Reviews

Every other negative reviewer has no doubt expressed what needed to be said about this lousy story. I just felt that It was necessary to add one more rating of 1 to counterbalance one of the brain-dead 10s. Goes nowhere is a slight stretch. It goes up and down and up and down and up and down repeatedly and for no reason, just like a manic depressive director. Do you want to know the the real surprising shocker regarding this movie? It simply this. The movie is SO forgettable, that I actually forgot that I watched it once before, about 2 years ago. There is absolutely not one good thing about it. The script is as predictable as a deck of 52 jokers. Flip over any random card from any location. Gee! I wonder what it will be? Oh! It's a joker, that's right. Now I remember. The story has no point except to subject the viewer to an hour and 42 minutes of torture. It's troubling when 21st century Hollywood generates SO much crap compared to the 20th century. I literally spend 2-3 hours some nights just looking for something new to watch, only to be bogged down by thousands of downers like this one. Or should I say upanddowners? Oh sure, they had their fair share of schlock and B-movies, back in the day, but crap was a lot more scarce than it is now. The actors in this movie will hopefully look back on this career-ending garbage and realize that they should have taken that dishwasher, waitress or TSA job. No. This review can't possibly contain spoilers. How do you spoil rancid meat? Nuff said.

The writer is a bad copycat script stealer. The producer has absolutely no sense of good judgement when it comes to green-lighting movie scripts. The director is absolutely the worst when it comes to selecting actors, giving direction, setting up scenes, and filming. The main actor is as bad at acting as many of his close friends who were obviously cast in the movie alongside of him. Oh! Did I forget to mention? Chris R. Notarile are all four of the above-mentioned persons rolled into one dismal failure. I've seen better work on MST3K and I'm talking the worst of their bad movies. Holy cheese dip Batman!

Remember those cheesy porn movies from the 70s and 80s. Filmed with the lowest of budgets. No money was spent on lighting or makeup. They just turned on the home video tape recorder and pulled the lamp shade off to expose a bare bulb so that you could clearly see the other bare things. Every body part was grotesquely or unnaturally pinkish or off-color.

Well, this show is no better with regard to makeup and lighting. Oh sure, it's titilating to see all the nudity, male, female, hermaphrodite, hismaphrodite, etc., but they could have made the lighting of the bodies in the podies considerably more flattering. Must also say that they didn't leave any body type out from what I saw. Thin, fat, piercings that outnumber the population of China, shaved, waxed, scarred, blemished with acne, ingrown facial hairs, ingrown pubic hairs, ingrown toenails, birthmarks, amputees, hirsute, deformed faces, Dr. Pimple Popper dropouts, artificial bOObs, artificial liPS, people who haven't jumped but are straddling the fence, circumcised and uncircumcised, bowlegged, pigeon-toed, knock-kneed, tattooed up the wazoos, morbidly obese, anorexic, tall, short, supermodel, homely, horrible teeth, crooked willys, and the list goes on and on.

I'm not judging any of the bodies, just making an observation. And like most people, I enjoy looking at the naked human form, but when you build the premise of a date on pure superficiality, you've got to expect that 99% of the relationships are going to fail from the git-go.

The show could definitely be improved, but it wasn't totally unpleasant to watch. Hence, my rating of 7.

What self absorbed wallowing depressive rubbish. This movie is NOT a sci-fi, NOT a comedy, NOT a drama, NOT realistic, NOT artistic, NOT poetic, and most importantly NOT worthwhile. Consisting entirely of droll narration (British over-dub at that), this movie leaves little for the actress to do except look chronically depressed for the entire film. It might loosely be classified as Horror because of its horrific presentation and delivery. It is PURE mental illness, written, produced and directed by the mentally ill but yet portrayed impeccably by an actress that exemplifies and embodies mental illness (either due to great skill, or because she herself is mentally ill. It's impossible to tell without seeing her in another film, and I will never do that!) I had to fast-forward through much of this movie or else I'd need a bottle of Lithium to pull me out of the abyss! Filmed in Austria, there is some nice scenery, but if it's Austrian countryside you want to see, then The Sound Of Music is much more appropriate. This movies should never have been translated. No, scratch that! It should never have been made. One star is much too generous!

