Reviews

Season 1 was incredible, pretty consistently witty, clever & exciting from start to finish - like Game of Thrones as a Comedy, starring the amazing Elle Fanning.

Season 2 turned into a season of Gossip Girl, starting with ep 1.

I thought surely there must be new writers at work, and it seems what has happened is Tony McNamara used to be the lead writer, and used to work with Vanessa Alexander's support, and often a third writer to round things out. In season 2, Vanessa Alexander takes the lead - and it isn't completely jarring, but it takes the snarky, pop culture cheapness that used to garnish the show as an accent, are now being served up as the main course. All sense of gravity and balance is lost, and it's just a glib quip fest without substance or emotional weight. The show has become a vampire, lost all of its soul in season 2. Watching the same bodies perform in the same places, in the same costumes, surreally superficial, trashily modern versions of their earlier selves is really disappointing. Like a YA rewrite of a Nabokov novel.

And beyond the dwindling quality of the dialogue, the plot also suffered. It stopped making sense - despite all the dialogue exposition walking us through it - it walked us through logic the way a toddler might. And while, with Peter's somewhat childish character being what it is, that would have made sense for him, Catherine simultaneously is now written as 1) dumber, less logical, incapable of effective negotiation or leadership, 2) instantly being thrown into several situation as the Woman for the Job, just to give her more screen time, when another character could have done said job more effectively given their experience. Like, she is being increasingly treated as Superwoman, and looked up to, but also being (I think, accidentally) written as less intelligent, less confident. And whether it's deliberate or not, it doesn't play well - because the premise is that Russia is a bloodthirsty country, and no one would cowtow to her if she were really showing this level of incompetence and vulnerability. It stretches the stylized glittery oversaturated quality of the show far beyond credulity; knocks it off the thin line it walked between too silly, gentle & trivial and too grim, violent & somber. Now the violence is ever more trivialized, the emotions are shallow, and the discussions are as sordid yet trivial as 2 trailer park baby mamas on their smoke break at Circle K. The beauty & inspiration is gone. And since V. Alexander was the lead writer for the whole season, god knows where we'll find these poor characters and plot by season 3, even if more talented writers are allowed to try to salvage it.

The opening credits, Nicole Kidman, Roger Bart, and Glenn Close make this movie worth watching. It opens with a bang, promising more than it really delivers in the end. The ending is mediocre. But the aforementioned actors and opening scenes make it at least 6 or 6.5 stars regardless. The ending isn't terrible. The technical logistics of how exactly this science/process works is a little slack for my liking. The resolution is lazy because the sci-fi tech aspects are lazy. Very hand-wavey. The message is predictable and a little heavy handed toward the end. However, the dialogue is often cute and the costuming and lighting is also excellent. Writing overall is the weakest link in the chain - should have been a better movie with all the cast & crew clearly working hard and making magic where they could.

God! I'm soooo sick of these bait and switch didactic films that start with the premise of interesting characters who either "get redeemed" in some conventionally moralistic way to be good little livestock in the corporate, nuclear family machine - or, in this case - nearly escape the machine then get dragged back in through Orwellian brainwashing. This movie is such creepy, sinister Christian propaganda. It points out the utter horror show of Christianity - making a mockery of itself - then proceeds to embrace what it clearly sees as the lesser evil, the "beauty of faith".

What I can say to its credit is that it mocks "bad Christians" who are too proud, and addresses complicated aspects of spirituality. For Christians, this is probably a great movie, because it emphasizes tolerance and how to be the best Christian you can be.

But for the rest of us who broke out of the cult or were never in it and don't want to be sneakily prostheletized to for "Cult Lite", give this snake oil junk a miss. What I'd hoped for was another hard hitting, "goes there" film like *But I'm a Cheerleader*, calling these organized religions out for the creepy misogynist Bronze Age mythology that they are, but that one actually has a spine and follows through with its message. This film is a long con.

Even before it was a long con, it was showing the "bad kids" who were initially made out as heroes, smoking cigarettes as a show of rebellion. Why give the free PR to Big Tobacco? Why not having them smoke some joints? So already, this movie was playing it safe and square, right from the start, choosing more conventionally "acceptable" vices - the ones that pollute the air, trigger asthma attacks and give everyone lung cancer and respiratory disease versus the kind that make people slightly lazier.

Terrible film unless you're Christian. Then maybe a useful film to encourage people to be less insufferable acolytes.

