FYRE - Netflix Documentary Film Review | The Review Geek Written and directed by Julia Willoughby Nason and Jenner Furst, Fyre Fraud is much stranger than fiction, and yet it tells a story that makes perfect sense in the age of influencers and the general need to be seen. You're almost there! While developing Fyre, McFarland got it in his head that he wanted to throw a massive party on an island in the Bahamas that was once owned by Pablo Escobar. The best musical instrument is a love triangle. But Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened has other serious things to say about the society we live in. On more than one occasion, the filmmakers show McFarland staring into space as he refuses, perhaps for legal reasons, to elaborate on subjects such as whether Ja Rule understood the degree to which the festival was not ready to proceed as planned. But a brilliant new documentary on Netflix, , shows that the real victims of this ill-fated project were not the hoodwinked people who went, but the Bahamian people. The final section of the documentary shows how he succeeds, even as a convicted criminal out on bail, at launching another fraudulent insiders club. Get the freshest reviews, news, and more delivered right to your inbox! The Netflix documentary, "Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened," investigates the infamous Fyre Festival and its co-founders Billy McFarland and 90s rapper Ja Rule. We at Vulture wont even charge you a quarter-million dollars for the exclusive privilege of reading this review. The documentary shows how the Fyre festival crumbled with each day leading up to launch, how the project team reacted to the demands with direct interviews, and how it slowly became clear how corrupt Billy McFarland is. TikToks Favorite Celebrity Couple Is Kim Kardashian and Michael Cera. From Fyre Fraud, a stable narrative arises of where that came from,like with his steel credit card company Magnises, (which only provided the image of having a fancy credit card) further poking holes into the facade that some of the most successful have any idea of what they're doing. But Fyre Festival, which took place (in the loosest possible sense) on an island in the Bahamas over a weekend in April 2017, will forever be associated with two triangles of brown bread, a slice of clammy white cheese and a fistful of limp salad all presented in a white polystyrene box. Some festival-goers were even being yelled at over the phone being demanded to put money on their bands. 17 Oscar-Nominated Netflix Films to Watch in Honor of Awards Season, The 70 Best Romantic Comedies of All Time. McFarland had a crowd, now he just needed a festival. These people were burnt by Fyre and are still trying to recover. And I was going through the hardest experience of my life. In what way(s) is this movie a cautionary tale? None of the people got to see the progress photos from the place they were going to stay in. From all of these suspicious actions, these consumers should be reasonably concerned, and hopefully, they would ask for a refund after theyve smelled a scam, but the majority of people just wrote it off as a weird incident and decided to still go on the trip. But despite this, people still decided to go. Fyre was surrounded by sketchiness before it was even released. You dont have to dig for contacts, you just go to Fyre and get a quote. Both of the documentaries consider what the Fyre Fest debacle says about how Americans, particularly a subset of wealthy millennials, live according to aspirational values. But the Netflix film spends a fair amount of time on similar moments, even using the same school bus footage to capture the initial moments of Fyre horror. Fyre review viral festival disaster relived in shocking Netflix And the guests are still coming.". with updates on movies, TV shows, Rotten Tomatoes podcast and more. I actually wouldnt be surprised if, 10 years down the line, were hearing about Billy McFarland starting some kind of other adventure thats imaginative and gets some serious momentum, says Weinstein. eight lawsuits were brought against him relating to Fyre Festival,he was sentenced in October to six years in prison for fraud. For more news and updates about Reinhardt events, follow our social media platforms: Your email address will not be published. Schadenfreude on Twitter is fun and all, but the spectacle of white moneyed elites defrauding a Caribbean workforce makes our delight at what happened at Fyre seem small. Coming Soon, Regal There is a brief window when there is still time to pull it off, but nothing ever seems to happen. Netflix announced its highly-anticipated documentary Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened late in 2018, but on the week of its release, Hulu scooped the mega-streamer by releasing Fyre Fraud. 2023 Vox Media, LLC. The Fyre Festival Instagram was posting recycled pictures from the same photoshoot that was shot in Normans Cay, which was not factual. Isn't that what social media does? Before it became a very real nightmare for all who had flown down to the Bahamas and spent thousands of dollars on getting a sunburn and flying back home,it was meant to be a paradise populated with everyones favorite musicians, social media riffraff and movie stars: Im talking Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, Kanye West and G.O.O.D. Fyre | NETFLIX Documentary Review | The Greatest Party that Never The documentary is excruciating to watch. Review: Netflix's 'Fyre' and Hulu's 'Fyre Fraud' : NPR Fyre is a documentary that could have settled with being entertaining, but it manages to hit far more notes and explore many more ideas than that. Even though I watched both films, and recommend that the consumer watch both as well if you only want to watch one movie I would watch the Netflix documentary. It's off-putting and out of place, but the documentary becomes more confident with its tone the more it chugs along. