Pubdate: Fri, 19 Feb 2016 Source: New York Times (NY) Copyright: 2016 The New York Times Company Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html Website: http://www.nytimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298 Author: Neil Genzlinger REVIEW: 'ROLLING PAPERS' FOLLOWS THE DENVER POST ON THE MARIJUANA BEAT Rolling Papers It's not exactly "Spotlight," but it is about journalists. "Rolling Papers," a documentary, chronicles the response of The Denver Post to the legalization of marijuana in Colorado: The news organization appointed a marijuana editor, Ricardo Baca. The film follows him and several of his writers throughout 2014 as they define their new beat. The novelty of watching reporters get high so they can write reviews of the newly legal products gets old quickly, but that's really just a sideshow in this film by Mitch Dickman. Of more interest are the substantive subjects Mr. Baca and his crew look into, like false claims by dealers about potency. Especially compelling is the phenomenon of parents who bring seriously ill children to Colorado in the belief that marijuana is the cure for what ails them. The film, though, has a maddeningly short attention span, delving just far enough into one subject to whet your appetite before flitting on to the next. That approach extends to a secondary theme: whether the pot beat is just a gimmick, a desperate effort to attract attention and readers. That possibility is raised but never really examined. So the two most likely audiences for this documentary - people interested in marijuana and people interested in the news business - will probably find it shallower than they'd hoped. It's full of discussion points but lets them go by undiscussed. Rolling Papers Not rated Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom