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Celebrity self-portrait documentaries have always been a puzzling subgenre that tends to offer more than it can actually deliver when it comes to genuine displays of humanization. While most purport to be revealing and candid reflections of a famous subject, they often amount to disjointed pieces of a story, from which we never get a full sense, at least not an objective one.
Such is the case in “aka Charlie Sheen,” Netflix’s exhausting two-part documentary directed by Andrew Renzi, which sees the former “Two and a Half Men” star open up about his ugly public truths — his drug addiction, wild lifestyle, the public spectacles, his disastrous fall from TV grace — and others he’s yet to speak on until now.
The film, split into two 90-minute parts, is filled with unflinching revelations about Sheen’s colorful past that started making headlines before it even premiered on Sept. 10. Publications have already rounded up the juiciest and most salacious tidbits revealed because they know that’s exactly what people are tuning in for.
It’s understandable why the documentary is currently the No. 1 movie on Netflix. That’s just the world we live in now. The metric isn’t a measure of how well put together “aka Charlie Sheen” actually is, but rather what piques audiences’ interest these days, which, in Sheen’s case, happens to be the darkest aspects of his life and career that he’s still living in the shadow of.
But that’s just one issue with his documentary. The other is what many celebrity docs that feature their subject often suffer from: the inability to relinquish control.
While Sheen isn’t credited as a producer on his film, he appears to steer the narrative as if he were one. A question Renzi poses at the top of Part 1 suggests so, as he curiously asks the actor, “How do you imagine structuring the story of Charlie Sheen?” To which the latter breaks it down into three neat sections: “Partying, partying with problems and then just problems.”
And that’s pretty much how the doc is organized, which says a lot about what Renzi — and Sheen — want us to know about the actor at this point in his life, now eight years sober and on a path toward self-forgiveness, by his own account.
To the director’s credit, several figures in Sheen’s life speak in the doc as well — including his older brother, Ramon Estevez; his childhood friend, Sean Penn; former “Two and a Half Men” co-star Jon Cryer; his ex-wives Denise Richards and Brooke Mueller; and even Heidi Fleiss, the Hollywood madam that Sheen (one of her former clients) testified against in her 1995 federal money laundering and tax evasion trial.
Richards makes it a point to share why she agreed to sit down for an interview, which is commendable to a degree when you think about the purpose of the film.
“I want to peel the layers and be honest because, otherwise, this movie is going to be a fluffy, glossed-over, sugar-coated piece of shit,” she says in Part 2.
And while “aka Charlie Sheen” is brutally honest in some respects, where seemingly no topic is off-limits, it still holds back when it shouldn’t.
Sheen rehashes his Hollywood journey, his public spiral, substance abuse and more in his Netflix documentary.
Sure, there are poignant mentions of Sheen’s childhood — growing up with his famous father, Martin Sheen, and older brother, Emilio Estevez (both of whom declined to participate in the film) — as well as his battles with sobriety and fatherhood. There are even interesting stories about the actor’s professional pursuits, like the time he had to turn down the lead part in “Karate Kid.”
However, much of the doc’s long three-hour runtime is spent revisiting the most sensational parts of Sheen’s life — the sex, drugs, partying and crashouts — leaving little room for depth, and even less for examining how Sheen, despite hitting rock bottom multiple times, has still managed to stage a comeback (or as he calls it, a “reset”).
Other stars, particularly those who aren’t white men from successful families, aren’t always afforded the same second chances. So how does Sheen reckon with that privilege?
Such nuanced queries don’t make it into “aka Charlie Sheen,” as it seems Renzi had other interests in mind, like making a film Sheen didn’t even want to be a part of.
“He did not want to make a documentary,” the director told Tudum. “[Sheen] was like, ‘Why step into this arena in this way?’”
That’s a great question, especially since the actor is already releasing a tell-all book this fall that rehashes the same stories. And yet, he still sat for Renzi’s film to seemingly set the record straight on rumors and stories about him that come to define his public persona.
