RigelDC’s review published on Letterboxd:
A documentary on nutria, the oversized rodents that devastate coastal Louisiana, and the Americans who love, hate, idolize, hunt, and eat them.
Arguably a feature film, at 71-minutes it's barely more than a short subject. By the end, I found myself knowing far more about the lives and culture of the Louisianans who live and work in dependence on the hated nutria than the titular rodents themselves. Not far into the doc, the focus - which to that point is almost entirely on hunting the big rats - sloughs off uninterestedly, landing on the quirky ethnic antics of the locals, only tangentially related to the whiskered subject matter. Oddly, a very convincing case is made for capitalization on nutria fur - something I never thought I'd say as a proponent for animals.
While it takes a relatively unarguable stance that the nutria are a destructive invasive species, the directors go unflinchingly all-in against the critters in a very southern way. Hardcore animal-lovers and those without strong stomachs should pass, as there are endless scenes of shooting nutria, skinning nutria, cooking & eating nutria, and piles & piles of nutria corpses that pay out at $5/tail which are chopped off by the dozens onscreen.
DisneyNature this ain't. While we get eyefuls of ambling, muddy furballs, there's far more extermination than examination, and the cultural philosophizing outweighs any scientific introspection. Though the doc is well-made, there's some heavy bait & switch at play, and unexpected content that may prove shocking to the unforewarned.