Reviews

Overall this is a quite respectful homage to the spy films of the 1960s, from the set design to the camera work to the acting to the dialogue to the period costumes (other than the at-times amazingly inept mistakes with American military uniforms). The leads, from Dalby to Jean to Harry Palmer himself, are excellent. I actually thought the resemblance to Michael Caine by the lead was more cheeky than slavish. A lot of it was good authentic fun.

However, the modern need to "raise the stakes" of story-telling in order to grab the viewer ends up keeping this series from being the masterpiece it could have been. The Odeon Marquee of "The Manchurian Candidate" at the beginning was a clever harbinger of the brainwashing that Palmer would eventually endure. But the unnecessary push to go beyond the book and make the story a full on attempted assassination of the U. S. President came far too close to the familiar "jump the shark" trap of TV series. Not trusting the narrative of Deighton's book and the whole working class dingy nature of spying was a mistake. The constant threat of nuclear war hovering over Cold War espionage should have been quite enough. There simply was no need to make it a full-blown attempt on President Kennedy's life.

I still have a lot of reasons to think highly of this mini-series, and would personally like to see the same cast and production team attempt another Deighton masterpiece (Why hasn't SPY STORY ever been done?). But could we trust the audience a little more next time, and avoid throwing the kitchen sink at the story climax?

I have been a huge fan of Steve Martin for almost half a century (yes, BEFORE his big explosion into stand-up superstardom in the late 70s), but I had struggled with his descent into bland safe formula movies in the last decade. So this series has been a joy to watch, not only for its embrace of wit and sophistication, but for a number of opportunities Martin takes advantage of to slip into his brilliant physical comedy. His comedic genius was particularly realized in his drugged out performance in last year's finale, but he has several wonderful moments during the murder reveal in this episode.

Which brings us to the "big reveal" in this episode. It is quite inventive and captivating, and plays out the "twists" in ways that contain both broad and subtle comedic gold. There is even a moment where Martin gets too dizzy and points at the wrong person to say "You did it!" It's a wonderfully sly commentary on all the misdirections happening during the scene.

Of course, the ending has to tie up some loose ends after the actual ending that feel a bit besides the point of the episode, but them's the breaks. However, when "Poppy" slips in to her supposed "Oklahoma accent", it is quite painful to listen to how bad and off the mark it is. But then, I actually live in Oklahoma, so...

It is commendable that Seth MacFarlane, given the opportunity to indulge in a series he is free to take in any direction he wants, is willing to explore deeper issues and take chances that he doesn't have to take. The core of this episode explores concepts of emotion, empathy, and the flaws of absolutist thinking that are well worth exploring. The acting here is also at times a step up from some previous episodes.

However, when I first saw that this episode was almost 80 minutes long, I groaned inwardly, expecting the probability that the long length was unjustified. I certainly wouldn't have minded being proven wrong, but unfortunately I wasn't. An excellent hour-long episode was padded with a subplot that cost 20 extra minutes...for no good reason.

The idea of a matriarchal society that treats men as inferior is worthy of its own episode, not as a subplot. But more than that, the gambit of pretending the captain and all other men in the crew of the ORVILLE are menial underlings and women have all the command positions was both pointless and obviously doomed to failure. Were there no human spaceships available at least under the ACTUAL command of a woman, if not mainly crewed by women in command positions? Seems far-fetched that there aren't, considering the open-minded attitudes portrayed by this future human society. So why the labored switch here, which even in comedy terms had limited play? Not to mention that the inevitable reveal of the subterfuge was met with totally justifiable outrage, as above all else, it was a LIE. Way to negotiate with alien cultures, guys.

Still, the core of the episode was not only well-played, but it felt like an excellent examination of plot points which had been honestly set up over the course of the entire series. So, in the end, this episode is still well worth viewing.

I have to say this is an astounding movie to me. Not simply because it looks far better than a $7000 movie has any right to look (even if a distributor spent a hundred times that to "clean it up").