Still, some of those moments don’t get all the attention they deserve; the doc’s director saves the most weighty topics for last — and makes a show of clearing out the diner he filmed Sheen’s interviews at for a private chat between the two — and breezes through them as if they’re not among the film’s biggest revelations that Sheen has never openly talked about.
The first is the Corey Haim allegation that was made by actor Corey Feldman, who claimed that Haim told him that Sheen sexually assaulted the late actor during filming for 1986’s “Lucas.” Sheen vehemently denied the accusation before encouraging anyone who’d pause the doc to Google the story to “go for it.”
For as often as you hear Renzi’s voice throughout the doc, he’s particularly quiet here, and doesn’t push back as Sheen shrugs off the claim. “Fuck off,” the actor concludes.
The film then transitions to address Sheen’s HIV diagnosis, which Renzi explores with leading questions about the actor being blackmailed over it and sued for allegedly knowingly passing HIV to his sexual partners, which Sheen also denied.
This part moves on just as swiftly to get to the “bombshell” that’s not exactly explosive (depending on who you ask): Sheen’s sexual experiences with men that started with his use of crack cocaine — an admission that arrives in the last 15 minutes of the doc. He never actually says it outright, though.
Instead, Sheen talks around the topic exhaustedly with a convoluted metaphor about restaurant menus and appetizers, and ultimately leaves it to those who are “gonna come out of the fucking woodwork” to explain the sexual encounters he’s had with men, true or otherwise. Renzi eventually pries the confession out of Sheen, who then rattles off questions about what could’ve possibly led him down that path, but he doesn’t try to answer them. In the end, he simply chalks the experiences up to being “weird” and “fun.”
That’s hardly the approach you’d expect from a doc that promises Sheen is ready to be more open than ever. And this is where “aka Charlie Sheen,” and docs alike, fall short of delivering the vulnerable celebrity self-portrait it sets out to be.
Don’t get me wrong, there are still some introspective moments in the film, like in Part 1, when Sheen explains how he was “deathly afraid” of how his drug use would get away from him after being introduced to crack (and receiving oral sex at the same time).
“I got a little shaky telling that… I could feel some of that shit coming back up,” Sheen admits in the doc.
Still, Renzi’s film opts to focus on moments that remind us more of what Sheen has done in his past, rather than digging into the why behind those actions. And in most scenes where Sheen reflects on his worst publicized moments, he does so with little regard for what hardships he put those around him through. But Richards and Mueller fill in some of those blanks.
In Part 2, Mueller recalls recanting her statement about a drug-dazed, domestic violence incident that occurred around Christmas 2009, where Sheen was arrested for allegedly holding a knife to her throat.
“I had to recant my story,” Mueller says, taking partial blame. “If I didn’t, then he could have gotten into a lot of trouble.” Sheen, who was arrested for the incident, acknowledges his part and says he and his ex-wife are “past it,” but the doc spends quite a few minutes revisiting the public fallout. It makes you wonder what the actual motive is if not accountability.
“I don’t think it’s fair just to pick up these moments at Charlie’s lowest and define him as a human being based on those moments,” Mueller points out. Funny, because that’s exactly what the doc is doing. The question is, do Renzi and Sheen realize that?
With that in mind, it makes sense why Cryer expressed reservations about participating in a doc that could either help or hurt Sheen’s plans to bounce back both personally and publicly.
“Part of the cycle of Charlie Sheen’s life has been that he messes up terribly, he hits rock bottom, and then he gets things going again,” Cryer says at the top of the film, “and brings a lot of positivity in his life, and that’s when he burns himself out again.”
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“aka Charlie Sheen” never quite gets to the bottom of that conundrum or the root cause of Sheen’s self-destructive ways, which misses the entire point of the documentary. If the goal was to lay the actor’s life bare once and for all, it should’ve tried to dig a little deeper.
Better yet, it should’ve made him dig deeper.
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