By John Corrado

The 2024 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 25th to May 5th in Toronto

In their documentary Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted, co-directors Isaac Gale and Ryan Olson take us into the world of Swamp Dogg, an aging musician with a storied, unconventional career. Born Jerry Williams, he adopted the moniker Swamp Dogg partway through his music career to focus on putting out a series of quirky, singular recordings (with comical album covers glimpsed throughout the film).

Swamp Dogg now lives with fellow musicians Guitar Shorty and Moogstar (who is always accompanied by the plush monkey hanging around his neck) at a house in California, where the three men chill, create music, and reminisce about their careers. Instead of being a traditional music biodoc, Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted is more of a hangout film, built around scenes of the guys sitting around the backyard pool, as an artist works on painting a design on the bottom (the title is literal, with the progress being amusingly charted throughout the film).

Friends like Tom Kenny and Jonny Knoxville drop by, adding to the free-flowing, anything goes nature of the film, which includes animated and AI-generated touches that add to the trippy feel of it all (like a hand-drawn Scooby Doo sequence recounting Moogstar’s spiritual encounter in a graveyard). It works as a quirky and enjoyable portrait of the eccentric Swamp Dogg and his friends.

Film Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)

Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted screens as part of the 2024 Hot Docs Film Festival, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here.