Very square, safe, normie movie with horrific sound staging and an ear bleeding grocery store soundtrack. Some of the jokes are funny and it strives to have a positive message, but despite enjoying DJ as an actor, I found it unwatchable self conscious and sanitized. The whole thing felt very stiff & insincere, a movie with no heart (no pun intended). Trying painfully hard to be hip, like someone's boomer Leo dad in a midlife crisis trying to hang with the zoomer teens. The whole film has the cringe factor of a Michael Bublee cover album in a big box shoe store, or like watching a feature length Facebook ad. The comedic timing wasn't great, even though it's at least usually better on Dwayne Johnson's part, so there must have either been tons of issues with filming or the director was the problem. Whatever it was, this was the worst movie I've ever seen him in.

This movie was TRAUMATIZING in the best of ways.

Oh my god, it went there. It was so disturbing when he was in peril. The stakes were HIGH in this one and he was so clever, but so tiny and frail in this huge complex world, and yet his greatest enemy was another tiny clever rodent, of all things. This is a pretty great analogy for global power structures. But it's also an excellent story for kids. I was rarely so horrified for the fate of characters, hanging in suspense, then watching this movie, and even each time I watched it, knowing he'd made it last time, I'd still start to wonder how...how could he possibly escape this cruel fate?!

As an aside, Basil is such a fox. Even though he's technically a rodent. #nofurry, right? But still.

Unlike so many other cartoons of this era, the characters don't constant run around with ditzy Stepford Wife glee or the constantly creepy positive attitude you see in charismatic cults. This was a tremendous relief, as a child. These characters express a reasonable and rationally motivated range of emotions and complexity of interactions commensurate with the real world. This cartoon is rich havarti to all its garbage Kraft singles peers. It's the grey poupon to all their horrendous acid yellow fast food mustard packets. Just a little more substance, reality, thought and class. The characters are well developed, the plots are relevant to kids and basically probably everyone, the art is lavish and lovely. This was your first class upgrade when your family paid for basic cable, I guess. Meanwhile, the trailer park kids got stuck with Franklin and Dragon Tales. Talk about class warfare. Nickelodeon had TinTin, too, and briefly - before it was cancelled for that atrocious Papa Beaver - it had edgy anime Grimm's Fairy Tales. This was part of that shining consortium that once made childhood television great, long ago.

Their derpy, vacant expressions and clumsy oafish steps still haunt me to this day. Must everything for children be inane, emotive drivel? No. Just no.

Such a great show. Wish he hadn't turned into a Monsanto schill. Great charisma & stimulating, relevant content! Should stick to what he knows (though he ought to know glyphosate is the problem with Round Up ready crops, not the alleged red herring bogeyman of "genetic modification") & stay out of the environmentally decimating Big Ag lobby. This show made me love science enough to grow up to become a scientist. Who ironically disagrees with him now. But this was where it was at, back in the day. Mr. Wizard was a close second, but a lot more chill/boomer & less splendidly surreal & absurd.

I couldn't stomach more than the first 10 minutes of this movie the first 2 or 3 times I tried to watch it. Cusack's character was so unlikeable that I couldn't imagine rooting for him at all, and yet I was fairly sure he was supposed to be a sympathetic & relatable character.

But I'm a little older now, with a better developed sense of irony and see that he isn't necessarily supposed to be any sort of "hero" or role model. Very much an antihero. An occasionally sympathetic loser with attitude problems and a hopeless degree of cluelessness. He's so average and Everyman that he depressed me, because he's basically every "small" reason you break up with a guy, incarnate.

But in retrospect, I see that this is truly masterful writing. The writer really crafted this loser perfectly. Unfortunately, I think a lot of guys will see this film and relate and the only takeaway will be that "sometimes loser guys get lucky" rather than comprehension that he grew a little and changed as the story progressed. Very little. Vanishingly small character growth, but it was there, and it was some of the most realistic & believable character growth ever depicted in film. Because it was so slight. He didn't turn into someone else by the end of the story, to win the day. Those kinds of big "baby I've really changed" spiritual revolutions never really stick. Our synapses are calcified in the same bad shapes until he gradually tai chi them into subtly different channels like rivers transforming a canyon.

To the extent that the ending was satisfying, it was, at very least, believably so. Which is rare in most movies and grim in the remaining few. This was neither fictitious nor grim.

I was afraid this was really one of those "bro" movies for "bros" about how women are the problem, that desire is a weakness synonymous with hate, a stealing of masculine power that must be thwarted or punished. There was a rash of them in this cinematic era, with the Van Wilder franchise and similar rubbish. All them remind me of that "just grab em by the p*ssy" pickup artist attitude in frat culture which quickly turns to broflake, incel, men's rights tantrums when it fails to pan out the way they'd hoped.

