Helvetica – Review
by john on Apr.12, 2009, under Reviews
There’s a Facebook app going around titled, “What Font are You?” Hopefully none of you got helvetica because according to Helvetica (the movie), that’s the font equivalent of gray. It’s famous for its blandness. It emotes nothing. And that’s why it’s found just about everywhere.
Why watch a movie about a font? Sounds like a complete waste of a few hours, right? Wrong! You may not be aware of this, but there are people out there who love fonts. And I mean LOVE fonts. And those are people worth watching. Remember that movie about the Superheroes in Hollywood? Imagine one of those guys as Helvetica Man. Or maybe Hel-boy. (Groan. Yeah, I know.) Anyway, it all proves one point: obsession makes good cinema.
The best parts of this movie are the interviews with all the Font Nuts and they fall into two camps. There are those who marvel at its perfection and challenge anyone to come up with something better. I know this is impossible because they told me they’ve tried. And then there are those who fart in its general direction. These are the most entertaining, of course. To them, helvetica is used only by styless hacks who respect art as much as toilet paper. I found it interesting that all the people in this camp used MacBooks.
Helvetica contains a pretty good history of the font (It came out of Post-War Europe after a need for legible street signs). If it were just a short TV documentary with that information, it would still be a decent watch. But the interviews and the crazy cast of characters really push this into the “must watch” category. It’s on Netflix “Watch it Now” so go do so.
Oh and yes, this review is posted in helvetica.
Grade: A
April 27th, 2009 on 7:24 pm
i am one of those who LOVE’s fonts… thanks for the review…