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. It is the documentary's great triumph to relegate the suffering of the organisers and. Do you think social media/the internet should bear significant responsibility for the disaster? Verified reviews are considered more trustworthy by fellow moviegoers. focused more on telling both sides of the story, from people who supported McFarland, such as himself and his significant other, as well as talking with people who worked on Fyre as well. So what if these people had been defrauded, lured with the promise of a luxury music festival that never came to be? If you wanted, say, supermodel Gigi Hadid to attend your party, you could log in to Fyre, pay your money and she'd be there. How many of us considered these stories when we gleefully shared images of a bad cheese sandwich? In the months leading up to the festival, Fyre Media even paid numerous celebrities and influencers to tout the festival on their social media accounts, including a reported $250,000 payment to. People got ready for the best week, or two weeks of the summer. He promises luxury accommodations, first-tier entertainment, first-class food, and unending fun. A young entrepreneur called Billy McFarland was working with rapper Ja Rule on an app called Fyre, which was designed to let ordinary people book talent. Courtesy Netflix, It goes on and on, but even when the money runs out and the lie begins to be exposed, McFarland refuses to change course. The tents, meanwhile, which are supposed to be luxury, are left-over hurricane tents. Hulu casually dropped their own Fyre documentary, Fyre Fraud on Monday, apparently just to flex on Netflix's previously announced . Coming Soon. Now that Meredith is gone, it is business as usual at Grey Sloan Memorial. the Terms and Policies, and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes. He'd left himself about eight weeks, . It was, Scores of celebrities and influencers were paid (or offered a free ticket) to post a cryptic orange tile, with a link to the Fyre Festival website, on their Instagram feeds. If it is, the Fyre Festival will certainly be a notable chapter in that period. This article is about the documentary. It is the documentary's great triumph to relegate the suffering of the organisers and guests below that of the Bahamian people left to pick up the pieces of an undeliverable dream. Common Sense and other associated names and logos are trademarks of Common Sense Media, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization (FEIN: 41-2024986). Netflix's 'Fyre': Inside the Millennial Scam of the Decade 90% of tickets were sold in the first 48 hours, with prices ranging from $450 to $100,000. At first it was a dream, a music festival in the Bahamas over two weeks, promising villas and and white-glove concierge service, dinners with special guests, and a bunch of fellow music-lovin', photogenicMillennials on one island. Fyre Fraud lays out more information about McFarlands background and his pre-Fyre endeavors, including a failed, exclusive credit-card company that targeted millennials and should have served as a red flag that Fyre, an app that basically functioned as an Uber for talent booking, and its related fest might not come together as planned. Courtesy Netflix. And in the age of Trump, theres every reason to believe that we havent learned from any of this, and that a character like McFarland will rise again. It just seemed as if McFarland was doing the interview as a redemption piece so that people would see him as not as bad of a guy as this incident made him out to be, so people will begin to trust him again and his future projects. A great example is his interview with Andy King, an event producer who is so loyal to McFarland that he admits he came very close to offering to give a Bahamian customs officer a blow job, at McFarlands request, so the Fyre team wouldnt have to pay customs fees for a bunch of 18-wheeler trucks filled with Evian water. That Never Happened is available to watch in the UAE on Netflix now, 5 reasons you should watch season 5 of Grace and Frankie no matter what age you are, Japanese tidying guru Marie Kondo sparks joy with cluttered Americans. "Fyre" - Netflix's version of a pair of dueling documentaries - is positively bonkers, a feature-length look at the planned Fyre music festival that went spectacularly awry . Tom Sandoval and Ariana Madix have broken up after he allegedly cheated on her with Raquel Leviss. Adults-only dramedy revels in sex, lies, and manipulation. Fyre is the stronger, more worthwhile documentary, but its counterpart is a helpful reminder that, like so many stories, one account can't contain the whole truth. Fyre. The Netflix documentary is more professionally done. Whats Next for Convicted Sex Criminals Harvey Weinstein and R. Kelly? 'Fyre' Review: An Entertaining Yet Slight Overview of - Collider As the documentary profiles McFarland in detail, he's proven to bea perfect match for the superficiality of influencer culture given his status as a compulsive liar and an updated dictionarys definition of a con man. FYRE: The Greatest . The two starts promoting Fyre festival on a tropical island. (There is essentially a Fyre Festival going on in the West Wing, one commenter says toward the end of the Hulu documentary.) Luxury lodgings and the finest cuisine was also pledged. Throughout the film, director Chris Smith interviews the mostly sincere folks who tried to deliver what McFarland had promised. Here are software engineers who worked for McFarlands app, event organizers he hired to pull off the festival, and the social media marketers who aided and abetted his illusion. Short staffing: No one wants to work, but why. Nearly every interview in Fyre produces another WTF revelation from the gentleman who was asked to perform a sexual favor to get the water bottles needed to keep people hydrated through customs to the Fyre employees ordered to put money on wristbands that would ostensibly be used at the festival but were clearly offsetting rising costs. Netflix Fyre Festival Documentary Review | Vogue Written and directed by Julia Willoughby Nason and Jenner Furst, "Fyre Fraud" is much stranger than fiction, and yet it tells a story that makes perfect sense in the age of influencers and the general need to be seen. The two disgraced men have both been sentenced for sex crimes. 