As "MoviePass MovieCrash" (2024 release; 91 min.) opens, we are introduced to various key players of the original MoviePass project. It is 2016, 5 years after the start of MoviePass, and the company is making a bold move in order to grow its subscriber bas: unlimited movies, anytime, anywhere, for $9.95/mth. At this point we are less than 10 minutes into the documentary.

Couple of comments: this is the latest from director Muta'Ali ("Cassius X: Becoming Ali"). Here he brings two stories in one: the rise and fall of MoviePass, a story known by many; and then there is this: did you know that MoviePass was in fact founded by two African-American guys? I didn't. And what happened to these guys? We get the full picture in this revealing documentary. This documentary reminds us of two correlating points: if something sounds too god to be true, it probably is; and corporate greed is alive and well. Mark Walhberg is credited as a co-producer.

"MoviePass, MovieCrash" premiered at this year's SXSW festival, to immediate critical acclaim. The documentary is now airing on HBO and its streaming platform Max, where I saw it the other day. It is currently rated 88% Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and for good reason. If you are in the mood for a documentary that goes well beyond the rise and fall of MoviePass, I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion.

MoviePass continues to be an object of fascination. Even though I was never a customer or investor, I found this doc engrossing.

It adds some new info to the saga I never realized, namely that the two founders were black and the problem started when they had to find investors to keep their business going. White investors and white guys to run the company (and claim they founded it). Turns out they were incompetent and/or stock manipulators, oops.

However, there's more to the story than this. What was the business model of the original founders? Was that ever viable? They racked up a mere 20,000 subscribers in 10 years because they were charging a reasonable price for an unlimited movie pass: $50. That's not viable, and dropping it off a cliff to $10 sure wasn't but was there ever a price point where this would have worked?

I also recall that MoviePass did have some dealings with the theater chains to get them on board with MoviePass as marketing or data collection. The upshot was, the theater chains stole the idea and made their own passes. This is never mentioned at all. If the theater chains could have stolen the idea at any time and cut MoviePass out, then there was never a viable business in the first place, so this is a huge omission.

Now that MoviePass is back in the hands of the original founder (not a spoiler; that was reported in the business press), he has the chance to show this idea can work. The site shows some reasonably priced plans like $10 for 3 movies (as long as you're not in NYC or SoCal, where the price is double!!!) so it does offer some discount over regular pricing but hardly enough to get anyone's pulse up.

The irony is that now theaters are in serious trouble, with too few big hit movies coming out and theaters going empty. Maybe now the theater chains won't snub MoviePass, if it became a way to discount tickets in theaters that are going to sit empty anyway.

Subject matter: 10; documentary: 6, averages out to an 8.

A crisply edited, easy to follow documentary tracing the inception, initial years, popular explosion and subsequent implosion of an innovative business model within the film industry ecosystem. Candid interviews with almost all of the key personalities make for a very interesting story that tells the all-too-familiar saga of how a single business proposition can evolve in all manner of unexpected directions based on the individual goals and ideas of whoever is at the helm of a business at any given point in its evolution. Those interested in general business practices and/or movies in general are likely to be highly engaged.