Even rarer than a 0 star review is a negative review of a documentary for me. Because, at some level, all documentaries advocate for something, and can find a way to cull together enough footage to make at least a 90 minute entertainment out of it. Such is not the case for Mighty Mary, a documentary that THINKS it’s advocating for something, but doesn’t really know what that something is.
Mighty Mary is the name of a yacht. Specifically, the 1995 yacht Bill Koch’s America3 racing team used to compete against the best of the best, including the Wayne Gretzky of yacht racing, Dennis Connor. The key difference that year was, Koch elected to put together an all female crew, led by vet Dawn Riley and soon to be yachting legends JJ Fetter, Leslie Egnot, and Suzette Hau’oli among other women who took Connor down to the wire.
As inspiring as Riley, Fetter, Egnot, Hau’oli, and the rest of the female crew were, it’s a bummer to see the documentary fail to deliver anywhere near their level. Unless you’re uber rich, most of the audience doesn’t know what the America’s Cup is, and the doc’s big goal is to explain how the racing competition works to the plebs. The doc’s inartful explanation never sets the stakes properly, so each “giant” victory by the women is beset by other parts of the competition none of us know what is coming. As such, it makes narrative momentum hard to maintain cause no one knows when we’re building to some big moment until it’s too late. Instead, it uses Elizabeth Banks and Hugh Jackman’s voiceovers as cheap gimmicks to manufacture some momentum Mighty Mary never catches wind on.
But the biggest failure is the filmmakers don’t know what their doc’s story is. The tale they tell is designed to be an uplifting one. And yes, individually, each of these women do amazing things and break the glass ceiling in their sport of choice. But, as I watched Mighty Mary, I realized the documentarians picked the wrong tone. The doc should have been more cynical and foreboding. For those who don’t know, the minute Bill Koch shows up, you should cringe, because of the flaunted wealth that man and his brothers have done to get what they want at the expense of anyone and everyone. The movie even acknowledges that this could have just been a PR stunt to get goodwill on an upcoming lawsuit for Koch. Each ceiling Mighty Mary breaks reveals another, bigger, stronger ceiling that requires even more hard work to overcome. I won’t reveal what happens in the 1995 America’s Cup, but a more acidic dark tone would highlight just how impressive these women actually are in the face of such patriarchal institutional force that even this crew of lady badasses cannot take down on their own.
May I suggest Werner Herzog and Dennis Haysbert as your voiceovers? That’s the right level of morose gravitas that Mighty Mary needed to tell it’s actual tale. I’m sure it would still be hella inspiring in spite of the forces of the patriarchy overlooking the film. I bet the Koch’s even had final say on the doc, those succubus’s of humanity. Sorry ladies, you got screwed again.