Mark Schwab over at Diamond In The Rough Films reviewed Traceroute. He liked it and gave us 3.5/4 stars!
I had blocked out my inner-nerd and all it took was an Austrian to melt down the hard water stains on my psyche and embrace it again.
The Austrian is one Johannes Grenzfurthner (going to Ctrl+C that last name right now) and he has made a simply wonderful documentary in TRACEROUTE – a lovely ode to nerdom and all things geeky. Flying into San Francisco and travelling East to New York City by van, Grenzfurthner stops at many points along the way (such as Area 51 and Stan Winston Studios) while giving us a little history, chatting with the local folks and opening up about his own personal nerd journey.
This doc works in some very unconventional ways, not the least of which is our plucky protagonist. Grenzfurthner is an absolute charmer as our host and his narration is note-perfect (the accent is so cool in that Werner Herzog kind of way). It’s really rare in a documentary about a not-that-famous person where you become almost instantly won-over and invested in their personal journey.