You may remember that an independent film about Monero recently topped the US box office charts, with gross sales of only $3,430, mainly thanks to the massive closure of cinemas during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The film’s producer, Justin Ehrenhofer, recently contacted Cointelegraph to let us know that Monero Means Money is now available for free streaming on YouTube, so we decided to review it.
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Elephant in the room
First let’s keep in mind the following: Monero means money is not a documentary in the traditional (or perhaps any other) sense of the term.
After the obligatory disclaimer, we find ourselves with a rather pleasant sequence of credits, which follows around a minute of archive material from a 1978 National Geographic film that explains the collapse of the gold standard.
After that, you’re basically watching a promotional lecture on Monero given by Dr. Daniel Kim in late 2019. It’s shot from one angle, with the accompanying slides superimposed.
Of course, there are two more archive shorts, one discussing a newborn’s right to privacy and the other about the value of money depending on trust in government, but essentially this is like a
- Bitcoin Profit
- Bitcoin Superstar
- Bitcoin Revolution
- Bitcoin Code
- Bitcoin Era
- The News Spy
- Bitcoin Circuit
- Bitcoin Trader
- Immediate Edge
- Bitcoin Evolution
- Bitcoin Billionaire
without the production values… or objectivity.
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A great idea, but a poor implementation
„But Jack,“ I can virtually hear you say. „Surely that wasn’t the point?“ And you’d be right.
After seeing the desperately low box-office figures at the start of the quarantine, Ehrenhofer deliberately set out to see if he could top the charts with a film hastily built on his passion, Monero.
This is a very commendable goal, and he achieved it, along with column space (including the ones you’re reading now) of coverage he got for Monero. So in those terms she has scored a great success.
I just wish he would have tried a little harder.
Technically, it should be impressive to take a film from its conception to its release in just one week. But this is literally just a lecture, with credits and some archive clips added. With today’s digital projection technologies in theaters, what is presented here could have been released the next day.
In a week, I could have surely re-recorded the presentation… or at least edited it to eliminate Kim’s verbal stumbling and grabbing the audience… or maybe even just highlighted parts of the accompanying slides when Kim does.
