Bugs (2016)

Good start, but then it gets ruined

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

I loved this movie for many reasons but the main one is Ben Reade. What an amazing man. I loved his thoughtful descriptions of tastes throughout the film. His take on the whole subject of insects as food went beyond anything I had thought before and it opened a new way of seeing things for me. At one point in Kenya when asked point blank, "Tell us truly why you have come here?" Reade answered: "We are cooks looking for new taste experiences." This is the key to the whole film. This film is just tremendous to watch if only for the incredible camera-work revealing a world never seen by Western eyes. Like how you extract the gigantic and delicious queen from a massive termite mound. Or how you grow billions of crickets to make protein meal for animal feed. By far the best parts of the film involved trips with native people's in Africa and Asia to local markets and into the bush to obtain regional insect delicacies and most importantly, how to prepare and cook such amazing creatures. At one point Reade says something like, "We thought we would just ask how do you cook insects, but it turns out that would be like asking: how do you cook mammals?" There are a thousand ways, and we are shown a few in this film.Without giving anything away, because this take home message is important and cannot be repeated enough, Ben Reade's point is that food should NOT be about maximizing profit and finding new ways to make money, or cheaper ways to provide protein. No. It should treat food as part of a complete social and ecological system. Instead of imposing Western commercial agribusiness to "improve" the lives of African peoples, the focus should be to learn what they are already eating that tastes delicious, then to understand how that deliciousness can be brought to Western tables. He cites sushi as a prime example, pointing out that 20 or 30 years ago the idea of eating raw fish was repulsive to most Western European palates. Now it is ubiquitous. This film will make you believe that the same thing may happen now with insects. But only if we follow Ben Reade's thinking and not the goals of globalized agribusiness which simply wants to add yucky tasting ground up crickets to "organic" energy bars. See this film. It will change you.

Normally I do not have the habit of writing movie reviews since I consider myself a bad writer (and just plain lazy), yet I do feel a strong need to write one for Bugs (obviously I'm going to be the first user who writes a review on it, where are the other viewers??)BUGS is a documentary that follows the research team of Nordic Food Lab's Edible Insects Project as they explore different insect cuisine cultures around the globe and discuss the problems and possibilities existing in the food systems. Before going to the movie, I made the extra effort of repeatedly reminding my friend not to buy any snack. After all, this documentary is all about people shovelling down giant larvas, worms, ants and bees etc... So it didn't seem like a very sensible thing to do if we were gonna eat during the movie without carrying any vomit bag. But I couldn't be more wrong. Not only were the insects eating scenes nowhere near disgusting, but we even found some of them very intriguing and even to the extent of being appetizing. The satisfaction and the joy that present themselves on the smiles and laughter of the local people when they discover and enjoy the insects are just amazing to watch. And the way they treat insects as real food and cook them with such enthusiasm and dedication is an equal amazement. I also absolutely love how the main characters make really vivid and unexpectedly interesting descriptions of the flavours of the different insects they have tasted along their global exploration. Some of them sound so magical that my friend and I wished we were there to verify the magic with our own taste buds.I was not only wrong about the insects eating scenes, but I was wrong about the whole movie. It turns out that the movie goes a lot deeper than just watching people digging some insects out deep from the earth and then eating them cooked or alive. There are a lot of discussion about the possible good and harm of the rapidly attention grabbing insect eating culture. This is also another thing that makes me appreciate this movie so much. It is very honest about the limitations and the controversy of what they (the research team) want to achieve. They don't just blindly advocate insect eating; instead they take into consideration the possible outcome of a profitable insect protein industry and reflect on the necessity of insect eating. My only complaint for this documentary is that it is way too short. There are a lot more insect cooking and eating footages that are not shown in the movie. I would have loved to sit for another hour or so to watch more of them if it wasn't for the murdering air conditioning and my carelessness of never remembering to bring a jacket to the cinema.