Excellent Michael Moore-like documentary feature about steroid use. Filmmaker Chris Lee uses his own family as a template. Three brothers, one a wannabe professional wrestler with delusions of success (Mad Dog Lee), the other an aspiring world-class powerlifter who seeks greatness through strength (Smelly), and himself. The first two continue to use to permit them to be the people they want to be. Chris stops out of guilt about using. Mom and Dad are loving, religious, sincere, overweight normals in Poughkeepsie, NY (dad was at IBM, now an accountant, mom bakes cookie bars) who want their kids to love themselves for who they are as children of a loving God. That’s the personal part. Very intense, very funny, bizarre, but unlike a Mooreian sense of certitude, this film leaves you with lots of ambiguity and ambivalence. Mostly it’s a meditation on the hypocracy of a society that’s totally body and looks obsessed, where plastic surgery is no more unusual than a haircut, and where celebrities shape/warp the minds of young people. After all, Ahhhhnuld and Sly became who they were through lots of work and juice. So why are we soooooooo crazy about roids?. What is it to us?. Why does it matter in sports?. How is juice different from anti-inflamatories?. Or altitude beds?. And why are some like Ben Johnson punished for using drugs while others, like Carl Lewis, aren’t?. Why has the press allowed the steroid story to become another case of reefer madness?. Why has Congress spent more time on this than on Iraq and National Health?. Why has Henry Waxman, who knows less than nothing about these issues been allowed to run riot?. A good story that sometimes stretches too far, all but denying the seriousness of ‘roid rage (after all, only 5% experience it!!!!), lumping roids and beta blockers as the same thing, or suggesting that any time someone does speed to write a paper it’s the same thing as a major juicer. But such overblown elements aside, this is a fine film that should not be missed. It’s weak on history, thankfully, and to my surprise doesn’t mention any of the recent work by John Hoberman. My Three Sons it ain’t but it is a very interesting story that makes you think and decide things for yourself. The * is a subtitle about victims of American culture. See this one.