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Reviews
The King of Queens (1998)
Avoid like poison
I've watched couple of episodes. Only the Pilot being kind of a tolerable. After that, it seems like someone said: well, make the wife much more annoying and vicious. Though, even in the pilot she was basically playing mother, rather than a wife.
OK, do we get something out of this show?
1. Turn your brain off an relax? No, it's stressful, you're basically watching two people fight and pick at each other all the time. Their lack of communication and ignorance is astounding.
2. An positive outlook, something of an essence, a form wisdom, social commentary? No, not really. Their approach to problems is catastrophic. Anyone trying to even remotely imitate it is doomed, sure to be alone and unhappy forever. I'll come back to this.
For now, here's an example: husband is clearly insecure. In one episode, he's afraid wife might have an affair. Rightfully so. She's brought home, by a rich boos, in a Jaguar. Late at night. He try to talk to her about his insecurities. Her reaction? She laughs at him, humiliate him, and does not take him serious at all! When his insecurities grows more, he makes a fool out of himself, and the of course apologizes! The end.
Let me address something deeper now. This is not the first sitcom of this kind. There are many. Almost all are like that, to be honest. How come? Let me return to the second point. This is purely destructive show, disguised as a "comedy". Like a poison, in a candy wrapper. Pulls people in and teaches them a terrible model of a relationship. Watch this, watch it a lot, and it will teach your all the wrong values. I'm sorry, what we consume, has an influence on us. Like food, even more so, things we watch.
If you're a woman, this will teach you, to be a vicious human being, to threat your husband in the best case as a kid, in the worst as your enemy, unworthy of any consideration or respect.
If you're a man, this will teach you, to be a pathetic looser, who have to crawl and apologize for your own existence. You shouldn't. You're worthy of respect and dignity.
So, this, this thing corrupts minds. Destroy families, marries and lives. It's truly horrifying thing, because it's packed in such a family friendly, innocent, wrapper. It's so precise in its underlying message though, that it's on a level with a worst kind of propaganda.
I'm part of the generation who grew up with this dirt. It's scary. It's so frightening what TV did to us, our society. No wonder things are completely upside down in 2017. We need to do better.
1408 (2007)
So many questions, no answers.
What's wrong with this movie:
Divorced couple, dead child.
Skeptic proved wrong. Worried person who knows the truth, trying to convince stubborn skeptic not to go "there". No matter how many people died "there", how odd everything seems, skeptic still skeptical. Very strange things start happening, skeptic still skeptical. No way out, skeptic is trapped, but still skeptical, for a second, then in total panic, out of his mind, unable to conduct a single constructive idea.
Many cheap quick scenes in style of: "look out, it's right behind you".
Plot makes no sense, and NOT trying to make any sense.
Character(s) are not developed at all, and you cannot really care about any of them.
Evil room?
- What in the room is evil? Walls, furniture, wallpaper? Air between walls?
- Why is the room so evil? Is there a reason?
- When the room became evil?
- If walls are indeed evil, are only inner sides of them in such sinister mood, or does neighboring rooms share a little bit of this deviousness?
- Does the room profit from being so evil somehow or is it just sadistically enjoying, when people are suffering?
- What happens if you'd unscrew all doors, replace outer wall with a big window, and have a little garden there? Will the room still be evil?
- It seems room has a total and unbelievable control over the main character, preventing him from escaping in any imaginable way. It goes so far to make him believe he escaped, and construct full outer environment, people, (meaningful) conversations, etc... BUT, it cannot prevent him from starting the fire?
- How the fire damaged the room anyway? Furniture and wallpapers were burned, so one of those two was actually evil? It wasn't walls then? If only management would know what, they could replace wallpapers and furniture and problem would be solved. But, what if someone would bough part of that furniture, lets say bed? Would he have an evil bed then?
Finally the main character die. He is about to be reunited with his daughter, who he loves and misses terribly, but before he goes, he'll take his time, scare the hell out of the hotel manager and stand in that evil room, just for fun. Make sense.
My Life Without Me (2003)
Predictable, shallow, silly, selfish and irritating.
I suppose this movie is trying to be deep and insightful, but oh God, how shallow it is. There's no message which you could take from it. No character to which you could relate - they all seems hollow and unreal, they're like puppets in hands of someone with a very limited imagination.
Ann - the main character is a young and (so far) healthy individual. She have two little daughters and a loving husband. After getting the news that she has only two months to live, she make some interesting decisions. First of all, she refuse to get a second opinion and she refuse any treatment. Her initial reaction is, to sit, cry a little bit, then ask for a candy. Her next action is, to write an obligatory "things to do before I die" list, on which she put things which I can split to following groups:
1. Predictable: she decide that she'll tell her daughters that she love them every day, visit father in Jail, have a picnic with family, and say what she's (really) thinking. We don't see much of this in the movie.
