Documentary Review: 'My Father, Muhammad Ali' is Deeply, Uncomfortably Voyeuristic

My Father Muhammad Ali (2023)

Directed by Tom Denucci, Chad A. Verdi

Written by Documentary

Starring Muhammad Ali Jr.

Release Date January 13th, 2023

Published January 11th, 2023

As much as I did follow the life of the legendary Muhammad Ali, I was somehow unaware that he had a son. And yet, indeed, the greatest boxer of all time did have a son and he did name that son, Muhammad Ali Jr. How is it possible that he was not part of the story of Muhammad Ali's life? How did it happen that even people like me, people who think they know Muhammad Ali's life story, never knew that he had a son that he named after himself? It's a weird and harrowing story.

Muhammad Ali Jr. was born in 1971, at the height of his father's return to the world stage. Ali had just come out of jail for having refused to go to Vietnam and was fresh off of the first fight against Joe Frazier, billed as The Fight of the Century. Muhammad Ali wasn't around for much of the early part of his son's life as he was training and fighting in the midst of the greatest run of his boxing career. That's not an excuse. I have no idea what kind of Father Muhammad Ali was, only that I know he was a very busy man in the early 1970s.

From the time Muhammad Ali Jr was born through most of his life, he was not much known. According to the new documentary My Father, Muhammad Ali, his teenage years were spent with his mother's parents while his mother and famous father toured the world. In High School, Muhammad Ali Jr. fell into drugs and spent a number of years battling addiction and being estranged from his famous family. He had a family of his own. a couple of daughters from a couple of moms and struggled until not long after his father passed away in 2016.

At some nebulous point following his father's death, Jr beat his addiction and started to use the Ali name to garner attention. This may or may not have been at the behest of a friend, and former New York City Police Officer, named Richard Blum. Together they star in this unusual documentary that follows Muhammad Ali Jr today as he tries to start a boxing-based charity alongside his supposed best friend. The notion of this 'best friend' taking advantage of Ali Jr. hangs thick over My Father, Muhammad Ali.

Part of what makes My Father, Muhammad Ali so strange is the storytelling structure employed by directors Tom Denucci and Chad A. Verdi. The film opens with them introducing Dr. Monica O'Neal, a psychologist known for her appearances on reality television, as much as for her work as a Harvard graduate and psychologist. She made her name profiling the 'psychology of Bravo,' with special attention to the various cast of Real Housewives of insert large city here.

That's not intended to impugn her integrity as a doctor, it's just what she's known for, your opinion of Real Housewives characters or series, is entirely up to you. Dr. O'Neal is here to examine/interview Muhammad Ali Jr. but that doesn't really happen. What does happen is a series of odd encounters wherein Muhammad Ali Jr. lovingly recalls his father and talks about some of the troubles in his life in relatively vague terms. O'Neal's inclusion in the documentary appears intended to be important but it fails to provide any kind of insight, other than showing Ali Jr. affably trying to defend his father and avoid talking about what led to his own personal troubles.

More impacting and uncomfortable is a scene where Muhammad Ali Jr. visits a former High School teacher that Ali Jr got very close to. The teacher taught Ali Jr. how to make paper flowers, but no one mentions that Ali Jr. did not pass High School while under this teacher's guidance. As we watch, Ali Jr. lays himself bare, talking about how much the teacher meant to him, referring to the man as his dad, calling the man his dad and talking about how much he cared for the man in awkwardly fawning and emotional fashion. The teacher takes it in stride and returns the love with awkward but genuine empathy. It's a scene so uncomfortably intimate that you may want to stop the movie and walk away or walk out of whatever theater you are in. Ali Jr. is so earnest and emotional you feel like you shouldn't be watching.

And the film gets only more uncomfortably voyeuristic as it goes along. One scene captures Ali Jr. being served divorce papers and awkwardly processing this fact before the cameras, ending with a bitter breakdown, or as close to bitter as someone as affable as Muhammad Ali Jr. is can be. Then there is a scene showing Ali Jr. giving a radio interview to promote his dubious charity. Since the charity has a mostly nebulous purpose, and the radio hosts are only interested in having Ali Jr. perform his impression of his father, the whole thing plays as mean spirited comedy.

The makers of My Father, Muhammad Ali appear to want to question Ali Jr. and Richard Blum's desire to create a 'charity' off the reputation of Ali Jr's father and they certainly do cast a suspicious eye on Blum's relationship with Ali Jr. But, by the end of the documentary, it's clear that they too are taking advantage of Muhammad Ali Jr. The inclusion of that terribly uncomfortable scene with Ali Jr's teacher and the ending centered on Ali Jr crying his way through an encounter with one of his estranged daughters, have a desperately voyeuristic and exploitative quality that is better suited for garish reality TV melodrama than in a documentary. It's all incredibly uncomfortable and it makes the documentary border on unwatchable.

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