Who payed the critics

This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

The Final Member is one of the weirdest most unique documentaries I've ever watched. Just the subject sounds surreal, perfect for a movie of the absurd, real as real life can be. The subject could be enough to make a comedy, but this is not a comedy, it is a slice of life presented with humour. One of those documentaries you won't forget.The Phallological Museum in Husavik (Iceland) is a tiny museum devoted to collecting and exhibiting penises from animals all around the word. A priori, it seems naughty or ridiculous, but it is actually not when you watch this doco and heard the reasons behind the foundation by its founder and curator Sigurður "Siggi" Hjartarson. This documentary follows Siggi in his quest to complete his collection of phalli with a human specimen, interviewing and communicating with possible donors in Europe and America; you cannot go out and chop somebody's willy, no matter how pretty, and put it in a jar even if it is for a museum.The documentary is mostly a personality or character study, and we come to enter into the mind and life of Siggy and the possible donors, and become part of something truly unique. The two directors approach the subject with a good balance of curiosity, seriousness and interest, treating their subjects with utmost respect and consideration. The result is a serious documentary about the absurdity of life. You will laugh or rather chuckle, but still feel that none of the characters was ridiculed or mistreated to make this film. The characters are not ordinary people, they are extraordinary people, perhaps for the weirdest of reasons. Not everything extraordinary has to be beautiful or mainstream. Not for the faint hearted.

Thirty miles from the Arctic Circle, in the northern Icelandic town of Husavik, stands the Icelandic Phallological Museum - the world's only penis museum. Over forty years, the founder and curator has collected every specimen from every mammal except for one elusive penis needed to complete his collection: The Human Specimen.First off, this is not for the faint of heart. You will see many penises, human and otherwise, being cut and boiled... and one man talks about his penis (which he calls "Elmo") braking during a raucous. Guys will wince.Beyond that, this is actually fairly educational. Not only as a psychological study of the sort of people who would donate their penis to a museum, but what sort of person would collect them. Now, unfortunately, the focus of this story is on the acquisition of the final penis, so there is not much discussion of previous samples. And that is a loss. From a Darwinian natural history point of view, certainly much could be learned about comparing the wide variety of penises and baculum in mammals.

I remember a few years ago in my sophomore year health class, learning about the obligatory sex organ unit, being deeply immersed in my internal thoughts about human sexuality so-much-so that you couldn't give me money to tell me what my teacher was talking about. My mind kept circling back from films I've seen that touched on sex, to romantic encounters people might have with each other, to the point I want to make here, that the penis and vagina are really not that attractive organs. Men have the luxury of having two immediate go-to body parts on women to feed their eyes, which are obviously the breasts and the buttocks, but women don't have that same luxury. Yet the organs we can't see - and the ones we ultimately desire to see the most - are arguably the two most hideous things on our body; but we're attracted to them.I bring this up because Siggi Hjartarson, the owner and founder of the Icelandic Phallological Museum, clearly finds the male sex organ attractive enough to construct and operate the only museum dedicated to housing penises of hundreds of different animals. The museum opened up in 1997, and inside, Hjartarson has severed mammal penises encased in formaldehyde for proper preservation and puts them on display with a vivid history behind each endowment. However, while Hjartarson has several penises from extinct species, and even a humongous one that once belonged to a sperm whale, he is missing a penis from a species that has billions of functioning ones right now - the homo sapien.That's where the documentary The Final Member comes in; a film just a tad over an hour long that shows Hjartarson's impressive collection as well as his quest to obtain the penis that will complete his collection. Hjartarson's health condition is greatly deteriorating, and while he has two men interested in donating their penises to the museum, he wants to be able to see the museum complete before he dies. The museum was founded after he received a bull's penis as a joke from a friend and, upon doing research, found the idea of opening a phallological museum intriguing and playfully taboo. Contrary to public perception and initial assumptions, Hjartarson's purpose of opening the museum is the furthest thing from being pornographic. Hjartarson, much like myself, admires the notion of how taboo and off-color it is for someone to mention penis in public, despite half of the world having the sex organ. The awkward part about the penis is that people make it awkward.In efforts to track down a human penis to complete his collection, Hjartarson finds two men, one of them named Pall Arason, a well-known Iceland womanizer who agrees to donate his penis to the museum when he dies. Another man is an American by the name of Tom Mitchell, who is perfectly willing to donate the museum his penis while he is still alive, hellbent on making his penis the most famous penis in the world. Mitchell even goes as far as to get a tattoo on the head of his penis, and has ambition to write a comic book series on his in pursuit of his goal.The Final Member works to show the different ways people want to appreciate and commemorate their own sex organs, to which I say continue and let flourish. Hjartarson has found a quirky, unique way to inspire thought and curiosity into something so frustratingly and unjustifiably taboo in a manner that allows education and curiosity to flourish, while maintaining a successful business all the more. The documentary is never too long, is consistently entertaining, and almost operates like a fictional film, with its quirky situations and focuses, but never in such a way that the distracting and often perplexing "mockumentary" features are played for gimmicks. This is a genuinely fun, thoughtful, and surprisingly moving little gem about a museum in dire need of one final endowment.Directed by: Jonah Bekhor and Zack Math.

It's a bit hard to tell if this is a mockumentary, or an actual documentary about some of the most clueless and repulsive people you will ever meet, cinematically or otherwise. Full disclosure: I turned it off after twenty minutes, a little after one of the main subjects, a disturbed idiot who wants to have his wrinkled organ surgically removed prior to death so he can bequeath it to the Icelandic Phallic Museum, has the head of the organ in question tattooed with an American flag. If this is a mockumentary, it is one of the most boring and unhumorous ever committed to film. If it is an actual documentary, it is really criminal to exploit such demented and damaged penis- focused human beings for entertainment purposes, instead of providing the care they need in an appropriate institution. Watch at your own risk -- your time would be better spent loitering.