A documentary reclamation project, Feels Good Man tries to rescue Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character created by Matt Furie for a 2005 comic called Boy’s Club, from the Internet trolls and hate groups who bizarrely co-opted him as a symbol and mascot during the Trump era. Director Arthur Jones delivers a fascinating deep dive into meme culture, tracing how something like this can happen so quickly in our viral age. Furie himself is something of a sad subject – the poor guy just seems to want to make his art and be left alone – and so the framing of this as an inspirational tale doesn’t entirely stick. But it’s still valuable as a time-capsule artifact, and the animated segments featuring Pepe – done by Jones, Jenna Caravello, and Khylin Woodrow – bring a welcome, genial playfulness, thereby doing some reclaiming of their own.
