Know Your Mushrooms: Go to Uwajimaya Instead

No, don’t. And neither does this inane documentary by leftie director Ron Mann (Grass) know anything significant or new about fungus. Mainly it follows a couple of graybeard hippies to the Telluride Mushroom Festival, where these mycology experts spew a few random facts, lead classes, get stoned, and wake up on the lawn. The snickering psychedelic subtext overwhelms everything else: Shrooms are natural and good and should be legalized! Stick it to the man! Lip service is paid to using one variety of fungus to clean up oil spills, but no outside scientists appear to verify this or any other claim made in the film. It’s a movie made by and for fungus partisans. If you’d like a little help with actual mushroom recipes, their nutritional value, what variety to buy—organic or otherwise—at Safeway or Uwajimaya, or how resource-intensive they are to grow compared to other crops, this film has absolutely nothing to teach you. (Other than: Avoid Telluride during Mushroom Fest.) Try the cooking section of your local bookstore instead.