Documentary Review: 'Balloon Man'

I have to preface this review by saying that I appreciate that Bill Costen is a good man. He is a kind and thoughtful gentleman as demonstrated in the documentary Balloon Man. The documentary takes you into the life of Bill Costen, a black man who made his life all about flying hot air balloons. That’s quirky and interesting but is it really enough to justify a feature length documentary? Eh….

Bill Costen is a large man but not the least bit imposing. With his lovely grin and graceful manner, Costen welcomes people to him. He grew up in Omaha, Nebraska and moved to Alabama where he would eventually make it to college and play football. He was good enough that he was drafted into the NFL with the Buffalo Bills. Costen played offensive line and blocked for O.J Simpson amid O.J’s record seasons in Buffalo.

When Bill Costen’s NFL career ended abruptly with being cut for reasons he never understood, he found a new passion, hot air balloons. Costen’s Football agent was the one who brought Bill to Hot Air Balloons but it would appear to many who have met Bill that fate or God had intervened to put Bill Costen in a Hot Air Balloon. After his earliest experiences in Ballooning in the mid-1970s, Bill Costen quit his job and, along with his wife, began Ballooning full time.

Did you know that you can make a career, and a successful career at that, in hot air ballooning? It’s true, Bill Costen has done just that. Whether it was taking tourists up for rides or competing on the Hot Air Balloon racing circuit, which is a real thing, or taking part in festivals around the country, hot air balloons remain a very popular and somewhat lucrative pursuit. One of the interesting anecdotes in Balloon Man is the popularity of hot air balloons with advertisers, something that Bill’s wife quickly realized and capitalized on.

Balloon Man has a number of sweet anecdotes about what a lovely man Bill Costen is. The documentary was crafted by Bill’s daughter, Chantal Potter, and you get a very genuine sense of how much she admires her dad and what he’s done in his life. He’s clearly a good man as so many people in the documentary attest to his kindness, his caring, his compassion and, most of all, the skill with which he handles a balloon.

Much more goes into hot air ballooning than you might imagine. You might think it’s just a matter of going up and down but there is a real science behind what Bill Costen does. More importantly for Bill however, is gut instinct, a seemingly innate talent for feeling out a balloon ride, sensing the wind and speed and knowing exactly where to put the balloon down safely. In all his years of flying, Bill’s never had a notable accident. That’s quite an accomplishment.

Balloon Man will tell you more than you ever imagined about Hot Air Balloons from how competition races are conducted to how the balloon gets up in the air. It’s all interesting but the movie could stand for a little more quirk. What’s missing from Balloon Man is a slight sense of the absurd. These are people who could easily become models for characters in a Christopher Guest movie but the makers of Balloon Man are too close to the material to recognize how charmingly odd the world of Hot Air Ballooning is to those of us outside that world.

Balloon Man is rather circumspect about the racial aspects of Bill Costen's story. The marketing plays up Bill Costen’s role as the first black man in the rather whitebred world of Hot Air Balloons but the movie is a little more reserved in discussing race. The most we get is an anecdote from Bill about how he once came down hard in a farmer’s field in the South and how he worried that he might be met by the Klan. Instead, he has a lovely encounter with a group of farmers eager to make sure he’s okay following his rough landing.

Other than that, the movie doesn’t have any interest in making a point about race or racism. That’s understandable as, by all accounts in Balloon Man, Bill Costen was welcomed into the Hot Air Balloon game with open arms. Hot Air Ballooning appears to be the rare subset of American hobbyists and professionals where race is not an issue. That’s really great and how the world should be, but it’s also another in a series of not particularly dramatic avenues for a documentary.

In the end, I really admire Bill Costen, he appears to be a stand up guy, a true gentleman. He’s thoughtful and charming and if this were a 10 or 15 minute feature on a morning talk show, it could win someone a local Emmy Award. As a documentary, it’s a bit of a stretch. There are a lot of nice guys who have strange jobs or places they’ve carved out in the world, but no one has made a feature length documentary about them.

To her credit, Chantal Potter’s film never appears to be spinning it’s wheels, but she may have overestimated how interesting Bill’s growing up and going to college really is. It’s never boring because Bill Costen is a sweetheart and the people praising him are equally sweet. But again, it’s not exactly the kinds of interesting or engaging material that makes a great documentary. That Bill Costen is a really nice guy who has a unique profession is interesting but not exactly a revelation worthy of a feature documentary.

That's not to say that I don't like Balloon Man, I do admire the movie. But, it's undeniably esoteric. Balloon Man is made for a very specific subset of people. I can appreciate it from that perspective but I can't say it's a great documentary. It's solid and professional with a lovely subject but nothing I needed to see or was all that excited about throughout. The fact that a really nice man and beloved father, son and friend, also happens to be great at flying Hot Air Balloons, is not exactly a revelation worthy of a feature length documentary.

Balloon Man is available for streaming rental via your favorite streaming service on February 2nd.