Josh Modell

The story of Wrinkles The Clown and the public reaction to his antics is funny, weird, and timely — there may just not be enough of it to warrant a feature-length documentary.

It’s a good story—especially the focus on music as redeemer—but it does feel a bit too warm and fuzzy.

At its heart, No Stone Unturned is a simple story shrouded in sad facts of the bigger one that surrounds it.

Perhaps when history has had its way with this era, it will be enlightening to re-experience U.S. presidential election night, 2016. But all 11/8/16 does from this near distance is confirm a recent memory and reinforce some safe assumptions.

It’s a biopic that ends before its subject’s life-changing work even really begins, so those without the knowledge to fill in the gaps will almost certainly leave wondering why they should care.

There’s a lot of “this was really important,” and “this changed us,” but very little in the way of specifics. Maybe they couldn’t put their fingers on it, and that’s fine, but there’s no sense that they even considered digging deeper. Still, several live performances and some powerful fly-on-the-wall moments make it tough to dismiss Reflektor Tapes entirely.

What’s perhaps most telling about the artist himself is a later-in-life project he builds in his cluttered backyard, a sort of funhouse ride through his own psyche.

A largely forgettable lark, notable more for its slight diversions from action-movie norms than anything else.