Film Fest Knox 2025When I sat down for this movie, I went in with one question that I was looking forward to having answered: why? Why make a film presented in a documentary style but is very clearly scripted and shot like a Hallmark movie? The fact that the subject is a not exceptionally well-known (at least outside of the genre) country music singer-turned-podcaster raises a whole other “why?” question, but I was more interested in the film itself and what it was trying to say, and what I was supposed to take away from it.I still don’t know. If it was supposed to be an autobiographical documentary about Elizabeth Cook’s life and career, it failed to be informative beyond a few basic facts. If it was supposed to be a semi-fictionalized story about a female country music singer fighting the male-dominated industry and carving out her own niche in the then-burgeoning podcasting world, it failed to actually tell that story. Or any story, for that matter! Not a single conflict introduced was ever resolved. Did Cook get her advertising deal back? Did she get back with her ex or actually date the Floridian songwriter/handyman? Did she quit her radio show and move to podcasting (the movie fails to differentiate between the two)? Did she ever actually make a new album? Did she ever truly reinvent herself within the country music scene? Did she ever fix the leak in her roof? All of these questions are asked, some of them are reiterated, and none of them are answered.So what answer am I to accept for the question of this film’s existence? I was willing to settle for just about anything, really, but the answer I was desperately hoping not to land on was “pure, ego-driven vanity.” And I still don’t want to say it was just that, but there’s just nothing else there. Somewhere in the movie (again, there is no narrative, so events just kind of blur together) Cook rants about how brave she is and how exhausting it is to be so brave. At first I took that scene as a moment of weakness, the character’s low point where her stresses overwhelm her and frustration spills out raw. Looking back, all I can see it as is a thesis statement.