Cusack characters tends to have toddler meltdowns in his movies which ring more whiny than absurdly endearing like, for instance, a Nicholas Cage meltdown. Rob says the quiet parts out loud. Has no self control. Neatly always feels sorry for himself. He lacks empathy but is *incredibly* sensitive to his own delicate needs - like groundless masculine pride. He's almost never as brave as he wants to be, and often that's a good thing. It's fine. The movie is aware of this (and punishes him for it). Yet, he really represents the flaws that nearly all men grapple with in one way or another, to varying degrees of success.

On another note, the record shop boys were perfectly written and almost perfectly played. Jack Black was actually impeccable. I've known these characters in real life, and that made these people immensely satisfying to watch, even though they were periodically excruciating. Such an accurate representation of hipster elitist music culture & its diva indie scholars living in cardboard boxes made of vinyl covers.

The love interests were all quite excellent and tragically but often hilariously sympathetic. You feel sorry for them at times and are really happy for them, mostly. Seeing Joan Cusack onscreen is always a treat.

I gave it 6 because in the end, I really still didn't like Rob much, but if I were to rate this on something actual "objective" quality over pure personal enjoyment, it's an easy 8. I'm glad I finally watched it & do see what all the fuss is about and why it means so much to so many friends (most of them male hipster music snobs).

Cons: I was promised a Lester Bangs cameo & didn't get it. Someone got this mixed up with another film...🔥

The beauty of King of the Hill, I think, is that it humanizes the constituency of the right and left to each other in a rather fair way, around a basis of striving for the common good and upholding standards of decency. It's a really unifying show. Anyone who isn't down with it, I would think it's just too radical and unbalanced that they take themselves and their little battles much too seriously, because the core battles that King of the Hill does consistently take seriously - season for season - is the pursuit of good conscience.

This is where the "More Like This" list of other shows fails - the top 4 hits are American Dad, Bob's Burgers, Aquateen Hunger Force and Beavis & Butthead. Sorry/notsorry to sound like a complete Puritan, but none of those are particularly morally edifying (even though B&B is sort of the older sibling of the show). What they share in common are the most superficial elements: chiefly that they share the genre of "satirical adult cartoons".

Does anyone really choose their favorite shows or movies based on genre alone? Or is it really the content, messages, overarching themes - things that are harder for algorithms in a huge database like this to quantify, requiring much more in the way of human assessment & input? Maybe there's a way to screen keywords of reviews to try to discern the narrative content as well - maybe they already do and it's the result of shallow reviews that KotH would ever get likened to Ren & Stimpy (also in the top 10 "similar shows" list.

Space Ghost, Sealab & Futurama are pretty good hits on that list - Futurama because it deals with fundamental aspects of reality & politics in an abstracted but frank way, Space Ghost & Sealab because they shares the same dry sense of humour and similar stiff gestural animation style. Hell, even Robot Chicken often shares a similar satirization of social norms, though the outcome is generally ghoulish sadism rather than wholesome resolution.

Family Guy & the Cleveland show absolutely do not belong on the list of comparisons, and, like them or not, I feel they're only there because of genre matches. If it were a matter of content matches and the algorithms were sufficiently sophisticated, they should really cross into the live action genre well before ever comparing KotH to Family Guy of all things - pretty much on opposite ends of the ethics, humanism & reverence spectrum!

Unfortunately, there really doesn't seem to be another show like this. Antiheroes & boorish oafs seem to be more in vogue than a sympathetically hardworking Everyman struggling against the wages of the day, and shows that follow the latter character convention tend to lack this level of relevant social criticism and self-awareness. Most heroes tend either to be overly or under-flawed and HH is pretty much the perfect balance, because he always strives to do right and the ways in which he struggles are usually things he can't quite immediately help, like culture, that he must then progress painstakingly through/around.

But it's not just him. Most characters, given enough characters, can be colored in with a sympathetic light - but never in a polyanna Miyasaki way that fully excuses their failings, and some are reasonably acknowledged to just be pretty ethically bankrupt, while still continuing to have relationships with those around them, which often reflect the imbalances of their parasitic, selfish nature colliding with the general idealism, romanticism or pragmatism of their 'prey', so to speak. It's one of the fairest, most uplifting shows I've ever seen. It never just attacks people or ridicules them without also trying to understand them and how they got that way and if there's any silver lining or redemption in it.

9 stars for the first 90% of the movie, but the ending is maddeningly stupid.

