screenwriter could conjure up.