Reviews»Movies»Biker Fox
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Kareem Ali 3

Biker Fox

 

  • The good

    Comes together when his interactions with fellow Tulsans are put on display and clarifies his choices including his care of wildlife. A few laugh out loud moments.

  • The bad

    Too many scenes where there's no activity. Some humorous parts are hit and miss. Doesn't present a clear picture early on as to why there's a documentary

  • The ugly

  • Biker Fox is a documentary produced by Lookout Mountain Productions and chronicles the life of Frank P. DeLarzelere III aka Biker Fox. It opens up with him cooking hot dogs, chicken and burgers on a grill as if he’s hosting a cooking show. But instead of extolling the virtues of the food he’s cooking he’s talking about how bad it is before trashing all of it. He says it’s better to eat vegetables and healthier alternatives and he uses his old pictures as proof where he weighed so much more before changing his life. He did this by changing his diet and focusing more on his inner energy, and most of all, riding a bike, which he refers to as a stress relief. And in his case it’s very necessary seeing as he’s had many run-ins with the authorities and others in Tulsa, Oklahoma due to his view on bike riding rights and his eccentricities at times. And as a result he tends to get along much better with nature, and one of his hobbies is to take care of the local raccoons as if they were his pets. Aside from all of this he still has to run his successful business as a muscle car guru buying parts, and repairing them. Ah, all in a days work in the life of the Biker Fox but who is he really?

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    I had no idea what to expect when I started watching Biker Fox because I was completely unfamiliar with him, and the synopsis cast him as a self-help guru who became popular by chronicling his weight loss on the internet. I also discovered that he was the oldest person in the world to do an Extreme Front Flip on a bike, so I expected some of that to be covered as well. However what would follow would be as unpredictable as possible before coming back around to make some sense, and in a way that exemplifies Biker Fox. The opening with him tossing food is relatively tame to his later antics, and the documentary starts off the same showing him at work with his business partner and he explains how he was able to put another out of business, and now that same person works for him. It follows his activities initially like a regular documentary as he describes different things in his life, including his love of raccoons and compares them to dogs or cats. His life changed when he started riding a bike and lost 70-80 lbs the first year, and the energy that accompanied that loss helped change his outlook on life, and he even grew his hair out as a symbol of his newfound youth. And the adrenaline from riding his bike is his drug of choice, which also gets him in trouble with motorists with some encounters captured on film with his own camera. So the change in the camera’s POV is very much indicative of the change in Biker Fox’s portrayal as the majority of the film was recorded by him, and it often gets very raw offering more than a glimpse into his world.

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    And the way it’s filmed at times works for and against the documentary, and so it’s important to view a lot of it as tongue-in-cheek in the sense that part of what made him popular were his eccentricities, and it’s a persona that he embraces. There are moments where sequences are funny or bizarre, which I believe was the intended effect, but there are also times where it’s difficult to figure out what’s occurring or what the point is of certain sequences. It’s humorous and slightly disturbing when he picks up a chainsaw in response to a deal or his seemingly random arguments while riding a bike with one driver ready to fight him on the street. But there are other sequences that just show him sitting or gyrating and it serves no purpose, and can easily make you question the direction of the documentary. However it becomes relatively focused later on as his interactions with the authorities in the area starts to take center stage and his antics are given a context, and as a result, who he is comes into a much better view. When the former mayor of Tulsa, who he became friends with, starts to give the rundown of his run-ins with the law he does so with the stance that Biker Fox has been unfairly targeted many times, and charges exaggerated because of who he was. One incident during the documentary that captures this is when Biker Fox explains on a phone call after being arrested that he was assaulted by police with witnesses, and he’s clearly irate on the phone. This is juxtaposed with a video of a hostile raccoon, and this is when I found myself getting into the documentary even more as it all started to come together.

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    He’s not so much a self-help guru preaching to others but someone who has decided to grab life by the horns and still struggles with his demons, and never gives up in terms of striving for self-improvement. And so the documentary works best when viewed in this context, and if you have patience to get through some of the earlier parts then you just might see what became so appealing about the one known as the Biker Fox.

     

    SUMMARY

    Biker Fox is very much like its star in that it’s very uneven at times, perplexing at others, but ultimately works when put into the right context. Since no backstory is given as to what made Biker Fox so popular it can take a while to grasp exactly what’s going on or the purpose of what’s being shown but when his interactions with fellow Tulsans are put on display then it all starts to come together. He admits to having a Jekyll and Hyde personality at times as Biker Fox but his journey to transform himself, and interactions with nature makes him a very unique self-help guru. If you enjoy eccentric characters who become memorable then I recommend Biker Fox because you will definitely remember plenty of moments.

     

  • Rating ( 6.25 )
  • Total score 6.3

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