Screwball Proves Billy Corben is the Best Documentarian, Because Florida

F&%k A Movie Theater is your weekly to bi-weekly to probably once a month guide to the best movies you can watch through streaming services. So skip the traffic, the crowds, the $472 popcorn and soda, the screaming babies, and the fart-filled seats of the movie theater, stay home, and stream some shit in the comfort of your own home. This week F&%k A Movie Theater reviews Screwball.

The latest Racontur documentary Screwball proves that Billy Corben is the best documentarian, because fuck Ken Burns. No filmmaker is as good at capturing the complete and colossal fuckery that is South Florida’s underbelly quite like Corben does. He did it with Cocaine Cowboys, Cocaine Cowboys Reloaded, and Square Grouper. And now he’s gone and done it again.

Screwball, which you can now stream on iTunes and Amazon, is Corben’s latest foray into the cartoonish weirdness that is South Florida, and further proof that when anything shady happens anywhere in the world, there is always and inevitably a connection to the Sunshine State. And Corben is so masterful at telling these stories, we kind of forgive him for that whole “Because Florida” schtick he always does on every….single…tweet…he…. sends… out….. WE GET IT, BILLY. JESUS.

Seriously though, Screwball is more than what you think it is. Yes, it’s about Miami’s own, former Yankees slugger, and current Boring Dad on Instagram, Alex Rodriguez. Yes, it’s about steroids in baseball (zzzzzzzzz). Yes, it’s about Miami. But it’s way more than that. Because the story that unravels the entire thing is bananas. Because, Florida (DAMN YOU, BILLY CORBENNNN).

Screwball centers around the 2013 performing enhancing drug scandal that gave Major League Baseball and everyone involved a proverbial nipple twist, got Big League stars like A-Rod, Manny Ramirez, and Ryan Braun busted for juicing their shit up, and got everyone to go, holy shitcheese Jose Canseco was right!

In a nutshell, the story goes thusly: Anthony Bosch, a Florida Man who got his medical degree in Belize because, fuck it, opened up a health clinic to rejuvenate older folks who wanted to take better selfies, and discovered a way to mix together a PED regimen so that it was barely noticeable during a piss test, if at all. Naturally, this eventually led Bosch to having old people who wanted to fuck like teenagers as clients, to Big League ballplayers who wanted to get an edge. Bosch also apparently gave these PEDs to high school athletes through parents permission because we live in a world where literally everything is terrible.

Add some shady Goodfellas type dudes, a pinch of conmen and criminals, and a dash of a dopey guy who threatens to blow the whole thing up, and you have yourself a helluva story. Throw a weirdo like A-Rod into the mix, and possibly, maybe, kinda, allegedly, could be, MLB doing some shady illegal shit of their own, and NOW you’ve got yourself a barnburner.

Just look at that trailer.

The first thing that pops into your head when you watch that trailer is, wow steroids are kinda fucking cool I think I wanna start taking some where is this Bosch character now anyone have his @? And the second, and probably more importantly, those kid actors!

That’s because the best part of Screwball is how Corben decides to tell the story by using some talented kids. Taking a page out of Comedy Central’s Drunk History, where actors reenact scenes by lip-synching off-camera narrators, Screwball uses child actors to play all the characters as the real life-people retell their story. Blake McCall, the kid that plays A-Rod, really captures A-Rod’s odd plastic image-obsessed nature, and absolutely NAILS his swing (also, Ian Mackles deserves an Oscar for portraying my former Miami New Times boss Tim Elfrink so masterfully. The kid is the next Daniel Day-Lewis. I’m not even kidding. So great. Ok, I made this about me. Sorry. ONWARD…).

Bottom line, if you haven’t watched Screwball, then do it. Especially if you’re into sports and especially if you live here in South Florida, where we have some kooky-ass characters living among us. ESPECIALLY IN POLITICS.

It’s funny, irreverent, and smartly done. And it’s another notch in Corben’s utility belt of awesome story-telling. Truly, Screwball represents yet another side to just how dysfunctional a place paradise is, and Corben masterfully builds an entire movie around a slightly subversive central idea about some guys who wanted to get rich quick, and a couple of guys who wanted to hit baseballs good, and how it all went to shit because people are stupid.

Screwball gets 4 out of 5 F&%ks
Greenwhich Entertainment, a documentary directed by Billy Corben. Running time 105 minutes. Available on iTunes, Amazon, FandangoNow, and Vudu.

Chris Joseph (@ByChrisJoseph) is a host of Ballscast, and has written for Deadspin, Miami New Times, CBS Sports, and several other outlets.