The main selling points for this doco are clips from Cary Grant's own home movies and excerpts from his unpublished memoir. But the home movies are are unremarkable at best, dull at worst. And the memoir extracts seem more like Grant's attempts to conceal, rather than reveal himself. The documentary accepts at face value what Grant says about his various marriages, while never even addressing all the indications that Grant was gay - not the plain fact that he shared a house and his life with Randolph Scott for 12 years, nor the revelations in Orry-Kelly's unpublished memoir about Grant's gay relationships in his New York years. At the same time this film attempt to analyse Grant's screen persona through the prism of the actor's private life - incomplete and questionable though the picture they've presented is. It's all highly dubious, and does no justice to either the actor or the man.

Becoming Cary Grant (2017)*** (out of 4)This here is like many recent documentaries where the subject themselves tells their story. The subject here is the one and only Cary Grant who we hear from interview clips as well as actor speaking from an unreleased autobiography.If you're familiar with the life of Grant then I seriously doubt that you're going to learn anything new here. We start off hearing about his LSD trips later in life and then we bounce back to his troubled childhood, which includes losing his mother to mental illness and then reaching out to her decades later. We cover his move to Hollywood, his rise to stardom as well as various roles throughout his career.Other documentaries have covered this stories several times before, which is why I say there's really not too much new stuff here. What new stuff there is includes some home movies that Grant filmed, which are quite interesting and towards the end there's an interview with his last girlfriend as well as his daughter. Truth be told, I would have preferred more to do with these two ladies as I'm sure they had some great stories to share.As it is, BECOMING CARY GRANT does a nice job for those unfamiliar with the life of the actor but at the same time I wasn't really bowled over by the structure of the film. I think some of the visuals go a bit too far as the story itself is strong enough to hold the viewer's attention. Still, fans of Grant will want to check this out.

Lets get the first thing out of the way. Cary Grant is one of the performers I admire greatly. I have not researched his career in depth but I was aware of his real name. Learning about his troubled childhood and his relationship with his mother and women was enlightening. I was shocked to find out he used LSD, under medical supervision, to better understand himself and was more shocked to find out about his weaknesses. He did turn those weaknesses into a strength though and became a better performer by understanding himself.Recommended viewing for his fans and amateur shrinks.

I was really looking forward to this. I had read what was probably the best written biography of Grant (by Marc Eliot), but I thought so much could be done with film supplementing the story.The best addition -- a look at the LSD sessions. Worst deletion -- even the mention that Grant may have been bisexual or gay.And then there are the MANY films Grant took himself (like home movies). Occasionally they are meaningful to the story, but often you looked at them having no idea who the people were in them, what the buildings, or why they were important. Similarly, there were excerpts from films that implied that they had some deep meanings about Grant's real life. Or then again, maybe they were just words written by a screen play writer.I'd say buy the book by Marc Eliot. I would guess that a lot of people will be disappointed by this video version of Cary Grant's life.