I watched this because my parents were watching it and I though I would give it a real chance. You can't judge a show by its promos, you know?
Not really my usual thing but it could have been alright. In fact, it could have been kind of wonderful.
But for a very specific reason it just doesn't work. For a very specific reason, this is just irritating and that reason is that the narration kills it.
Now narration in audiovisual medio is not categorically bad, in fact it can provide a wonderful layered story telling (Notes on a Scandal, Forrest Gump, Badlands, Little Children, Babe) but this is the worst kind of narration.
It brings absolutely nothing. It is a lazy excuse to not tell the story visually. Everything that this to Watch-with-Mother-esque narratrix tells us could have and should have been conveyed with visual cues which have enriched the experience exponentially. What we have instead is an obnoxious and really condescending pile of saccharine that gives no credit at all to its audience. A fascinating little puzzle-story instead becomes a televisual beach read.
I have not read the book but I have every impression that the work-shy adapted screen-writer copy and pasted a bunch of prose passages because they felt they had better things to do. Or maybe they were pressured by over-zealous executives, who knows?
It is trite, self-satisfied, sophomoric, pseudo-intellectual drivel which I can imagine is written in bulk to allow pool-side home-makers to think they high-brow readers.
I sort of want to try an see past this crippling flaw and talk about the show that lies beneath. Without the gimmick, it's a fairly typical period pseudo-biography of the sort that haunts book clubs along with margaritas but a lyrical and cinematic visual approach would have and could have made this sort of engaging.
"Literary Groundhog day", one critic called it. (Off-putting). A better analogy is the Double Life of Veronique and a better one still is Kenny from South Park but points for originality must be allowed.
There were points where I thought that a more subtle approach to the editing might have really helped but that's me being pedantic. The expressionistic depiction of death was refreshingly stylish and justified cinematically but those non-diegetic snowflakes were just pretentious as was the use of old-timey film in both the title sequence and in the depiction of the battle field.
Tonally, we get sentimental family trash instead of the pathos this could have had. "My Life as a Dog" could have taught them a lot.
Not really my usual thing but it could have been alright. In fact, it could have been kind of wonderful.
But for a very specific reason it just doesn't work. For a very specific reason, this is just irritating and that reason is that the narration kills it.
Now narration in audiovisual medio is not categorically bad, in fact it can provide a wonderful layered story telling (Notes on a Scandal, Forrest Gump, Badlands, Little Children, Babe) but this is the worst kind of narration.
It brings absolutely nothing. It is a lazy excuse to not tell the story visually. Everything that this to Watch-with-Mother-esque narratrix tells us could have and should have been conveyed with visual cues which have enriched the experience exponentially. What we have instead is an obnoxious and really condescending pile of saccharine that gives no credit at all to its audience. A fascinating little puzzle-story instead becomes a televisual beach read.
I have not read the book but I have every impression that the work-shy adapted screen-writer copy and pasted a bunch of prose passages because they felt they had better things to do. Or maybe they were pressured by over-zealous executives, who knows?
It is trite, self-satisfied, sophomoric, pseudo-intellectual drivel which I can imagine is written in bulk to allow pool-side home-makers to think they high-brow readers.
I sort of want to try an see past this crippling flaw and talk about the show that lies beneath. Without the gimmick, it's a fairly typical period pseudo-biography of the sort that haunts book clubs along with margaritas but a lyrical and cinematic visual approach would have and could have made this sort of engaging.
"Literary Groundhog day", one critic called it. (Off-putting). A better analogy is the Double Life of Veronique and a better one still is Kenny from South Park but points for originality must be allowed.
There were points where I thought that a more subtle approach to the editing might have really helped but that's me being pedantic. The expressionistic depiction of death was refreshingly stylish and justified cinematically but those non-diegetic snowflakes were just pretentious as was the use of old-timey film in both the title sequence and in the depiction of the battle field.
Tonally, we get sentimental family trash instead of the pathos this could have had. "My Life as a Dog" could have taught them a lot.
