Review: May I Be Frank (2010/2013)

[Mark Leeper]

MAY I BE FRANK
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: This is a documentary account of a morbidly
obese man who gets a last chance at life. Frank
Ferrante is an abuser. Most of his life he has abused
food, alcohol, drugs, and his personal relationships.
Along the way Frank ruined his body and his life. Then
one day he wandered in to a vegan, holistic cafe and
the three proprietors offered to put him on a vegan raw
food diet for 42 days to restore his health and his
personal balance. His reactions and his progress,
experiences, and reactions are documented. Frank
improves his life using unconventional New Age therapies.
The film is unpleasant at times and also surprisingly
honest where Frank is less than totally successful. But
Frank's positive personality shines through. Rating:
+1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10

Frank Ferrante and three friends, Ryland, Conor, and Cary, are
trying to save a life. It is the life of Frank Ferrante himself.
Frank is a 54-year-old man who has abused food, alcohol, drugs--
including heroin, but in return they have abused him even more.
Frank has spent a life giving in to every temptation until he
weighs 290 pounds plus, has Hepatitis C, is nearly diabetic, and
has alienated his family. But he also has the three friends whom
he met at Cafe Gratitude, a raw, organic, vegan cafe. The three
who run the cafe have a plan for getting Frank to redeem himself.
They offer to put Frank through a regime of self-love,
affirmations, natural vegan foods, yoga, and colonics. Over the 42
days we see Frank go through pain and effort as he ingests a lot of
things that are not greatly pleasant. Franks diet consists of
obscure concoctions like wheatgrass juice and coconut milk
smoothies. He eats just nuts, fruits, and vegetables. And he
affirms his new attitudes with mantras like "I, Frank, do love me.
I am a perfect human being, radiant beauty and divine energy. I am
divine. I now hold in my mind this new image of myself as a
thriving, flourishing, gloriously beautiful human being." He uses
these affirmations in trying to overcome pangs of guilt over people
that he has hurt over the years.

While his improvement over the 42 days leads to many positive
results, those results fall short of what Frank and the viewer
might have hoped for. Pictures of Frank a few years later show he
as lost a lot more weight and at least appears to be smiling.

What makes the film watchable is the fact that in spite of it all
Frank himself has a winning personality. Whatever Frank has done
before--and it is pretty bad to his siblings, his wife, and his
daughter--Frank comes through as a man who can take his hard knocks
and still laugh at them. He wants to lose weight and to break his
drug habits so that he can redeem himself and fall in love one more
time. He clearly has a way with beautiful women and people who
still love him in spite of himself.

MAY I BE FRANK made in 2010 runs very parallel to Joe Cross's FAT,
SICK, & NEARLY DEAD, also produced in 2010. Cross started out a
bit heavier than Ferrante did. His regimen seemed to have involved
less spirituality though he also depended a great deal on whole,
natural foods. Cross did not have the problem with his
relationships that Ferrante had and at the end of the film Cross
seems to have healthier interactions with his family, though we
cannot tell if that was just an aspect not covered by the film.
Frank is perhaps too frank about matters of defecation. These
sequences run on too long and try the patience of the viewer.

A story of the guilt-ridden overcoming their past and redeeming
themselves will always have an audience. The viewer has to accept
Frank more or less like his family does, not forgetting the ugly
parts of his past, but trying to like Frank in spite of them. I
rate it a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.

May I be frank? There are two ways to look at this film. One can
see it as a portrait of Frank Ferrante and how his viewpoint
changes over six weeks as he struggles to redeem himself and earn
release. There may even be something to be learned from his new
attitudes. But if the viewer takes the film as a recommendation
for its unconventional medical views on health, that could be a
mistake. Frank's loss of weight and his spiritual changes are
perfectly consistent with mainstream views on health. Wheatgrass
cocktails are probably a lot healthier for what they are not, e.g.
sugared Coca-Cola, than for anything special that they are. Odd
concoctions like wheatgrass juice have no demonstrated clinical
value. Ryland, Conor, and Cary are not trained medical
practitioners, they just run a cafe. It is not at all clear that
Frank's rapid weight loss is not simply the result of commonplace
dietary improvement. And the spirituality might have just given
him motivation to stick rigorously to his diet. In any study Frank
would be just one datum point, not evidence of any powerful medical
truth.

Film Credits: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1474792/combined>


Mark R. Leeper
mle...@optonline.net
Copyright 2013 Mark R. Leeper