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
- Total score
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?
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.
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.
Leave a Reply