Bigger Stronger Faster (2008)
BSF Film

Description

When you discover that your heroes have all broken the rules, do you follow the rules, or do you follow your heroes? From the producers of Bowling For Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11 comes a powerful new documentary that unflinchingly explores steroid use in the biggest, strongest, fastest country in the world: America.

Tags

Steroid use

Collected reviews and ratings

9.0 Variety | Peter Debruge

More scrupulously reported than your average Michael Moore film but every bit as entertaining, “Bigger, Stronger, Faster*” is as commercial as documentaries come - a no-brainer to market in light of recent sports scandals.
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9.0 Los Angeles Times | Carina Chocano

It's a fascinating and unexpectedly profound and melancholy meditation on what we have become as a country and on the misguided obsessions that made us this way.
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9.0 Amazon user reviews

Chris Bell's "Bigger, Stronger Faster" is a brilliant documentary. His triumph is to crystallize the steroids debate into its effects on a single family: His own.
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8.5 DVD Verdict | Michael Rubino

Bell is more balanced than most hot-topic documentarians these days, but his personal involvement in the story does lend itself to some questionable moments. At times, the film, which was produced by the folks behind Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11, feels almost like a poor man's Michael Moore documentary.
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8.3 Entertainment Weekly | Owen Gleiberman

A good documentary will take you places you didn't plan to go, but I didn't really expect that from Bigger, Stronger, Faster, an incisive and compulsively watchable look at America's love affair with steroids.
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8.3 The Onion A.V. Club | Noel Murray

The family angle gives Bigger, Stronger, Faster a personal and emotional underpinning that almost justifies the movie's adherence to the pro forma Michael Moore style.
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8.0 Newsweek | David Ansen

The subtitle of Christopher Bell's movie - "The Side Effects of Being American" - perfectly reflects the range of this funny, disturbing and complex tale.
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8.0 DVD Talk | Chris Neilson

Athletes and body builders are the obvious audience for Bigger, Stronger, Faster, but it should also be seen by anyone that cares about civil liberties.
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8.0 PopMatters.com | Cynthia Fuchs

An intelligent, earnest, and challenging film that is only partly about steroids, and mostly about the culture that makes them go.
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8.0 filmcritic.com | Brian Chen

With Faster, Bell accomplishes something most independent documentary filmmakers struggle with: He keeps the film pumped on interesting, at times hilarious, visuals while providing a barrage of information.
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7.0 Washington Post | Stephen Hunter

He treats jocks like humans, not stars or superheroes, and in the end has managed something unique for documentaries these days: It's as entertaining as it is fair.
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0.0 New York Times | Stephen Holden

Just when Christopher Bell’s documentary, “Bigger, Stronger, Faster,” seems content to be an entertaining exploration of his and his two brothers’ use of anabolic steroids, it turns a corner and plunges into deeper waters.
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