Six Days In Roswell - roswell6.com

Reviews

Compilation Of All Reviewer Quotes

Quotes
SIX DAYS IN ROSWELL -- Reviewer Quotes

"A hilarious journey into the bizarre world of UFO fanatics...."
David Hunter, The Hollywood Reporter

"Gut-bustingly funny...."
Tammy Swift, The Forum, Fargo, North Dakota

"...pants-peeing funny! "
Chris Parcellin, Film Threat

"The truth isn't out there -- it's right here in this original, odd, hilarious documentary about a gathering of UFO buffs in Roswell, NM. ...You can't argue with the beauty of a UFO haircut."
Al Brumley, The Dallas Morning News

"A masterful send-up of the Roswell incident and the small New Mexican town that gave birth to a UFO legend.... This film could be called the Andy Kaufman of Roswell exposure."
Paul Davids, UFO Magazine, Executive Producer of Showtime's "Roswell"

"You know you're moving in a strange crowd when Gov. Jesse Ventura...is the least flamboyant person in your film."
Peter Ritter, Minneapolis City Pages

"Six Days in Roswell is frickin' funny. It's laugh-until-you-cry, 'holy crap that was funny,' funny."
Chuck Terhark, The Minnesota Daily

"...Insightful, offbeat and often hilariously surreal...."
The 1999 USA Film Festival, Dallas, Texas

"Oh my God is Six Days in Roswell funny! I'm talking wet your pants funny. ... Rich Kronfeld is just a true gem - he's one of the funniest guys I've ever seen on film. ...there's some 35 minutes of deleted scenes [on the DVD], and this stuff is every bit as good as what was in the final film - there are lots more good laughs here."
Bill Hunt, www.thedigitalbits.com

"This movie is funny, very funny. Director Timothy Johnson and cohort/producer Roger Nygard have a gift for finding the weirdest bits of Americana and packaging them into an entertaining story."
Scott Hamilton and Chris Holland, www.stomptokyo.com

"One of the best things about "Six Days in Roswell" is the fact that you don't even have to be a sci-fi or alien believer. The film stands on its own merit and is hilarious throughout. ... If there is a "Spinal Tap" version for the alien lovers out there, this is their film."
Howie Nave, www.Zeromag.net

"SIX DAYS is an absolute riot...."
The Flick Filospher, Girl Movie Critic, www.flickfilosopher.com

"...a surreal six days of conventions, scholars, colorful characters, re-enactments of the crash with dead alien bodies et al., and even the World Premiere of ROSWELL, THE MUSICAL."
The 1999 Hawaii International Film Festival

"The reality of how the New Mexico town is capitalizing on its eerie reputation is wonderfully explored in Timothy B. Johnson's documentary (produced by Roger Nygard, who made Trekkies). ... The film reaches the heights of Mount Ineffable with a performance of a musical about the UFO landing performed with amateur relish at the Roswell Community Little Theater--Waiting For Guffman pales by comparison."
Michael S. Gant, The San Jose' Metro

"Get Ready to laugh your ass off at this hysterical look at UFO's and the kooks that love them. Funny, funny, funny. In 1997, Roger Nygard investigated the mania that turned a television show into a institution--Trekkies. As producer of Six Days In Roswell, Nygard examines another popular American subculture with the clever direction of Timothy B. Johnson. It is the jubilant transformation of the town that is the subject of Johnson's film, not whether the crash really happened at all. Wit a mixture of deadpan wit and a bit of gentle curiosity, the adventure of Six Days in Roswell is something uniquely American."
Cinequest, The San Jose' Film Festival

"Kronfeld, outside of Minnesota for the first time and away from Mom's watchful eye, gets a green and orange dye job and has a local hair stylist chop it into something called a 'Roswell UFO Haircut'. When he emerges from the barbershop with a self-satisfied smirk, there's no room left for debate: he's truly as weird as all outdoors. As for the other Roswell attendees...it's amazing to see how many of these yahoos really believe they've been abducted by UFOs. Their straight faced accounts of alien encounters are pants-peeing funny! ... Timothy B. Johnson has done a masterful job of capturing a certain strain of American wackjob in their natural habitat. The similarly-themed 'Trekkies' pales by comparison. Johnson, like Errol Morris, has a keen eye for irony and the ability to get us to empathize with these people at the same we're laughing at them."
Chris Parcellin, Film Threat

"...an ideal 'weird America' entry.... Like a cinematic version of the 'Roadside America' travel guide, [the film] captures amusing scenes in the curious Southwest town totally immersed in UFO lore."
Robert Koehler, Variety

"'Six Days In Roswell' is a fun documentary about an alien encounter festival that serves to remind people about the alleged spaceship wreck near Roswell, N.M., and the government cover-up. 'Six Days in Roswell' is a pure pleasure from beginning to end."
John Douglas, The Grand Rapids Press, Michigan

"'Six Days In Roswell' is a quirky, surreal documentary... ...if you have ever questioned whether real life is stranger than fiction, put your doubts behind you. ...anyone up for a funny, entertaining picture, don't miss 'Six Days In Roswell.'"
Reka Jellema, The Holland Sentinel, Holland, Michigan

"From the filmmakers who brought you Trekkies, comes their second hilarious look at Americana"
The 1999 Waterfront Film Festival, Saugatuk, Michigan

"...Endearing and entertaining... 'Six Days in Roswell' documents the hilarious pilgrimage of UFO enthusiast Richard Kronfeld to Roswell, New Mexico...."
The 1999 AFI Los Angeles International Film Festival