I'm shocked that none of these reviews even for a moment consider how degrading the film is to McKenna and sex workers in general. Is everyone so basic that they think the ridiculous "Sex worker?" "Sex worker?!" "Sex worker?!" campy echo from Rachael's friends isn't utterly banal? What stuffed-up privileged suburban lives do viewers live that they have zero empathy for working girls and the inane social prejudice against them. Are we supposed to like Rachael? Someone who's friends are such tedious, judgmental, normie biddies that they are horrified by her efforts to help Rachael integrate into a healthy job opportunity? The whole execution of this premise is ridiculously condescending. It could have been a good story, but it's just another example of privileged people using those less advantaged than themselves to fix their own broken lives then flushing them like toilet paper. Revolting.

Super cute movie. The first 3/4 are shockingly good - excellent dialogue, believable characters - formulaic, but well executed...

...Aside from the lack of WV accents that no one except the ever-fabulous Kathryn Hahn, the motel guy and an off-cam extra at the bar could even be bothered to attempt! Come on, it would have been so easy to add this great sense of place and culture, which the set designers/art directors did to PERFECTION. This is a stunningly beautiful movie. The lighting is also beautiful, making every scene unexpectedly like a thoughtful painting. Actually a little shocked at how gorgeous they made this film - to see these scenes popping off the screen like the original John Waters Hairspray or Kubrick was the last thing I expected from a fluffy romcom.

The actors all did wonderful jobs, aside from the almost complete lack of accents or even attempts. Their characters were unusually believable and so I suppose some of that is owed to the director, too.

The Piggly-Wiggly was a nice Appalachian touch; they really channeled the small town feel. There was some garish product placement here and there - a Sprite Can, a Little Debbie's Strawberry Shortcake box, etc. - semicringe. But the whole thing had heart, right up to the end, at which point the dialogue became the sort of trite nonsense the earlier part of the film had correctly ridiculed.

Did some producer take the script away from the original writers and rewrite the ending? It all just kind of collapses in the last 15 min or so of the film, suddenly characters act out of character, and everything becomes really kitschy and banal. There was no reason for this - up till then, the whole movie had followed the genre formula but still left its own unique stamp on it and really put in a lot of effort into making it an excellent example of the genre.

So it was nearly capped out at the 9 star max a romcom is ever allowed (and/or due to the usual obnoxious soundtrack), then lost 1 star due to lack of WV - or hell, even Southern - accents, and 2 stars due to the ending, and the fact that Pete would never say those things that way or leave his dog in the middle of the road all that time at the end, when one of his greatest flaws is his down-to-earth pragmatism. He likes his dog and is a vigilant, detail-oriented fellow. He would keep that boy out of the road, as long as his eyes were working...I know they just wanted to have the dog frame the credits, but that was the know-it-all micromanagerial producer talking, no doubt.

Anyway, well worth watching for the first 75% at least.

This movie should have been excellent. The actors in it are just lovely, there's OK chemistry, and a few hilarious lines here and there. The plot was great, but it's hard to get around the annoying formulaic writing/dialogue style and the pratfalls. It fails to be zany and cute because all of these efforts seem forced like those of a child who attempts to reenact the precocious antics of children on TV rather than simply existing as a naturally cute, precocious child. Oh well. At least Kristen Bell has moved onto better things in her career!

It's really sad that so many people worked hard for the aesthetic and marketing of this film. The art direction, costumes, location choices and cinematography are all on point. It's the writing that can't be salvaged. Good actors and good characters could potentially save such a bland iteration of a bland formula. But Isabelle (the leading lady) is an unlikable, entitled brat and Jaden Smith is a robot. Not his fault he got ushered into the acting world; there's got to be a lot of pressure on him to keep that dynasty alive. Probably even Tim Curry couldn't have saved this movie.

90% of people who've ever worked in a movie theatre or customer service and saw her dump the popcorn on him are going to cheer when she dies, or whatever. That's not a spoiler - it's in the trailer. So sick of these unaccountable manic pixie dream girls just being wasteful and destructive in a fit of whimsy - Audrey Hepburn throws her cat out of the taxi during a tantrum in Breakfast at Tiffany's, Avril Lavigne wrecks a department store in her Complicated video. It's so lame and lacking in empathy. And yet this movie tries to bank on empathy for a character who clearly lacks it except on a few "tsundere with a heart of gold" occasions? Spare me! Please! Just die already! The character - the movie - the genre, all of it!

The campiness and self-aware melodrama of the style is utterly delightful when paired with the acting calibre of leads Platt & Lowenthall and modern action soundbytes sprinkled in just the right doses. Platt is especially spectacular as the star and reminiscent of Gina Torres' Zoe (Firefly).

Directing & editing decisions in terms of cuts and transitions are satisfying & imaginative in transitions between location. Pulling off combat action in a (mostly) silent film is a tall order; like turning Mission Impossible into a haiku, and yet they pulled it off.

