In this talk we review recent developments in the study of $U(N)$ Chern Simons theories coupled to matter in the fundamental. The theories we study are not necessarily supersymmetric. These theories are interesting for several reasons. First, it turns out to be possible to exactly compute several quantities in these models in the t'Hooft large N limit at all values of the t'Hooft coupling $\lambda$. Second, these exact results strongly suggest that previously known Giveon-Kutasov type strong weak coupling dualities for supersymmetric theories extend to nonsupersymmetric theories. Third, several of these theories have conjectured bulk dual descriptions governed by Vasiliev's equations. Finally, theories with two gauge groups and matter in the bifundamental representation effectively reduce to fundamental models in the limit that one of the two gauge groups is much larger than the other, and so also have known Vasiliev dual descriptions. In the context of the N=6 ABJ theory, this observation allows us to find a Vasiliev dual of a field theory with a known string dual, and so realize Vasiliev theory as a limit of string theory.