"What [Richard Kronfeld] finds...is a bizarre world of UFO fanatics, townsfolk anxious to abduct their money -- and a haircut shaped like a flying saucer."
Mark Gauert, The Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

"Six Days in Roswell is a consistently interesting, often funny look at a phenomenon that both perplexes and amuses. It's definitely worth a look, and I find that many of its moments have stuck with me past that initial viewing."
Mervious, Fantastica Daily, www.Mervious.com

Review by Scott Hamilton and Chris Holland, StompTokyo.com

Press Reviews - Monday, October 30, 2000
http://www.stomptokyo.com/movies/s/six-days-in-roswell.html

"This movie is funny, very funny. Director Timothy Johnson and cohort/producer Roger Nygard have a gift for finding the weirdest bits of Americana and packaging them into an entertaining story."
Scott Hamilton and Chris Holland
www.stomptokyo.com

Six Days in Roswell
(1998)

review by Scott Hamilton
and Chris Holland

Our rating: three LAVA® motion lamps.

The good people who made the comical documentary Trekkies return with an even more comical, but slightly less documentary, feature. Six Days in Roswell was filmed in 1997 during the 50th anniversary celebration of the alleged flying saucer crash near the town of Roswell, New Mexico. The main character of the movie is Rich Kronfeld, a strange young man who showed up in Trekkies. You may remember him as the guy who built his own mobile model of the "futuristic" wheelchair Captain Pike used in the original Star Trek series. He's back and this time he says that he wants to be abducted by aliens, so he's going to Roswell, New Mexico, for the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the supposed UFO crash there.

The movie follows Kronfeld's pilgrimage, where he spends as much time as possible attending all the festivities and talking to people, trying to figure out how he might arrange to be abducted.

The documentary crew interviewed (or filmed Kronfeld meeting or watching) practically every luminary in the field of Roswell studies. We see Whitley Strieber, the professional author who wrote the book Communion and became arguably the central figure in the alien abduction phenomenon; Karl Pflock, contributing editor of Saucer Smear; Kevin Randle, author of the recently released Roswell Encyclopedia; Budd Hopkins, the psychologist who has written many of the standard books on alien abductions; and Stanton Freidman, perhaps the man single most responsible for the publication and popularization of the Roswell crash.

And "popularization" is the right word. Or perhaps pop-culture-ization. Almost nothing we see at the celebration has anything to with the Roswell crash, even if we assume that an alien spaceship did eat dirt outside of town. If an alien spaceship really did crash here, it should be the most important event in the history of humankind, but what we get instead are embarrassing haircuts and pancake-eating contests. While the traditional "gray" type aliens are certainly common, nearly everyone who has a shiny wig and bodysuit is in Roswell, celebrating their own idea of what an alien is.

As the movie goes on we get one unmistakable impression -- nearly everyone gathered in Roswell is there to make some money from everyone else. Kronfeld is fleeced by local man Norm Matheson, who wants to charge Kronfeld $200 a night to stay in his motor home. Kronfeld buys special alien beef jerky, Kronfeld buys fireworks (the gathering was over July 4th weekend), Kronfeld pays to see the original crash site. Kronfeld asks how much crystals charged with the "energy" of the crash site would cost, etc. When our star-struck protagonist notes to one vendor that the UFO he is selling looks a lot like an X-Wing fighter from Star Wars, the vendor replies, "We put the word 'alien' on it, and it sells."

This movie is funny, very funny. Director Timothy Johnson and cohort/producer Roger Nygard have a gift for finding the weirdest bits of Americana and packaging them into an entertaining story -- we found ourselves reminded of the books of Jane and Michael Stern. The story here is somewhat staged, because a quick check of the movie's official site shows that Kronfeld is not really the alien-obsessed loser he appears to be, but rather something of a performance artist. He's a human catalyst who prompts the people he meets into saying and doing ridiculous things. Still, even if it is a put-on, it's a funny put-on. We're not sure if Kronfeld really collects vintage electronics and school filmstrips ("Exciting Bulletin Boards, part one and part two -- part one is better"), but he certainly plays his part well enough to be accepted by everyone in Roswell.

Though occasionally we see flashes of skepticism, even when he's in character. Kronfeld visits an organization that spends all of its time recording the skies around Roswell, and claims to have recorded hundreds of hours of UFO footage. Looking at one tape, Kronfeld observes that the UFO's look like swans in formation. The person showing him the tape replies that only a skeptic would look for another explanation.

The fact that Kronfeld is playing a character adds humor, but once we figured that fact out, we began to wonder what else was staged. There is one scene in which two guys show up outside one of the convention centers with pro-government signs. This rubs a lot of the Roswell attendees wrong, because mistrust of the government has become a major theme of the Roswell experience, sometimes even eclipsing the alien aspects. We leave these two guys after the police have taken their signs away because they were inciting a riot, and they seem a bit disillusioned that the "government" they were trying to get people to trust has confiscated their personal property. Is this on the level? We're not sure, as the police are never seen on screen.

Those who grumble about the filmmakers' "betrayal" of the documentary format through their fictionalized central character are the same people who kibitzed at Titanic's historical inaccuracies. Sometimes such elements need to be jettisoned for the sake of entertainment, and Six Days in Roswell is highly entertaining. Besides, it's not as if the film is a serious endeavor to resolve the question of whether the Roswell crash was real. It's more an exploration of Roswell's more obvious strange visitors -- the ones from planet Earth.

Review date: 10/03/2000

This review is © copyright 2000 Chris Holland & Scott Hamilton. LAVA®, LAVA LITE® and the motion lamp configuration are registered trademarks of Haggerty Enterprises, Inc., Chicago, IL

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