Arnold

Arnold

The fawning docuseries “Arnold” repackages Arnold Schwarzenegger’s already well-spun and streamlined biography. In three hour long episodes devoted to his three major careers (bodybuilder, movie actor, and politician), Schwarzenegger provides negligible on camera and voiceover narrated commentary for movie clips, old and new talking head interviews, and self congratulatory pep-talk commentary about his life, whose selectively remembered setbacks all set up him for some future, uncritically vaunted success.

This overproduced miniseries will be most enjoyed by those who are either already fans of Schwarzenegger’s or have bought what he’s selling before the unstoppable foreigner and people’s hero who overcame great adversity and achieved his wildest dreams; or those who want to hear the ex-Governator skittishly name-drop career lowlights like “The Villain” and “Batman and Robin” before and after new soundbites from Sylvester Stallone and James Cameron that make Schwarzenegger look better.

Schwarzenegger cocks a schticky eyebrow while admiring coffee table sized books filled with high-resolution photos of himself from over the years. He has a PR-friendly anecdote or take for almost every moment in his public life, from the first time he met Maria Shriver (and complimented her ass to her mom Eunice) to his extramarital affair with Mildred Patricia Baena, their son Joseph both of whom he acknowledges in “Arnold.”

That stuff is old news or old enough that it can be used to embellish the Austrian Oak’s progress narrative, which only makes brief stops at major life events like the death of his brother Meinhard or the box office failure of “Last Action Hero,” to shrug them off with platitudinous grace.

Arnold waves away the boisterous bullying media persona that he and his people have pumped up for decades now, calling it so much “smäh,” a German word that he translates as “bullshit” (more like a jokey con job). It’s sort of amusing to see Schwarzenegger soften history to his whims, going so far as to sparingly acknowledge the L.A. Times and their critical investigative reporting, including some light talking head interviews with reporters Mark Z. Barabak and Carla Hall. He apologizes again for having “behaved badly.”

Schwarzenegger also dismisses antisemitism as “a horrible, loser ideology” in a clip from one of his recent social-media fireside chats. That line complements his recent claims about having only admired Hitler’s way with words, not his Nazi politics which plays better if you either don’t remember or care about the part of that 1992 Spy Magazine article on Schwarzenegger where writer Charles Fleming confirms the rumor that Schwarzenegger used to gift people with records of Hitler’s speeches.

Schwarzenegger does not mention that his abusive father, Gustav, served under the Nazis; this association was likely discarded in his 2012 autobiography, Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story. According to footage from a press conference held in 2003, people bring up the past only when they want to “smear” you, says Schwarzenegger (“You know, when you get into politics, they try to tear down your character, tear down everything you stand for.”).

How much smäh you can take will depend on how much you enjoy Schwarzenegger’s glittering present-tense narrative. (On working through heart surgery on End of Days: “This is a new day. Let’s just move forward.”) Some will find Arnold punishingly long; others will puzzle over a clueless narrative with ersatz values like when Schwarzenegger repeatedly confuses the worth and box office performance of his star vehicles (“Twins” was apparently great!), then piles on pseudo-inspirational lines such as “Nietzsche was right, that what does not kill you makes you stronger.” He deploys that last paraphrase immediately after talking about his brother Meinhard’s death, calling him “delicate,” speculating that he couldn’t take their father’s abuse.

There is almost enough truth amid all the smäh here to make it seem believable like when he remembers wearing down doubters such as Conan the Barbarian producer Dino De Laurentiis, who initially balked at Schwarzenegger’s accent. Never mind that Schwarzenegger suggests more than he directly states here or adds very little to what he has already said or makes strange asides for example, America in the 1960s and ’70s “had problems” like “the Manson murders and protests against the Vietnam War,” which implies that “Hippies were rising up.”

Still, the implausibility of all this revisionism is consistent and slick enough that time’s onward march could make you more vulnerable to Arnold. “We are the last dinosaurs,” Stallone tells Schwarzenegger in episode three, which not only explains why Rocky is in Arnold but probably why Arnold exists. Schwarzenegger continues to control his hypermediated destiny, and many believe that his accomplishments as an American politician outweigh his earlier sins. That was then; this victory lap is for now, forever.

Watch Arnold For Free On Gomovies.