What an execrable documentary this is! At it's heart is a great, though old, human interest story, that of Brian McKinnon, a 32 year old man who claimed to be 17 and returned to his old school for a year. But in spite of its use of clever animation and a rich sountrack, it's a tale very poorly told. The perpetrator is allowed to give his own account, but doesn't seem to have been prompted to say anything very interesting or to have been agressively questioned about the less believable aspects of his account. Meanwhile, his old school colleages are interviewed at length, to slag off those of their fellow pupils and former teachers who are not participating in the programme, to speculate about things they know nothing about (things it would have been better to ask McKinnon directly), and say things like "I'd have locked him up, even though he didn't do anything wrong". Meanwhile, a mostly unsuccesful attempt is made to induce them all to denounce a theatrical kiss in a school play as a form of child abuse. After 90 minutes, I didn't feel I knew much more than I could have been told in ten.
Review of My Old School
