This Penis Has Been A Long Time Coming

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How long do you think it took me into The Final Member, the documentary about The Icelandic Phallological Museum and its outward concentric rings of cock-loving crazies which just hit DVD this week, to decide that Reykjavík is next up on my world tours? If you answered ten minutes in you get a cookie. And by cookie, I mean a whale penis. Lots and lots of whale penises! 

I'm trying to think of a topic one could make a documentary about that would be more finely attuned to my tastes than one about dicks is - maybe a documentary about chocolate mousse? If Reykjavík wants to go ahead and open a chocolate mousse museum right next door to their penis museum they can go ahead and change the population count on the signs entering their town to one more because I am packing my bags as soon as I finish this review.

Oh right we're talking about the movie. Can you blame me for getting distracted? In truth The Final Member isn't anything approaching the giant schlong-fest I'm playing it off as - these folks take their dingle-dangles very very seriously. Terrifyingly so. That's where the humor comes in - the disconnect (or is that dick-connect, hardy har) between dongs and the deep reverence they're being afforded is all about hitting the funny bone (did somebody say bone, hardy har) square on the head (oh somebody stop me I could go on like this all day), and The Final Member definitely leaves a mark.

I kept being reminded of I Think We're Alone Now, the fantastic 2008 doc on that pair of Tiffany-obsessives - they don't see how funny slash scary they're coming off with their obsessions, and neither do these folks here. Both films walk the line between loving and mocking (and both step over it now and then) and they both prove their main subjects a little more sane by contrasting them with a defiantly less-hinged version. Suddenly that original dude with the museum doesn't seem so bad when he's not the one lying to gender reassignment surgeons on camera to manipulate them into operating on his genitals, ya know? 

Length-wise The Final Member runs light at just a little bit over an hour, but it makes up for that in girth (I mean mirth!) - it'll make your jaw drop and test your gag reflex over and over again.

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