I gave this movie some minor attention. But it was only a second choice when "Devil Doll'-1964 was in a commercial break on Friday Night Frights. The title caught my interest, but there was no mention of the reference in the other two reviews, so I may have missed what the story had to do with Dolly Parton when I surfed back to the other channel. The subject matter of the film (lesbians looking for a sperm donor from a homeless gay ex) a little far-fetched unless you live in San Francisco, was not something I was at all interested in sitting through. Perhaps if I were younger, it might have captured my interest, but I couldn't get past the mumbling dialogue and several contrived acting scenes by all cast members. I have phenomenal hearing too, so it wasn't me. Perhaps it was a lousy sound engineer. There was also no captioning available. Not worth finishing in my opinion based on all of the above detractors.

My mother used to rate movies based on the number of cigarettes she'd smoke in the lobby waiting for a bad film to be over. Five was a really bad movie, a waste of film and money, a hype, some schizoid diatribe by a writer or writers, a vehicle for some unemployed big names.

I don't smoke, but this one would Merit (pardon the pun) five cigarettes and I'm only 42 minutes into it. Of course, I'll struggle through the entire film before I publish my harsh critique of this work. And I must clarify that I usually distinguish the work of actors separate from the film that they are in, but in this case, there is no need. Neither the film, nor the cast or the crew deserve any praise for this end result. There is only one actor I like or admire for any of their previous works, (Hugh Grant), and to his credit, his role in this movie, is a simple cameo. All the other actors, I now like even less in this movie, especially Daniel Craig and his phony-baloney accent. They're as self-absorbed and pretentious as their characters themselves are.

It's also 50 minutes too long for a movie, much less a bad movie.

When you squander $40,000,000.00 as a vehicle for has-beens and wanna-bes, and only recoup $13,000,000.00 it shows a great deal of disconnect from society.

Glad that's over!

...why I walked out on this "movie movie" before the first segment was even halfway over. What schlock! It was replayed on TV today and I managed to stumble on the final half of the first segment, and struggle through it and the first few minutes of the second one. Don't get me wrong. It's a great cast of actors, and I love Spoof, but this "movie" falls short of spoof and lands smack dab in the middle of schlock. Some writer/writers should have been turned away at the door and this script tossed into the garbage can. Oh sure, there are moments when the actors do a genuine good job of performing their roles, but it's demeaning to have to sit through all the "CR4%" waiting for a few seconds of said actor delivering a good take. I was 17 when I walked out of it the first time. Now I'm 62, and I'm surfing back to BUZZER for old game show reruns. 3-stars is too generous.

My mom used to rate bad movies based on the number of cigarettes she'd leave the theatre to smoke in the lobby. If I smoked, this would have been a 5 cigarette movie. Boring narration style of story presentation throughout. No real acting, hence not worth watching. If all your actors are going to do is tell a story, then there's no point in making a movie. It might as well just be a sound bite.

I must say, "Not Bad!" As Chinese kung fu fantasy goes. Those hoaky special effects, levitating or floating in the air, which have become the norm in all Chinese martial arts films, is something that I've finally gotten used to. Not that I particularly like it, it's just been catalogued in my mind as Sci-Fi. Like the U. S.'s endless supply of zombie apocalypse myths, China seems to have an endless supply of super-human kung fu myths. We've come a long way from the days of David Carradine and Bruce Lee when real martial art talent could carry a show without any need for super-human special effects. But all that aside, this show did have some good character development, some nice filler-drama (back story), good costumes, nice set design and some very good cinematography. All the actors did very good work portraying their particular characters and bringing out the nicer aspects of Chinese and Chinese-American culture. They made the story more real. Now, while embracing the whole Black Lives Matter movement in one episode gave the show a little more realism and made you feel like it was current with the times, it did as one other reviewer put it, detract from the entertainment value of the fictional show. Political commentary and agenda should in my opinion be removed from art, but it has been going on forever. Roddenberry did it incessantly with Star Trek the original series. Civil rights, Naziism, slavery, race relations, fascism women's rights. Fortunately, the makers of this show avoided delving into the full nature of 2020's political upheavals and any reference to the global pandemic (that is, not one single mask in the entire series). Well, except for the gas masks when the bad guys threw the teargas and flash bangs. So yeah, 8 out of 10. Not bad!

