‘Under the Influence’ Review: An Absorbing, Unsettling Documentary Portrait of the YouTube Star David Dobrik
21.03.2022 - 01:03
/ variety.com
Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticDavid Dobrik, the 25-year-old YouTube superstar, has a grin that speaks a thousand words. Dobrik is the quintessence of cute — eager and baby-faced, with big dark puppy eyes and floppy brown hair combed so that it never seems combed. Clad in sweatshirts that he wears like pajamas, he looks like the comic-strip character Dondi crossed with Mark Wahlberg in 1995 crossed with the world’s smarmiest frat-house douche.
When Dobrik grins, his face lights up, but he’s a self-contained firecracker. That grin is a smirk, a freeze-frame guffaw, and a snicker of contempt all at the same time. It’s the look of a class clown, of a kid who can’t believe what he’s getting away with, or of the nicest, most polite office colleague who is also, in case you weren’t looking, the worst corporate backstabber.
David Dobrik, in short, is a dude who looks a lot like America.“Under the Influence” is a very absorbing, very disquieting, very meaningful-for-our-time documentary, directed by Casey Neistat (a YouTube personality himself), that charts Dobrik’s rise into becoming the buzziest and most infamous influencer of his generation. “Influencer” is a toxically insidious term, since it sounds cool and lofty and important but what it means is: someone who became famous enough on social media to get paid the big bucks for pushing video games, wine coolers, and Chipotle. And that’s all it means.
That’s the influence part. (You’re a verité advertising spokesperson.)The fame part of Dobrik’s rise was based on how he made himself into the new king of Most Insane Home Videos Nation. He posted his first vlog on July 31, 2015, when he was 19, and within a few years, after posting hundreds of vlogs with the dissolute rat
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