Watch in disbelief; then try to stop watching. It's hilarious; it's Ameircana and much more.
Tiger King (Netflix Original Miniseries)
Grade: A-
Directors: Rebecca Baskin (Another World), Eric Goode
Screenplay: TV Mini Series
Cast: Carole Baskin, Joe Exotic
Runtime: 5h 17m
By: John DeSando
“Stranger than fiction.” That cliché is well-worn, and probably lost much of its thrust for those parts of life that defy logic or the ordinary course of human lives. Case in point: Netflix’s documentary miniseries Tiger King about the owner of a private zoo, Joe Exotic, that includes scores of tigers, with whom he has a most congenial relationship.
Joe is a good old boy with a flair for the dramatic and a natural talent for promotion. Although the animals, mostly brought up from pups, are well behaved, the real drama is Joe and his endless struggle with Carole Baskin, owner of Big Cat Rescue in Florida, who is in a constant campaign for the rights of animals like Joe’s. While at opposite ends of tiger preservation, the two are locked in a hilarious dance that is good for business and viewing.
With his six-guns at this side and his bleached mullet on top, this gay redneck is a character customers come to see as much, if not more than, the beautiful animals he nurtures and displays at the G.W. Zoo in Oklahoma. To add interest to this virtual circus, Joe’s fight with Carole reaches epic proportions as her husband suddenly disappears, and Joe is accused of hiring a hitman to kill her while he accuses Carole of offing her husband.
On a less fabulous note, Joe loses a court battle with Carole over copyright infringement, leaving him to pay her $1 million. Meanwhile, he has taken funds from the zoo to help finance his failed bid for governor of Oklahoma. This stuff is the real deal, unbelievable as it seems
If you were new to Tiger King and cut into it at any point, you would probably think it a docudrama because the players are so authentic acting, so good at making their cases that you’d swear they were actors. Much of the footage comes from Joe’s consistent documentation, and many of these videos appear on YouTube.
This series has the virtue of letting each character fully vent about other characters so that few are left with unstabbed backs. At over 5 hours and seven episodes, each one almost good enough to stand alone, it is eminently bingeable, especially when you’re homebound by a virus more terrible than the crimes of miscreants and eccentrics in Tiger King.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JohnDeSando62@gmail.com.
