For the last few years, Netflix has been able to produce documentaries that not only conquer their streaming charts but also dominate social media. Remember the Tiger King phenomenon? Or more recently, Fit For TV: The Reality of the Biggest Loser, which dove into the scandalous fallout of the controversial reality series.
Netflix has done it again with aka Charlie Sheen, a two-part documentary made with the full participation of the troubled A-list star himself, chronicling his, as he puts it, “partying, partying with problems, problems.” The result is a 3-hour train wreck you can’t help but stop and watch.
The problem right off the bat is that it’s not the exhaustive tell-all it’s been marketed as, and Charlie Sheen comes off as being honest and open about his struggles with addiction, but he’s always holding back, especially in the final third, when he’s questioned about what he did while on cocaine binges. Tabloid sites have already run with the story, but in aka Charlie Sheen the star is frustratingly coy about his experiences with men, though ultimately he admits it, but brushes it off as just being weird.
It’s an explosive bombshell story, but not what I came to the documentary to see. As an avid fan of sitcoms, I was far more interested in hearing Sheen discuss what happened with Two and a Half Men and his widely publicized 2011 meltdown that culminated in a bizarre nationwide tour with talks about tiger blood, #winning, and his then-girlfriends, Bree Olson and Natalie Kenly.
2011 was a very strange year that’s hard to describe, but people paid money to watch videos of Charlie Sheen playing Call of Duty. Not watch him play, that would make too much sense, these were videos he’d show during his one-man shows of him on his couch and losing at Team Deathmatch.
aka Charlie Sheen goes into the very public downward spiral that caused him to leave the number one sitcom in America, and his co-star, Jon Cryer, is on hand to share his side of the story, noting that before working with Sheen for eight years, he had hair. As with most tell-all celebrity documentaries, if the subject is involved, it’s going to pull punches, and it’s here that the documentary frustratingly pulls back. While Sheen appears apologetic, there are few clear answers without putting the blame on something else.
Charlie Sheen’s famous ex-wives Denise Richards and Brooke Mueller also appear in aka Charlie Sheen, with Richards explaining that she’s taking part because otherwise the film would be a “piece of shit.” Richards doesn’t hold back, commenting on co-parenting with Sheen, how he acted during their marriage, and the affairs. Mueller comes across as more forgiving, but she’s also not taking him back any time soon, no matter how the now-sober Sheen is working towards making amends.
In between the scandals, aka Charlie Sheen spends most of its running time focused on his early life, battles with addiction, and the Hollywood career he could, and should, have had. For all of his faults, Charlie Sheen was a mesmerizing presence on screen, and few could combine his leading man looks with a keen sense of comedic timing.
Major League and Hot Shots! are still two of my favorite comedies, and the sequels are ok, but even those have more laughs in 10 minutes than the entire runtime of any comedy from the last five years. In that respect, aka Charlie Sheen is like the man himself, filled with potential but falls short, and makes you look back and wonder about what could have been if one or two things had been done differently.
aka Charlie Sheen is now streaming on Netflix.