Reviews

Okay, I know some like it (for reasons that I cannot fathom) but I did not. It wasn't all that funny or thought-provoking. It was supposed to speak to our social disparity between the haves (with money) and the have nots (the workers on the yacht) but it just came off to me as bland, boring and quite dumb. The first part with yaya and the ripped dude (never even did learn his name) was like watching grass grow - boring and insipid. She is selfish, vain and manipulative, he is the epitome of today's emasculated male. Yeah, that makes for good entertainment (enter sarcastic emoji here).

Next we are on the yacht where we are introduced to pampered, spoiled rich people who can never be told no, stuffing themselves with food most of us would only eat if starving, guzzling expensive champagne then getting seasick, which treats us to watching them throw up all over the yacht for five minutes. Wow - riveting! (Now where did I put that sarcastic emoji...)

Next? The yacht blows up. Uh huh.

Now we're on the island where only a handful of survivors have made it to shore. Of course it is a mix of rich and working class. Oh here comes the big point of the story - role reversal! As one of the workers, who is apparently the only one capable of making a fire, catching and cooking food is now the most valuable person in their group and now calls all the shots. (yawn)

Then the ending which no one gets and has to google to try and figure it out only for google to tell you it's left to the viewer to make their own conclusion.

Ok then, my conclusion is that I wasted a lot of time watching this drek waiting for something, anything even remotely entertaining to happen, but ultimately I waited in vain.

First, I really wanted to like this movie. I am a huge Allison Janney fan, but even she could not pull off this mess of a movie.

It is shot almost entirely in the dark and in the rain and often you can't see a thing going on. When it's not almost pitch black, the light is so low you still can't see well. So watching a movie shot mostly in almost no to very little light is not an enjoyable experience.

Then there is Smollett. She is abysmal in this. Her acting is flat and dull. She says her lines like she is reading them off a page. Truly bad acting and very poor casting.

Speaking of poor casting, I hate to say it but I feel the usually great Janney was a poor choice for this role. And quite frankly, her acting didn't seem up to par either.

Then there is the plot. It never comes off as believable. Too contrived and too poorly written an acted. There is little to no build-up of character development so for much of this movie we have no idea what is driving some of the characters. I guess they were going for suspense, but it backfired in a big way. Instead we feel blind-sided to learn that the abductor is Janney's son and that he wants to kill his mother, ex-wife and his little daughter. Worse, we learn everything at once. So instead of getting bits and pieces of the story dolled out to us as it develops, we feel confused in the beginning with no clue what is driving the characters to suddenly having it all dumped in our lap at once.

And I have to say, watching a mother and son beat the crap out of each other and try to kill each other is not exactly movie entertainment. It is uncomfortable and unpleasant to watch.

Bottom line? The whole movie is really just a train wreck. I wouldn't recommend it and I for sure won't watch it twice.

Jeff Bridges is phenomenal in this role. He is portraying a 73 year old man who has had a pretty rough life. So yes, he's going to grunt and groan. That is what happens when your battered body is in its 7th decade. And John Lithgow is his usual fantastic and nails his role. The character of Zoe brought a bit of interest, but she is discarded so quickly and uneventfully at the end that you realize her character was never necessary to the story and you feel as if our time was wasted on her being there at all. The rest of the cast does a great job as well.

This show really had me hooked, up until about the fourth episode. That is where it starts to become so muddled and bogged down you start to lose the thread of what is even going on. And it doesn't help that too many scenes are done in almost total darkness. I have never understood why some movies and shows do this. You can portray nighttime and STILL provide enough light to allow your audience to actually see what is going on. There was one particular scene, with no dialogue, that lasted several minutes in one of the episodes that literally had us sitting watching a black screen the entire time without knowing what was going on at all. So big thumbs down to whoever thought that was a good idea.

Simply based on Bridges and Lithgow alone I gave this 7 stars. They are worth watching despite the flaws in this series. But oh, the disappointment because this could have been so much better. The ending was so bland, so anti-climactic, so boring we were left wondering what the point of this whole series was to begin with. If all he wanted was his daughter back, then why all the other stuff we went through for seven episodes to achieve that?

Honestly, Bridges and Lithgow elevated this as best they could. But the decline of the storyline beginning around episode 4 and the ending ultimately lets this series down in a big, big way.