2. Shallow: get some false nails (do something with hair), smoke and drink as much as she want. Those are the most interesting things she can imagine, when she know she have only two months on this earth? How sad
3. Silly: find Don (husband) a new wife and record birthday messages for her daughters, for every year until they eighteen. I don't understand, why looking for a new wife for husband? He's not retard, he's good looking, caring young man, obviously he can find a new wife. And I suppose he should be able to choose her himself, when he feels the time is right. And why create some sad, crying messages, which her daughters supposed to listen, on every birthday, until they're eighteen!? Wouldn't that be kind of a depressing on birthdays? Why not just tell the family what's going on, and allow them to go through this with her?
4. Selfish: make love with other men to see what it is like, make someone fall in love with her. She have so little time to live, yet she desires not to spend it with family, but rather seek an affair in which one of her hopes is, that (not she) but the other person will fall in love with her. Why? She's already very much loved, her husband is portrayed as such a tender person; if he find out what she did, he'll be hurt, her daughters will be hurt. The person who she have an afar with, if he'll indeed fall in love with her, will be hurt at the end. She herself will be hurt. Hurting whole bunch of people, just so that she'll satisfy her ego and "see what it is like".
And this is how the movie is, above all we just watch her running to her new lover - even if that means leaving kids with a complete stranger and constantly lying to husband. We don't see how she's dealing with sickens, because beside throwing up occasionally, there's no signs that she's actually sick. We don't see that she'd be dealing with any mental challenges concerning the fact that she'll soon die, - her challenges are, above all, those of any adulterer: not being caught, finding time to see lover.
But even for a movie about adulterer, this one is very shallow, as she's facing no moral dilemma whatsoever. All seems so natural for her, almost as her family wouldn't consist of real people, but rather soulless dolls, being there purely to play a side role in her life. Funny enough, this is what her new lover becomes very soon too. So, she's selfish, shallow control-freak, unable to care about or love anyone but herself. Well, my guess would be then, that her illness must be some karmic balancing - hopefully in next life, she'll learn to be a bit nicer.
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)
Sure, the book is OK, but I can do better, said Jackson
...he rewrote the story, and he failed miserably.
All the substance and the beauty of the book, cut out, and replaced with mindless, fast moving action scenes, - which we could see in any silly Hollywood action movie. How sad.
New characters, dialogs and plot twists are introduced constantly. Existing characters (those from the actual book) are bastardized and dumb down to the level, where there're hardly recognizable, and impossible to relate to.
I couldn't wait for the movie to end, and left cinema disappointed, almost in disbelieve that what I saw, was actually The Hobbit. The first part wasn't too bad, and it could be a nice trilogy, like the LOTR was, but I'm afraid this one, ruined the whole thing. I have no desire whatsoever to see the third one.
EuroTrip (2004)
Garbage...
I would thought the makers of this movie were never even close to the Europe.
Lets start with the intro map of Europe shall we. They forgot to put border between Croatia and Serbia, they forgot that Ireland exists and they put wrong flag on Slovakia (color order is not correct). Lovely start.
The usage of stereotypes is heavy in this movie; nothing wrong with that, even if they'd be pushed a bit over the edge. But, what was displayed here was just incurred all together, hence, not really funny.
Among all small and big inaccuracies, Bratislava absolutely is the worst example. When they're driving towards Slovakia, the map is shown, with names of cities. Bratislava is not mentioned, the Slovakia is marked with question marks, cigarette butts and other garbage. When the city is shown Russian song playing in the background. And, the city... well, Bratislava is a beautiful city with its own unique historical look and feel. It's nothing, and I emphasis, nothing like shown in this movie. NOTHING like that. I mean, imagine this clip, and stating: "ohh, God, we're in New York". Same accuracy.
Since they already decided to represent Slovakia with question marks and garbage, the mentioning of the city could be completely avoided. They could just state: "hey, we're somewhere in east Europe." Sure it would still be extremely annoying, offensive and inaccurate, but at least it wouldn't put bad mark on a otherwise nice city.
And you can buy a hotel for a nickel? Come on. I guess you can in Detroit nowadays, but not in Slovakia.
In Germany some kid parading around clearly representing Hitler; OK, funny? It's made so, as this would be completely normal there. Really, this is how far the imagination of person who wrote this goes? And sure, pretty blonde German girl, cannot find anyone else in whole Europe to have sex with, - it must be American, and she'll jump on him like he's made of gold. Hmmm.
This movie shine a bad light, not only on Europe, but also on US, as after seeing this, you cannot imagine that an intelligent people could made this.