4.5/5. Honestly, I think this is the perfect viewing experience for young professionals who wish to make a name for themselves in ways like this. Little do they know that to win the 200,000 prize, they'll have to completely give up sex. As comedian Ron Funches says in a clip from Conan thats included in Fyre, If you paid thousands of dollars to go on a trip to see Blink 182, thats on you. While that all seemed great, the budget they came up with and the gameplay they created, clearly wasn(TM)t thought-out enough, because the event itself slowly collapsed and the worst of it happened when the people actually were there to experience it. Dont worry, it wont take long. Smith also does a more affecting job of capturing the degree to which McFarland preyed on a wide swath of marks beyond those who got swindled into attending Fyre Fest. Fyre Fraud - Wikipedia Tap "Sign me up" below to receive our weekly newsletter There's just one problem: It's not going to happen. Luxury lodgings and the finest cuisine was also pledged. AP, And most people who know McFarlandthink the 27-year-old will be back after his stint behind bars. From all of these suspicious actions, these consumers should be reasonably concerned, and hopefully, they would ask for a refund after theyve smelled a scam, but the majority of people just wrote it off as a weird incident and decided to still go on the trip. Their documentary does include interviews with a dopey-eyed, blinky McFarland that offer a bit more insight on his pre-Fyre Fest background . Spring Day Podcast with Kristen Teagarden and Leora Winter, Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened,, posted a burnt orange tile on their Instagram, 90% of tickets were sold in the first 48 hours, Future of LGBTQ Community at Reinhardt University. It's a story that inspired a documentary gold rush(we'll be reviewing a second Fyre Fest doc from Netflix on Friday), but in the case of "Fyre Fraud," it has made for an often hilarious andincisivetreatise on Millennial hubris. Coming Soon. Mature doc about outrageous scam is funny, sad, instructive. Cinemark While I would never personally run an event of this scale or really share any real relation to people who do this kind of thing, I felt terrible for nearly everyone involved in this story. "They just wiped it out and never looked back," she says, her voice cracking. Overall, this is a film that needs to be seen, due to the fact that people ned to know that things like this happen on a daily basis. Fyre Fraud goes a few steps further, not only placing the idea for the festival in a broader historical context but acknowledging the parallels between McFarland and other high-profile grifters, including one who had risen to the highest office in the land at the same time Fyre Festival was being planned. That world isn't available to everyone. Profanity is frequent, including "s--t," "hell," and countless uses of "f--k." There's one frank conversation about oral sex, and people drink frequently (sometimes to excess) and smoke cigars. We want to hear what you have to say but need to verify your account. Ja Rule and Billy McFarland, the organizers of Fyre. Outlandishly revealing and near-heartbreaking at times, this Netflix documentary shares very unbelievable perspective of those constructing a pivotal-yet-disastrous event. The festival, he insists, must go ahead. The babies of the 80s and 90s may resent the stereotypes that rear their heads in the Hulu documentary, but it does raise provocative points about what makes portions of this demographic so susceptible to endorsements from Kendall Jenner and other, similar attempts at Insta-marketing. Having said that, whats notable about Fyre, and perhaps makes it an interesting counterpoint to Fyre Fraud, which I have not yet seen, is that its not Billys face that I remember. The Netflix documentary, Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, investigates the infamous Fyre Festival and its co-founders Billy McFarlandand 90s rapper Ja Rule. Winner: Hey, guess what? By signing up you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. None of the people got to see the progress photos from the place they were going to stay in. Ja Rule says near the end of the documentary"Nobody diedNobody got hurt." The interview was just him back-pedaling, contradicting himself, and making excuses. You can help us help kids by "It really pains me when I have to talk about it. Who is adversely affected by the misbehavior of Billy McFarland? This is an updated iteration of a grift McFarland ran at his failed credit-card company, not to mention a return to the kind of cons he used to entice people to come to Fyre Fest. Where do filmmaker Chris Smith's sympathies lie? Making me literally hold my breath in expectation for every next bit of information with a story that is too bizarre and hilariously insane to be fiction, this is a superbly edited documentary about what happens when you put too much power in the hands of a pathetic playboy. All rights reserved. All the essentials: top fashion stories, editors picks, and celebrity style. Before even a minute of planning the actual event was undertaken, McFarland and his mates went down to the Caribbean and shot a promo video, complete with supermodels like Emily Ratajkowski and Bella Hadid cavorting in the sand in their bikinis. So some decided to ask the Fyre Festival Instagram account some standard questions about their 1 to 2-week stay. Again. The image perfectly, captures the contrast between what had been promised by the organisers and what was delivered. Excellent account of youngest FBI's Most Wanted. If these people would have noticed the signs beforehand, they would not be as upset when they watched the other poor souls on the island that had to sleep on wet beds from the storm the night before.