Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
Jack Rebney is the most famous man you've never heard of - after cursing his way through a Winnebago sales video, Rebney's outrageously funny outtakes became an underground sensation and made him an internet superstar. Filmmaker Ben Steinbauer journeys to the top of a mountain to find the recluse who unwittingly became the "Winnebago Man".
Winnebago Man is a modestly engaging documentary that uses the viral video phenomenon as a springboard to explore themes of unwilling celebrity and the ethics of internet mockery. The journey to find Jack Rebney is genuinely compelling, and Rebney himself is a fascinating, cantankerous subject. However, the film's cinematography is functional at best — standard talking-head and vérité documentary work without distinctive visual ambition. The acting category (applied loosely to documentary subjects and the filmmaker's on-screen presence) is unremarkable. Novelty is moderate: the premise of tracking down a viral video subject was relatively fresh in 2010 but not radically original. The ending offers a bittersweet, humanizing resolution to Rebney's story that elevates the film above pure novelty-chasing.