Having essentially grown up and gained my adoration for film in the 80's and early 90's, sooo many of these films were my bread and butter and I had no idea they had the same studio let alone such an interesting and ridiculous back-story. The only issue I had with this documentary was actually that I'm not sure it covered enough ground and I would have liked to have seen more significant interviews from the stars that these guys made and vice versa. Because despite how bad these movies were or tried to be where would the B Movie genre be without them let alone the 80's films in general. I think the story behind the "GoGo Boys" Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus is so interesting because ultimately they were passionate but had zero experience and got way ahead of themselves and played with fire and ultimately for lucky for a very long time until they weren't lucky anymore. Still its absolutely astonishing to see how many films they made and the similarities with those films.Very very very few of the movies mentioned in the documentary could ever be described as "good" and yet anyone who grew up in this era or loved movies will agree that so many of them are "legendary" in the minds of the fans. One of my favourite Stallone movies "Over The Top", one of my favourite "bad" movies "Masters of The Universe", and one of my favourite guilty pleasure film franchises "Death Wish." They gave us silly bad-ass heroes like Chuck Norris and Charles Bronson and unashamedly used exploitation to sell their early films and yet they kept making money until they couldn't anymore. I was ecstatic when I heard about this documentary because I love these kinds of Hollywood stories but interviews with the brothers would have been very good (both were asked and refused apparently) Chuck Norris interviews would have been great, talking to some of the bigger legendary stars that Canon made or kept going. I felt like this was a pretty surface look at Canon when there was so much here to cover but really interesting nonetheless just perhaps a little too simple. 7/10

Done with the same cheeky'n'breezy tone and nonstop hurtling pace as the blithely trashy exploitation fare its about, director Mark Hartley's hugely enjoyable documentary presents the incredible world wind story of Menaham Golan and Yorum Globus, who were a couple of impudent swindlers from Israel who ruled the roost throughout the gloriously excessive 1980's by specializing in cheerfully crass low-grade schlock made by their company Cannon Films that often clumsily attempted to capitalize on whatever trend was popular at the moment. These guys hit pay dirt with their action films starring either Chuck Norris or Charles Bronson, but ultimately got too big for their britches and sank their own studio thanks to shady financing schemes and blowing massive amounts of cash on such costly flops as Lifeforce, Over the Top (in which star Sylvester Stallone was paid over ten million to play the lead), and Superman IV: Quest for Peace (the effects budget was cut substantially halfway through production and a beefy former Chippendales dancer was cast to portray Superman's nemesis Nuclear Man!).Not surprisingly, this doc comes loaded not only with lots of nudity and over-the-top violence, but also a wealth of hysterical tales about the wild antics of Golan and Globus: Among the most choice anecdotes are Golan discussing a movie deal with Clyde the orangutan (!), how everyone hated working with Sharon Stone (who was accidentally cast in King Solomon's Mines because Golan said he wanted that Stone woman and the guy who cast her didn't know he was talking about Kathleen Turner of Romancing the Stone fame), Barbet Schroeder threatening to cut off his fingers with a chainsaw if he can't make Barfly the way he wants to, Molly Ringwald not knowing if the character she was playing in King Lear was either alive or dead, Franco Nero having his voice dubbed by another actor for Enter the Ninja, Golan and Globus making two competing lambada pictures in the wake of their acrimonious breakup, Laurene Landon setting fire to her VHS copy of America 3000 to express her disgust over her unhappy experience acting in that flick, director Michael Winner being a total sadist who was a perfect fit for Cannon, Golan and Globus failing to realize that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 was intended as a comedy, Bo Derek getting told to make Bolero as explicit as possible, and Just Jaecklin remarking that the infamous Go-Bo boys had probably never read the book Lady Chatterley's Lover. While not everyone interviewed has the nicest things to say about Golan and Globus, almost everybody nonetheless generally admits that their hearts were certainly in the right place even if they possessed more chutzpah and enthusiasm than taste and decorum. It's this latter element of genuine affinity for these two kooky mavericks which in turn makes this documentary a surefire winner.

Colorful documentary on Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, cousins from Israel who forged a filmmaking partnership in 1970s Los Angeles after breaking ground in their homeland with local dramas directed and often written by Golan. Taking over Cannon Films, the duo had some early successes before succumbing to B-movies, cut-rate sequels, ninja flicks and gory screamers. A distribution deal with MGM/UA goes sour when Golan and Globus deliver the company nothing but junk, further cementing the wildly enthusiastic producers' reputation for quick, cheap trash. Looking back, Golan and Globus had the right attitude for making movies--no bull, cut to the chase, film the script--but without good judgment in the filmmaking world, and the folly of newcomers with money but nothing decent to film, they became the bane of '80s Hollywood. Cannon did attract directors like Franco Zeffirelli and John Frankenheimer, but mostly names on the wane (an amusing phone call has Golan trying to lure Peter Bogdanovich's people into having the struggling director work with Cannon: "He a loser. He needs to work with winners."). Cannon's legacy is, sadly, Chuck Norris action movies, "Death Wish" sequels, 1984's dated hit "Breakin'" and the critically-acclaimed "Runaway Train"--but with so much garbage clogging its resume, the film group was bound to go down in flames. It ain't "That's Entertainment!" **1/2 from ****

A one-of-a-kind story about two-of-a-kind men who (for better or worse) changed film forever.Anyone who love cult or genre films knows Cannon. They were huge, especially in the 1980s, and made some of the finest action films out there. As this documentary shows, they were not afraid to use Chuck Norris to his fullest potential.I absolutely love all the behind-the-scenes tidbits on this. We see that Cannon never really knew what they were doing, but just kept going over the top and got lucky. The connection such figures as Michael Milliken is interesting, and it makes one wonder if some shady business was going down (apparently the SEC thought so).