Living in the UK, I never really got to experience the whole ‘Animatronic pizza place’ stuff that the US seemingly got hand over fist in the 80s and 90s. Here? animatronics were largely religated to clunky museum oddities or bizarre and terrifying fairground attractions. But i’d been aware of the ‘Chuck E. Cheese’ and ‘Showbiz Pizza’ animatronic bands for years and was hoping that this documentary would shine more light onto the phenominon. and…well, it kind of does?

This is one of those documentaries that, instead of just telling the story of the ‘Rock-a fire Explosion’ (the showbiz pizza animal band) explaining its creation, how it grew into a 200+ chain of restaurants, its money troubles and eventual merger with Chuck E. Cheese. We instead *kind of* chart the history of the restaurant, but really we focus more on a small circle of die hard ‘Showbiz Pizza’ fans sharing their memories of the restaurant, the animatronics and we even get to hang out with the original creator of ‘Rock-a fire’ and get a tour around his workshop.

And…thats FINE…but I feel like this films really quite a victim of the time it was made. Y’see, this film came out in 2009/2010 (at least, I think it did…theres an epilogue in the credits that runs as late as late 2009.) and thats the problem…

Because AT that point in time, the whole ‘animatronic animal band’ thing was a cheesy, niche and slightly cringy thing to be interested in. Kids wernt interested, investors thought it was kind of old hat. This documentary at the time it was made was aiming almost to kind of try and document the dying throws of what was quickly becoming a lost art.

Then, 5 years later “Five Nights At Freddy’s” would be released and COMPLETELY rejuvinate the whole ‘animatronic animal band’ thing, turning it from a cheesy kid friendly dated bit of nostalgia bait, into a mature adult horror series where the creepiness of the animatronics were changed from a fault, into a feature.

As such, it makes this film feel almost like its fallen out of a paralel world where these animatronics were LITERALLY rotting away in some overly humid abandoned warehouse, with a double digit ‘hardcore’ audience were clinging onto it for dear life.

Had this film been made even 5 years later, it could have approached its subject with a COMPLETELY different attitude and mindset, and taken the whole thing in a VERY different direction (likely being WAY more successful as a result). Instead, it spends most of the runtime essentially silently signalling that this documentary may well be the last coherent media piece to document a band who’d last been seen over 15 years prior.

As it stands, as a ‘people’ piece, its a fascinating time capsule, dealing with folks who genuinely thought this was the end of the line, and I feel we likely wont see that kind of mentality again for a good while. So in some ways its documented a completely unintentional aspect of this fandom and done it fairly well!

theres real emotion and passion in the fans and the rock-a fire’s creator Aaron Fechter. they’re all UTTERLY eccentric (I suppose you have to be) but they sincerely believe the concept will live on, and it is kind of satisfying to sit here in 2024 and see that they REALLY wernt wrong.

At the same time however, as a bit of a pandoras box warning for this documentary…my advice is maybe dont google ‘where are these people now?’ immediately after watching this documentary…As I did that and…well to cut a long story short, long term I dont think ONE person featured in this documentary made it into the 2020’s without either going VERY (bad) strange or ending up in serious debt/holding a serious criminal record…That taints this films somewhat bittersweet optimistic messaging I can tell you!

I kind of wish this doc HAD gone a little deeper into ‘Showbiz’ history beyond just the animatronics. they allude to TONS of animatronics that Aaron had made between the early 80s and mid 90s for showbiz, but they never really explore them outside of the core band. Aaron seems to have a lot to say, but its all been trimmed around in the ‘shaping’ phase of the edit which has left it feeling like we’ve only really got the absolute base elements present (which is honestly VERY surprising given the films only just cut to feature run time…like, they DID have scope and bandwidth to go deeper.)

Its VERY clear and careful to state that ANYTHING ‘Chuck E.’ will NOT be discussed in the doc, and the interviewee’s are VERY clear to pour scorn on the ‘the other place’ throughout. Which…when you pull back a bit and realise these were childrens pizza restaurants and that these interviewee’s are all in their 30s and 40s here…was bizarre to say the least.

Had it gone a little deeper, I think i’d have genuinely loved this documentary. As it stands the ‘people’ focus over the subject focus (which in my opinion was done to death between 2005 and 2015) combined with the bad timing PLUS the pretty depressing ‘2024 check in’ just kind of soured this one for me a bit.

I WILL however say that if you can get your hands on AGFA’s recent release of this, it’s ABSOLUTELY worth every penny, because; while the doc is pretty okay, the extra features are RAMMED with showbiz pizza stuff, trailers, recordings of shows, testing footage, archive footage. its basically all the stuff I really WANTED to see in the doc, and is definitely worth your time.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-rock-afire-explosion/