Customer Reviews

Tom of Finland: Daddy and the Muscle Academy

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I saw this in theaters, me and almost every guy in the audience wanted to lick the screen. This documentary is just as sexy as Tom's work. The artist is interviewed in Finnish, so (monocultural) Americans that don't like to read subtitles won't like it. It's full of talk about the leather community and those who find SM scary may dislike this documentary too. For those who like Tom's work, this is a great way to find out about the man himself. By interviewing Isaac Julien and talking about Tom's appreciation of black men, this film tries to be racially diverse. However, it may rub some as being fetishy. Gay artists have historically been just oppressed as gay authors or gay activists, especially artists who produce obviously homoerotic work. So Tom and this documentary are milestones in many ways. I applaud the director's efforts.

"Daddy And The Muscle Academy" is a wonderful DVD about Tom of Finland, a gay artist who has inspired an entire cultural wave for both gay and straight men all over the world.

Features an entire gallery of Mr. Finland's work, and lots of information about the artist himself; including personal history and sketching techniques, as well as small interviews with men who admire Mr.Finland and his work.

Highly Erotic!

the best study to date i have found of the tom of finland works.
the interview with the artist himself is excellent and shows how to overcome diversity and publish your dreams.
can be enjoyed by everyone .

Tom of Finland achieved iconic status in gay community. This film gives a rare opportunity to watch and listen to the mastermind behind the whole project, to find out how the comics were created etc.
Whether you are a fan or not, I think it's worth to watch it.

Tom of Finland is the sort of DVD you'll like if you really like this sort of DVD. Part Gay porn (owing a debt to Kenneth Anger) and part documentary, Daddy and the Muscle Academy (Zeitgeist Films) runs a scant hour, just enough time to allow the audience to learn some things never before considered, and supply endless fodder for a certain type of cocktail party.
Touko Laaksonen was a commercial artist who followed his dream--- and fetishes---into a million-dollar business. Thanks to bootleggers and the nature of selling the business of sex, Laaksonen, as Tom of Finland, gathered a great deal of publicity but little money. His iconic gay drawings from the 50s' body building magazines (not quite porno, not quite art) all the way to important commercial images of the pre-AIDS 80s, will be with us forever.
Body building leather men grunting at each other in dark bars are pretty much a thing of the past and this film scrupulously investigates what is no more. Some archival shots directly related to the artist are interesting, but the recreation of the culture, all but destroyed by progress in gay liberation on the one side and the AIDS crises on the other, barely a decade before the making of the film, falls flat. (The film was completed shortly before Tom's death in 1991.) The artist talks about humanity, but other than a short sequence about his long time companion, the film comes off about as human as Metropolis, only with less humor.
This is not to deny a muscle and leather worshipping subset of the gay and the straight community, nor in any way to denigrate the artist's contributions, but the history of a closeted gay man finding wild success after declaring his sexuality isn't particularly new. And the accoutrements of leather, muscles and S&M toys are neither shocking nor particularly interesting today.
If Tom and his men interest you, by all means rush out (or stride manfully forward) and pick up the DVD. If this doesn't interest you, perhaps a musical or a Ross Hunter film will do.