Reviews

As a GenXer, I absolutely loved the first 15 minutes of this episode with Cal's backstory complete with a killer soundtrack. A sweet and innocent Molly Ringwald storyline which culminates in a long-awaited first kiss from two soulmates who deserve to live happily ever after, but just as fast as Cher can slap us across the face with "SNAP OUT OF IT!", we end with the scene of Jake Ryan getting the call from Caroline that she's pregnant with his baby and we remember what show we are watching where there can be no joy or happy endings (yet?) I have to confess that I replayed the first 15 minutes a few times, but stopped it just before the phone rings.

The next episode where Cal returns to the gay bar is especially heartbreaking and throws more cold water on episode 3's brief moment of optimism because Cal's not only missing Derek, but also lamenting his lost youth and the might-have-been. In another universe, Derek might have been waiting for him at the bar when he arrives as The Thompson Twins' "If You Were Here" plays on the juke box, but I digress.

*Footnote, the scene where he is thrown out of the bar is perhaps my favorite scene from the entire series, complete with disco ball.

This series started out strong with episode 1 and it totally hooks you in. I loved it at episode one. Episode 2 was great, and then at episode 3 it goes downhill. I thought maybe it was that middle episode thing where there is one or two bad ones to get to the finish, but episode 4 was just at bad with repetitive situations that felt like episode filler. At episode 5 it just jumped the shark and was downright annoying with writing with situations that weren't believable and seemed like plot devices to string out this series for an 8 episode commitment to Warner Bros. I got so annoyed that I skipped to the last episode out of curiosity how they wrapped this turkey up. The character was just as annoying at the last episode and obviously hadn't had any kind of arc and was still acting the same as she did in the first episode. I went back and hate-watched the other episodes later while doing other things so that I wouldn't totally waste valuable time on this.

This film starts out promising, but loses its way halfway through in which it basically becomes the Transformers. At that point, the film relies less on story and more on back and forth fighting special EFX which quite frankly look more like something on a Playstation than a Hollywood blockbuster. Bring earplugs as a lot of these scenes rely on loud sound effects and after 3/4 of the film you are truly exhausted from having to endure it. One thing that I couldn't help but notice is the scenes of planes going into Metropolis/Manhattan buildings and then having them collapse on people who are just standing there gaping mouthed. If the filmmakers were going to be so insensitive about 9/11, then at least get it right and show what really happens when planes go into buildings that end up falling on people. One element that doesn't get developed is the attraction between Lois and Superman. Maybe I am not an expert on the comic, but wasn't there an ongoing sexual tension between the two? At 2 hours, the film starts to desperately try and wrap itself up to finish at which point the cast start to finish each other's sentences about how the strategy to defeat the enemy will work as if all of a sudden they are experts on worm holes and the inner workings of alien spacecraft from Krypton. After wasting half of the movie's runtime on the said video game fighting filler, the bad guy is finished off with a simple sleeper hold (oh gee, why didn't I think of this 90 minutes into the story?). No great finish here.