“It all looks sweetly narcissistic,” says veteran underground and indie film-maker Robert Downey Sr at one stage in this documentary about him, produced by and prominently featuring his movie star son Robert Downey Jr. That’s a fair comment on the whole proceedings, but there is definitely something sweet, sad and affectionate about this home-movie portrait, which Downey Jr began as an open-ended project in 2019 as his dad was beginning to submit to Parkinson’s in his 80s.
The idea – which maybe always existed more in theory than practice – was that they would be co-creating it, with Downey Sr working on his own alternative edit. But the movie ends with a piercingly emotional deathbed scene in Downey Sr’s apartment in New York, with his son and grandson in attendance.
