Wonderful character development!

Dreadfully Boring

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Shannon Whisnant purchased a grill at an auction. Inside the grill was an amputated leg. What follows is a story centered on the enterprising Whisnant and John Wood, the man whose leg wound up in the grill due to an odd chain of events.This story, by itself, is quite interesting because of the events and people involved. Shannon Whisnant is clearly crazy, with delusions of grandeur. He does not seem stupid, but clearly feels he has been slighted by the world and should be someone important. John Wood, on the other hand, is generally portrayed as the victim, but he has his own problems and from what we see in the film, he seems to have more or less thrown away a golden ticket.A little bit deeper, there are two issues I would love to have seen more of: one, why did the doctors let Wood keep his leg? I feel like there are some biohazard issues with letting people keep rotting flesh, and the film never really got into that.And two, I wish the issue would have gone through actual legal channels. There are some excellent legal questions involved: does the leg belong to the person who found it, just as money in a mattress would? Or is it clearly something different because it is human remains -- can you actually own part of another man? This could have been fascinating to see argued in court, but that never happens.

Maybe it's because I am in Ohio, and this took place in North Carolina, but I don't recall hearing anything about this public feud over a leg found in a smoker that was sold off in a storage unit auction. There are many different types of documentaries -- historical, biographical, ones that take on social, environmental or political issues, but soon into this film, I ascertained it to be I guess a comedic doc-?? Well, a bit farther into it, I realized there is more to this than I thought. In fact, I would call this a documentary about healing, recovering from addiction, and making amends. Definitely worth checking out sometime...

There seems to be a lot of documentaries made these days, and even some movies look like doccos. The premise of Finders Keepers is odd, but the tagline/blurb of this film tells little about what it is: a weird human interest/recovery story from NC/SC. Unlike a lot of documentaries based around simple folk, the makers really draw you into responding emotionally to the characters in this one, whether it be annoyance, revulsion or admiration. Finders Keepers has the right mix of humour, TV/news footage and one on one face camera/narrative dialogue to tell an engaging story of the media, greed, missed opportunities and redemption. The documentary makers keep the necessary distance from the subjects to allow the story to unfold naturally. It is worth watching and talking about afterwards, especially if you are interested in embalmed feet.

This is documentary filmmaking at its best, filled with hilarity, surprising twists and turns, eccentric characters, and poignant revelations. The film is brilliantly constructed from bits of news footage, beautifully photographed interviews, and quirky bits of animation that highlight the timeline of events. It's actually one of the best edited films of any kind that I have ever seen. Add to that a quirky soundtrack that's as unique as the real-life characters themselves, plus a story so bizarre it has to be witnessed to be believed — and you've got one absolutely remarkable film. It is best to come to this film without any preconceptions or expectations, so I am not even touching on elements of the story. This movie is a gem.