As so many other literate fans of Tolkien have already stated, boringly long, over-rated and straying too far from the written stories. To begin, the whole movie is much too dark, visually during underground and night scenes. Special effect scenes are too blurry and unrealistic for the human eye. Vocal sequences are often drowned out by un-necessary background music. Legolas has a never-ending supply of arrows. And through all the perils, most of the main characters come through unscathed like Superman! Avalanches, falls, battles, poisons, etc. Running sequences span much too great a distance in the time that normal humans, wizard, elves, dwarfs, horses, and orcs should be able to cover. CGI is very poor compared to old-fashioned animation. The two sequels, and the Hobbit prequel trilogy that followed were equally lame in all the same respects with one exception. Legolas looks much older and haggard than he did in the first three films, even though he was supposedly younger. Hollywood! Get it right! If you're going to film epics, do them in order! Finally, It must me said that The Hobbit should have been ONE single movie of normal length. Perhaps 2-1/2 hours at best.

As is typical of most movie and music remastering, something is always lost, and nothing is gained. Mr. North rated 10 stars in my book as far as the original theatrical version and the transfer to commercial VHS video. But when it came out on DVD and then later digital, some lame-brain or brains took the liberty to totally rework the opening sequence and credits. In short, they black screened over Anthony Edwards bicycling jaunt along the Rhode Island coast with nothing but an altered style of credits. Butchers! It's sort of like cutting out all of the bum-bum-bum-bums in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Without them, there is no symphony. So, the remastered version gets a six, thus my average rating of 8. I'm glad I still have my VHS. I guess I'll have to convert it to digital myself someday

I've seen numerous comedy series shows that were as equally good as "Dummy", but the one thing they all had compared to series shows nowadays is length. You could spend days binge-watching a show like That 70s show and literally be doubled over from laughing a fair amount of the time. With "Dummy", the quality is just the same! Doubled over with laughter, and yet the whole series is barely the length of one episode of any older television comedy series. What is with writers and producers today? Is their attention span so limited that they can only create projects that last no longer than 6-7 minutes. The whole series "Dummy" is a great concept, but it's only enough for a pilot and should have been produced as such. Are actors so self-absorbed that they think they should get paid the same amount for 60 minutes of screen time that their counterparts got paid for 25 hours of screen time back in the day? With all of the cookie-cutter garbage that is coming out on Netflix and other streaming services, something original like "Dummy" is going to get buried because either, A. It doesn't have enough weight to hold its own with all the other wannabes, or B. It's too short to be considered as anything more than a teaser-trailer for something that will never be realized. The quality of this show is 10 stars, but the quantity is ZERO. Therefore, it gets a five star rating from me.

Mine's Drew BarrEATmore. That's right. You heard me. Nothing beats the sardonic humor she dishes out as she gnaws on a humerus bone. When she plays a role, she really gets down to the guts of it. (Pun Intended). Tim Olyphant is top notch in his role as the spaced out nut of a husband. Liv Hewson is one of the best comedic young actresses on the rise. Skyler Gisondo is an amazing supporting comedy actor in his own right. This show is like Butter Rum Life Savers. I can't get enough of them or Santa Clarita Diet.

Garbage. There's nothing else to say, but the review process requires 5 lines in order to be a valid review, so I'll just carry on pointlessly like this movie until I reach the minimum number of characters to fill up 5 lines. When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them...

