Stutz

Composite Score: 82.93

Featuring: Jonah Hill and Phil Stutz

Director: Jonah Hill

Genres: Documentary, Drama

MPAA Rating: R for language

Box Office: N/A

Why should you Watch This Film?

                Stutz is Jonah Hill’s Netflix documentary about his therapist. It features Hill and his therapist Phil Stutz having an extended “session” where Hill seeks to explore the “tools” that Stutz gave him in therapy to help him overcome depression and his other challenges as a celebrity. Along the way, they also dive into Stutz’s past and the formative events in his life that led him to formulate the tools that he offers to his patients. The pair also discuss various moments and aspects of Hill’s life that brought him to therapy and that he has since used Stutz’s tools to overcome. It is a refreshingly wholesome watch about the benefits of therapy that also offers some practical advice to people struggling with any kind of weight in their lives.

Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?

                If you are not someone who is currently looking for a solution to emotional or mental weight or stress, this film will probably feel like an unnecessary vanity project from some Hollywood celebrity who wants to capitalize on the cultural phenomenon of people actually caring about mental health for a change. This is not my particular take on the film because I see a lot of merit in what Hill and Stutz discuss and accomplish in this documentary, but I understand if you take a more cynical view because of how the film seeks to reel its audience in. If your problem is with people going to therapy in general or with the highlighting of mental health struggles though, then you should check yourself and probably seek therapy as well.

So wait, why should you Watch This Film?

                I think this is a fantastically made documentary. It starts out fairly obviously before evolving into something far more interesting (and real) after a few minutes. Hill’s directorial decision to do what is basically a plot twist at the end of the first act of a therapy documentary worked so well for me and that is really the piece that will probably hook most audience members. It’s well-executed and supplements the overall message of honesty and realness that the documentary is seeking to communicate in what is, to me, a very unique way. It gives the rest of the documentary a deeper sense of authenticity and makes its message that much more palatable.

                On top of its fascinating filmmaking choices, Stutz does offer some solid mental health advice from an actual therapist, free of charge (assuming you have a Netflix subscription). While the tools that Phil Stutz and Jonah Hill discuss are not personalized to fit any specific individual, they do offer solutions to problems that are so general that most audience members should be able to find one practical piece of the film to walk away with as well. Whether it has to do with how you view your own place in the world, how you relate to your past, how you approach the present, or some other broad topic in between, Hill has crafted a documentary that really does have some practical application.

                The film’s real-life therapeutic offerings to viewers struggling with mental health are brought to the fore in Stutz by some excellent filmmaking choices on the part of Jonah Hill in the director’s chair, making the documentary one of the most unique in recent years and one of the Greatest Films of All Time. Its focus on therapy and practical therapeutic methods might not be of immediate interest to you, but it’s definitely a solid film to keep around for tough times. It is currently available to stream on Netflix for any who might need it.