Verdict
Summary
The Last Blockbuster is an enjoyable trip down memory lane filled with nostalgia and stories from various people in the entertainment industry. It’s maybe a little longer than it needs to be but it’s still a must see for fans of physical media like myself.
Plot: A documentary on the last remaining Blockbuster Video, located in Bend, Oregon.
Review: I’ve been wanting to watch The Last Blockbuster for a while and now that it’s on Netflix (how ironic) I finally got to check it out at the weekend.
The Last Blockbuster is a documentary about the downfall of Blockbuster Video and how there is only one store left in the world in Bend, Oregon. There are interviews with the likes of Kevin Smith, Jamie Kennedy, Ione Skye, James Arnold Taylor and many more with everyone reflecting on what Blockbuster meant to them and it’s a wonderful nostalgia trip filled with entertaining anecdotes; if I ever met James Arnold Taylor, I feel like I would chat to him for hours.
The owner of the store Sandi Harding comes across as a wonderfully appealing lady who runs the store out of pure love and works incredibly hard to keep the business going; when all this lockdown stuff is over I would enjoy visiting the store myself.
I was lucky enough to grow up in the era of VHS and I still collect them when I can; I used to go to Blockbuster and back in the UK we had Global Video which was another great store. I liked how in this documentary they explore how it wasn’t so much going to rent a movie out, but it was the human interaction which I think we miss now more than ever. I rarely ever rented movies; I just went straight to the Ex-rental section and bought them which is why I now have no more room in my apartment.
I do feel that it goes on a little longer than it needs to with the entire sequence featuring Doug Benson visiting the store adding nothing and I’m not sure if he was meant to be funny… but he wasn’t. This could have easily been an hour long and been equally as entertaining.
The Last Blockbuster has clearly been a labour of love for filmmaker Taylor Morden which is what makes it such an enjoyable viewing experience. A lot of us thought that Netflix were responsible for the death of Blockbuster but we discover that it was in fact the market crash in 2008 that was the real killer.
By the time we reached the end credits me and my brother were surprisingly emotional not so much about the loss of Blockbuster but the loss of the experience which is something we’ll never get from streaming.
Overall, The Last Blockbuster is a massively enjoyable documentary about an iconic company and one amazing woman who keeps it going with her wonderful staff in Bend, Oregon. If like me you are nostalgic for the old video store then you’ll enjoy every moment of this.