As the saying goes, everything’s bigger in Texas. Including the penis, if Dallas-based medspa owner Bill Moore has anything to say about it.
And by “say about,” we mean “inject into.” With an apropos last name, Moore’s invented a way to increase the phallus — not in length, but girth — to more resemble the size and shape of, oh, something aluminum that could be redeemable for a dime in Michigan, Oregon and Connecticut. His innovation also involves a sleeve-and-bungee-cord situation that looks like a reject from the board game Mouse Trap.
In Manhood, we follow Moore on his mission to “man up” insecure men, one dick at a time. This is the second feature documentary Daniel Lombroso has directed, following 2020’s White Noise (which, incidentally, probed a different type of prick: white supremacists). However, Manhood’s guts seem rooted in Lombroso’s 2023 short, You’ll Be Happier, about one woman’s choice to get a Brazilian butt lift despite the surgery’s dangers.
Needle-delivered phallus fillers amount to a procedure, not a surgery, but can prove hazardous nonetheless. An OnlyFans creator named David learned this the hard way, seeking Moore’s help after another provider’s botched silicone procedure makes David’s unit look like a deformed potato after a domestic violence situation.
Manhood’s other primary patient, Ruben, engenders nine-tenths less sympathy. He’s a father of five who’s struggling to house his children, yet selfishly drops an estimated $20,000 for something his spouse doesn’t appear to want. While you feel for the guy due to his childhood, you also want to knock the vape out of his hands, set fire to his Pokémon T-shirts and tell him to grow up. His wife offhandedly mentions he was fired for beating off in the bathroom.
He’s the type of guy who falls for the manosphere bullshit — dickmaxxing or otherwise — thus depriving his family of their basic needs because he comes first. Meanwhile, Moore poses next to his latest luxury vehicle and, to no one’s surprise, has a framed portrait in the injection room of himself as royalty.
Why people do what they do is an uncrackable conundrum; that’s why God made documentaries, babe. Lombroso’s level of access is so unfettered, Manhood could bear the title You Can See Everything. (And you can, some of it prefaced with a “WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGERY” title card.) That said, Lombroso leaves some threads dangling that I wish he would’ve yanked.
Quibbles aside, the film is never not interesting. It’s lively, offers fleeting moments of poignancy and displays BDE: Big Documentary Energy. —Rod Lott
In theaters Oct. 30.