Parents' Guide to Untold: Johnny Football

The story of Johnny Manziel is a tragic one. Chronicling Manziel's incredible rise and fall in Untold: Johnny Football, this documentary easily showcases his natural ability and prowess on the football field in high school and college. But Manziel's desire and appetite for alcohol and partying are also easily documented here, with stories and examples of his behavior in abundance. The majority of information and insight comes from people around Manziel (his best friend during high school and college, his coaches, his family) and Manziel himself, innocently sitting in a chair, casually discussing his own fall from grace. Ultimately a story of addiction and a too-late bipolar disorder diagnosis, this tragic tale outlines Manziel's collapse almost systematically but struggles to get to any deeper meaning to Manziel's story. Electing to assume that the lessons of Manziel's life are self-explanatory, this documentary doesn't strive to make any conclusions.

Doing so gives this presentation a reporting vibe rather than one of opinion, which is probably good for some reasons and bad for others. Not choosing to add commentary to Manziel's story allows the documentary to feel observational rather than personal, even while Manziel's family and inner circle do their best to humanize him and explain away the worst of his behavior. But adopting a purely observational take on Manziel also ends up kind of making Manziel seem like he doesn't really care (and also doesn't comment on or show remorse for his behavior that led to his ex-girlfriend accusing him of domestic abuse). In other similar kinds of stories, the recovering person uses their experience to give back in some way, share their story so that others might not go down the same path, but here, Manziel seems indifferent. But again, for many, his story will still speak for itself.