{"id":543445,"date":"2026-03-18T00:46:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T00:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/543445\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T00:46:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T00:46:12","slug":"penis-enlargement-documentary-curves-left-of-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/543445\/","title":{"rendered":"Penis Enlargement Documentary Curves Left of Center"},"content":{"rendered":"

What if you could up your penis size a notch or two with a few spritzes of a needle? OK, it\u2019s not that simple, but the PhaloFILL procedure highlighted by filmmaker Daniel Lombroso in his latest documentary, \u201cManhood<\/a>,\u201d aims to make penile enlargement procedures about as easy (and commonplace) as Botox.<\/p>\n

Dallas entrepreneur Bill Moore, who is quite proudly Botoxed and fillered-up himself, patented the minimally invasive procedure (don\u2019t call it plastic surgery!), promising to make insecure men feel whole again. Or at least a bit thicker, anyway. Lombroso\u2019s skillfully constructed film<\/a> is funny in the best and worst ways: funny because it\u2019s in on the joke but \u201cfunny\u201d because of how the majority of the audience might feel embarrassed just by watching it. The director understands the humor inherent to this situation, but he also understands the sad parts, the well of male insecurity it\u2019s all coming from \u2014 locating that especially in an OnlyFans camboy who comes to Moore after a catastrophic procedure at a rival clinic has left him with a dick full of nodules.<\/p>\n

\"'Sinners'<\/a> \"V<\/a> <\/p>\n

Penis size is a major psychic hang-up for men across both the straight and gay communities; as a gay man, I can attest to these particular pressures within a community where both partners have penises, and a community that already primatizes physical attributes over the inner self. Moore\u2019s practice, as \u201cManhood<\/a>\u201d illustrates, has turned small genitalia (or even those not especially small, even though the body-dysmorphic men they\u2019re attached to insist they are because of society, etc., etc.) into a growing business while seeking to universalize the dick-size complex. \u201cEvery man wants a bigger penis,\u201d the bio-hacking mogul says at one point. Do they? Using hyaluronic acid \u2014 which is the same stuff I put on my face every morning \u2014 he\u2019s ready to give you the big penis of your dreams, and an even bigger bill.<\/p>\n

One of Moore\u2019s clients, endearingly self-defeating Arizona-resident Ruben, is a father of five who is under serious financial strain due to gambling addiction and also perhaps a penile enhancement addiction. He\u2019s a repeat customer of Moore\u2019s, having spent tens of thousands on multiple procedures that \u2014 this is important \u2014 have not increased the length of his penis but certainly the girth several sizes over. Penis lengthening is not something any doctor wishing to avoid malpractice has successfully figured out, despite grotesque procedures in ancient times, from mechanical lengthening to snake bites, that purported to do so. <\/p>\n

\"'Manhood'\"\u2018Manhood\u2019SXSW<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, though Ruben\u2019s wife was plenty happy with his God-given girth, her husband (who has children with multiple women) keeps going back to Dr. Moore for yet another below-the-belt tune-up. \u201cManhood\u201d is loud and clear in its uncensored depiction of these injections into men\u2019s members as they drop their drawers and splay prostrate on the operating table. Don\u2019t forget the gasp-inducing images of dicks mangled by one Dr. Loria in New York City, who has proudly refused malpractice insurance but allegedly left a number of men deformed after pumping them up with chunky-looking filler. Lombroso applies the same close-up care as he did in his 2022 documentary \u201cWhite Noise,\u201d unflinchingly gazing into the rise of the alt-right movement and neo-Nazis in America. \u201cManhood\u201d isn\u2019t reinventing the form \u2014 even as the men it follows are reinventing theirs \u2014 but it\u2019s super charming in its straightforward aims at tackling taboo material.<\/p>\n

Contrasting Ruben\u2019s heterosexual working-class charm, meek-mannered David Smith, a former OnlyFans camboy turned Florida nursing student, is one such emotional and physical casualty of Dr. Loria\u2019s alleged malpractice. (Loria, by the way, is an unapologetic talking head in this documentary, too.) Already coming from a devoutly conservative family that rejected his homosexuality, the tight-bodied, petite David felt insecure about his dick size while becoming a fast-rising star on OnlyFans. He\u2019s been left with what Dr. Moore describes as \u201cthe penis of an alien.\u201d Moore not only offers David the promise to fix his penis, he also invites him into his bed to be the apparent third in Moore\u2019s relationship with his partner. The three are seen sharing a hotel bed while traveling to see a specialist who will need to perform drastic surgery on David\u2019s member, and it\u2019s not clear what Lambroso, or his camera, thinks of this arrangement, which is why this decidedly non-invasive, nonjudgmental documentary works so well.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can fill your penis with filler, but I cannot fill the whole in your heart,\u201d Moore tells his patient\/lover David. The patient-doctor relationship here is certainly ethically questionable, but at what point are ethics just sort of tossed out the window when we\u2019re talking dicks? Still, Lombroso takes his subject and his subjects seriously, and treats them with respect. David, marveling near-tears at the results of his reconstructive surgery, makes for a moving moment \u2014 who knew a documentary about penile enhancement could touch a nerve and the heart, too? <\/p>\n

Grade: B+<\/p>\n

\u201cManhood\u201d premiered at SXSW<\/a> 2026. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.<\/p>\n

Want to stay up to date on IndieWire\u2019s film\u00a0reviews<\/a>\u00a0and critical thoughts?\u00a0Subscribe here<\/a>\u00a0to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings \u2014\u00a0all only available to subscribers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What if you could up your penis size a notch or two with a few spritzes of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,1554,212036,337,209,50926],"class_list":["post-543445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-manhood","tag-movies","tag-reviews","tag-sxsw"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}