This movie takes the ultimate advantage of it's budget to present a time travel story that is, in a way that I find rather unnerving, the most "realistic" portrayal of time travel I have ever seen. The "non-acting" of the actors, the shaky (yet sometimes quite sophisticated) use of the camera, the odd way the story plays out as semi-coherent...this film plays out as if it were actually made by it's protagonist (which, of course, it was). But what we discover by learning the story through "Aaron" is that the final result of time travel is, quite simply, madness.

I had such a feeling of dread as this film unfolded. From the moment we see Aaron and Abe first watch the "other" Abe at the U-Haul facility, the full ramifications of what time travel really could lead to started to crystallize. It's not just the idea that God-like powers have been placed in the hands of flawed human beings...it's the concept that flawed human beings are continually pulled like magnets toward the temptation to trap themselves inside a nightmarish existence, for the most "logical" of reasons. Not only that, but the insidious way the ripple effect of tampering with reality through time travel spread and spread meant that, ultimately, no one would be safe from such a disastrous invention. To me, somehow the most terrifying moment of this film is when the wife talks about getting an exterminator to take care of the "sound in the attic." As soon as I realized what that sound was, it shook me.

I will be thinking about this "imperfect" film for some time to come.

I have been a Peter Sellers fan for four decades. It is my opinion that Sellers is the greatest film comedian of the 20th century. Therefore, when I first began to hear the stories about the dark side of the man, I was, like many others, at first unable to accept that a man who made me laugh so hard could be as terrible as some writers would have me believe. As I read biography after biography of the man, part of me would search for any obvious bias on the part of the writer that would allow me to dismiss some or all of their negative takes on Sellers. And yes, I found some degree of bias, sensationalism, and even incompetence on the part of all those Sellers bio writers. I also found enough collaborative aspects to the writings to be able to determine that, in the end, at least some of the negative statements about the man were probably true.

And now, at last, we have the first true biopic about Peter Sellers. And for the first time, I feel I have some sort of solid perspective on both the man and on those who, like "the blind men and the elephant" fable, have been attempting to draw conclusions on who and what Peter Sellers was. Wouldn't you know it would be the film medium itself that would be necessary to bring the man into some sort of coherent focus? First of all, the format of the film itself was a brilliant choice in telling the Peter Sellers story. In a way as bizarre as the man himself, it appears that filming the biopic as though it were one of the very light comedy movies that the man made his mark in seems to have become the only way to bring the larger truth of the man to life. Then you have the fine performances by Emily Watson, Charlize Theron, John Lithgow, and most especially Geoffrey Rush as Sellers himself. Because we know the real people these actors play all too well, it again becomes necessary for the light comedy genre to be used so the actors are allowed the room to maneuver in to tell the story in a substantial way.

And finally, what does this film tell us about Peter Sellers? When you are wedded to your own bias, you will reach subjective personal conclusions about that. You can say the film shows Sellers was a monster, or merely an empty vessel as he himself claimed, and then use these conclusions to attack the film or use it as further proof that the man should be dismissed from serious discussion as a part of the history of film. But if you watch the film with some degree of objectivity, and realize the significance of why the filmmakers told the story in the genre they did, you will reach a more fascinating conclusion: Peter Sellers was so brilliant at playing the fools he played in all those films because, in the end, Peter Sellers was the Fool himself. A Fool who knew, deep in his soul, that he was a Fool, and who despised that fact even as he brought so many legendary cinematic Fools to life...while inexorably continuing to live the life of the Fool. It is a horribly ironic joke that the only accurately "psychic" moment the manipulative medium Maurice Woodruff has about Sellers is when he pulls the Fool card out of the Tarot deck. And what does he do? He hides the card. It's the only true insight he has into Sellers, so it's the only vision of Sellers he doesn't share with Sellers. Such could only happen to a Fool.

Did all the events in Sellers' life happen exactly as they are portrayed in the film? That's not the point. The point is that Sellers so craved the world's approval that he was willing, in a way no other actor has been capable of, to put his whole Foolish heart and soul into comic characters that were so memorable because, incredibly enough, they were really the man who was playing them. And the terrible cost of this was paid not only by those around the man, but by the man himself.

And that, finally, was the Tragicomedy that was Peter Sellers.