...if you took all three seasons and cut the soap out of it. There's an enormous amount of filler that some reviewers called "character development" which should never have made it past the cutting room floor. Good writing can develop a character it 5-10 pages of script, which translates to about the same number of minutes in a production. The opening credits are far too long as well. Give me a title, the main actors, a producer, a director, and slap them altogether within a 30-second jingle, and you've already saved a minute and a half of film in every episode. If all this wasn't true, then most of our greatest movies going back 100 years would have been horribly long and drawn out like this show. Good science fiction will raise the hairs on the back of your neck. This show never does. I won't rate it as awful (1), because the actors are good at playing their parts. It's just that the overall production was sadly lacking in pace. At best, the usable content would make a decent 1-1/2-hour movie, or a 2 to 4 hour mini-series. Sort of what I've come to expect from the Netflix cookie cutter factory though. About every five minutes another piece of crap comes out masking as good sci-fi. If you wanted to, you could probably use one actor for the entire collection of their Marvel shows alone. That's how unremarkable they all are. They're like cloned sheep. Iron Fist, Flash, Daredevil, Jesica Jones, Luke Cage, Arrow, Etcetra Men, Ad Infinitum Woman.

Amateurish direction and production. Writing was pretty LAME. Then there's the simple fact that the story pretty much goes nowhere from beginning to end. Many scenes drag on way too long. Most of the actors are relatively unknown, but fair for their relative inexperience. Watching the movie was like watching a play that was slapped together by a bunch of people who either didn't have their heart in it, or who were too absorbed to realize how terrible the overall project was or would wind up becoming. Editing wasn't that good, but sometimes and editor is stuck with what he or she has. "Well let's see. I've got scenes A, B, and C. I could leave them in alphabetical order or I could rearrange them into a B, A, C or a C, A, B pattern. Boy! Wouldn't the audience be really mesmerized If I cut it as a B, C, A or a C, B, A layout? No wait! I almost forgot! There's the rarely used A, C, B sequence! Whoo! I'm a genius!" I'm sorry! Turds are turds! It doesn't matter in what order you squeeze them out. Pardon my vulgarity, but this film failed only because someone put too much effort into getting the OK for it to be produced. The reason it didn't get a (1) rating is because most of the actors did well, considering what they were given.

...outside of a middle school or a corrupt pharmaceutical company. My mother used to call these cigarette movies and would rate them accordingly. Thus, a five cigarette movie was one in which she spent the majority of her time in the lobby sucking on her own depressant (nicotine) in lieu of having to absorb it visually and auditorialy. This movie, I'm sure would get a half-a-pack rating from her if she were still alive. Me? I hate cigarette smoke, but it would be a close toss-up as to which I'd rather be exposed to again. Second- hand-smoke, or Manchester By The Sea?

The opening neurotically wastes far too much time, 4:00 minutes, with Franco-like music and scenes from all over Paris before finally jumping into the opening credits. My mom used to call this type of picture a 4-cigarette movie, because she could get up, walk out to the foyer and smoke, and miss absolutely nothing of cinematic significance. I was about to give up on it when I finally figured out why I had such a familiar feeling of "Gee, I wished I smoked!" The reason for my utter distaste was that it was written and directed by Woody Allen. First of all, you have to be severely depressed in order for anything created by him to appeal to you. Otherwise, you're bound to be depressed by watching it. Regardless, I watched it for 5 more minutes until I was certain that it was atypical Allen neuroses. Owen Wilson looked like he was on depressants while filming. If an actor's depressed mood is that apparent 5-minutes into filming, why not wait until A. they are feeling better, or B. you replace him with someone better suited for the role. And, while you're at it, throw out the script, the writer and the director and start over. Yep, If I smoked, I probably could have killed a half a pack in a foyer of the good old days.

The character development and overall show plot were pretty original as zombie themes go. Funnier than Zombieland, cruder than Pulp Fiction, and racier than Red Oaks. Got to be one of the funniest things I've seen since Groundhog Day, and like Groundhog, I laughed hysterically just watching the trailers and I couldn't wait for it to come out in February. I watched all the shows back-to-back, rested a day or two, and then watched the shows again. I'm now on my third time through, and it's still funny! Drew's timing and on-screen chemistry with Timothy is impeccable. Their daughter, played by a great new actress Liv Hewson, carries her own weight in the show. She's funny, smart, and has great potential as a new teen idol. All of the supporting characters, some still living and some dead after the first season were quite refreshing and they fit into place like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. Drew's crassness brought back pleasant memories of my late mother's sense of humor. Looking forward to another season.