Ty Watches "Untold Raygun: Breaking Badly"

Yesterday I sat down and watched the new Raygun mini documentary on Netflix. This is part of the "Untold" series, and boy oh boy, this may be the best one they have done yet. I have written about other "Untold" movies before, but none of them have had this kind of an effect on me.

For people out there that don't know who Raygun is, she is the Australian breakdancer that represented her country in the 2024 Paris Olympics. This was the first year that they made breakdancing an Olympic sport, and Raygun left quite the impression on the world. This doc tells us how she started, how she ended up in the Olympics and how, after the games, her life kind of unraveled a bit. Most people know who Raygun is due to her performance. It was pretty bad. She became a meme. Her performance went viral. She got roasted by a bunch of people. But this movie tells us how it got to this moment. We got the behind the scenes stuff. We see how she worked her way up to the top in Australia, and how she got herself into the Olympics. We also get to meet the people in her life who have helped her get there.

The first person we meet, and who leaves an everlasting impression on the viewer, is her husband Sammy, aka Sammy Sex. Sammy is her coach, but he was a breakdancer before he ever met Raygun. He has been into that whole world since he was a kid. Does that mean he is a great dancer? No. But he does have some small skills, and boy does he love Raygun. This guy is obsessed with her, but they are married, so no big deal. But the way he describes her dancing, especially in the Olympics, the words he uses, the beaming in his eyes, he thinks way too highly of her. Raygun has skills as well, but she is not some otherworldly dancer either. They both move so oddly. They look so much slower and less coordinated than the other breakdancers. They look stiff and just not that great. But man do they love one another.

We also meet some of the other breakdancers in Australia, and man do they have an opinion on Raygun. They always say something nice about her, but then button it with how much they despised her performance at the Olympics. I do also want to say, hearing white people with Australian accents call themselves "b-boys" and "b-girls" is one of the funniest things I have ever seen on tv. And the fact that they do that, with a straight face mind you, makes it all the more funny. And seeing some of the old routines, watching Raygun and Sammy dance back in the day, was one of the more cringe things you can see on tv. I had to look away a few times because I was embarrassed for them. I know they have no issues with it, they truly love to dance, but it just made me squirm on my couch.

The doc does go into some great detail about the toll and the aftermath of the Olympics as well. That's all well and good, but that was not why I turned this on. I do feel bad for what she and her husband and mom and dad had to endure, but I would have been better off not knowing all of that. I get that they have to do this, especially in a documentary, but it made this movie a bit more depressing than I wanted it to be. I was also not that big of a fan when they showed her working out after punching her ticket to the Olympics. It felt hollow and, while she got stronger, it did not help her all that much during the Olympics. And when they got to the Olympics, that was when the movie really started to groove. Seeing all of this again, but knowing about the backstory stuff, that made it even wilder seeing all this stuff. Raygun did not give a solid performance. She was pretty bad actually. Seeing her do the sprinkler, do a kangaroo walk, yawn at a competitor who is beating her ass, it was nuts. She didn't score a single point during her run. She was beaten by her three opponents by a score of 54-0. That's crazy. Raygun didn't score a single point. Not one of the judges deemed anything she did good enough to give her one solitary point. Yikes. And seeing where she is now, seeing how she kind of climbed out from the abyss was a good thing, I still wished they did more of the dance stuff.

I turned this on to laugh, as bad as that may sound. And while it got a good amount of laughs from me, I didn't need all the other stuff. I recommend checking this out if you have any memory of Raygun, but maybe skip all the stuff that feels like it is going to get emotional. 

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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