It's amazing that John de Lancie is in this and makes us love him all the more for going with heroic passion projects. And fortunately for all of us, it's available on Monkey Kingdom Productions' Youtube channel for free viewing, at the time of this writing.

Comedies so heartfelt are few and far between. The characters are all so real, and deviate exceptionally from the standard roster of character archetypes in these sorts of films and shows. It's funny, because I never noticed how ubiquitous certain personality tropes are in this genre until watching this movie that defies the standards and is actually quite original.

Bonnie and the magpie are the best characters. Fight me. But everyone is pretty splendid in their own ways.

I do wish they didn't feel the need to endorse tobacco cigarettes at the end. The industry has enough seedy advertising without any help from the film industry. Could have done without.

If not for that, a few tiny plot holes toward the end, and the rando ending (which was hilarious, but I still wanted more elaboration 🤣) it would have been 10/10.

But overall, the film was lovely & truly unique! The best new post1990s movie I've seen this this year.

Sure, it was a little gratuitously edgy with the sex, drugs, brooding chainsmoking antihero - clearly trying to play to a certain macho testosterone crowd, with a little (in my opinion) annoying and gratuitous romance thrown in "for the ladies". Since episode one, I felt it had the subtle underpinnings of a total "bro show" - a high budget, subtler Sons of Anarchy in the early 20th century. The character of Grace rapidly became unbearably annoying, but Polly was quirky and believably flawed and Lizzy was pretty great as she started to develop. The sister is snotty but still reasonably believable. The main character, Thomas, is amazingly convincingly played and very evocative of pathos, and Sam Neil is excellent as the inspector.

However, something starts to go awry as the series winds on. Somewhere along the way, it seems like some focus group must have told these bro writers that they weren't being including enough of the female characters in the age of #MeToo or something to that effect, because all of the sudden, the female characters go from believably tough but in a somewhat subordinate role accurate to a very Catholic patriarchal Irish gypsy crime family in 1910s UK. Then, suddenly, they all start to get "liberated" - which is not done by making them more responsible or even really dynamic, but more aggressively hysterical, stupidly violent, obstinate confounding and generally emotionally reactive when lives are on the line. Ironically, writing that is clearly supposed to reflect "female empowerment" winds up being incredibly condescending as the women just start henpecking the men, spoiling schemes and essentially screwing up everyone's lives with their pursuit of self fulfillment. There is even, by season 3 - when they've really gone off the rails by folding token ethnic minorities casually into the gang without so much as a sideways look at them or any suggestion of racial inequality at the time - an all woman board meeting for this leading Irish crime family. Btw, in Catholic Ireland, abortion is still illegal last time I checked? They don't have a great track record for women's rights, so this is completely bogus.

But if the goal is an alternative, revisionist history in which everyone is equal, so be it - great. People don't need to chain smoke cigarettes, because we know that isn't cool, it's carcinogenic and the respiratory damage caused by direct and involuntary secondhand smoke leads to asthma, cancer and a higher susceptibility to Covid 19. So, if we're going to make things up, how about not glorifying cigarettes? Have em smoke fat blunts like a rap video, that's much healthier and achieves the same effect. Or, I don't know, at the very least write actually strong females rather than women who constantly destroy the lives of those around them by nagging, talking too much and throwing childlike temper tantrums. Have these writers ever actually met or talked to a real woman? Where did they come up with this nonsense? Hentai schoolgirl anime? These characters became caricatures over two seasons because they were trying to scratch some bizarre perceived social justice ratings itch and gave it a lazy token nod that made no sense to the context or plot. By the 3rd season, it was unwatchable daft. Girls stop a fight between murderous crime bosses by just being stubbornly sulky. I felt like I was suddenly watching a cute Jennifer Aniston romcom, not a dark period crime drama - suddenly everything went campy and Disneyfied, gun battles turning to pillow fights and bad guys turning to tickle monsters. Just a surreal departure from season 1's quality.

Maybe nobody but the other virtue police, miscellaneous hoodlums, hippies and concerned mothers of the world will care about this, but:

I heard endless good things about this movie but never watched it for a long time because 1) narcs and snitches are not redeemable characters, generally speaking, 2) making a joke of police brutality in this era is in pretty poor taste 3) it's okay to narc out and kill psychedelics dealers who haven't been shown to do anything else illegal. But then again, I think you can make an excellent joke of most things, if you do it right. The trouble is, comedy can be propagandist, it wins people over. So when live animals get blown up for laughs, and the audience laughs along, obviously the whooole audience isn't gonna run out and start blowing up chickens, and if even some people in the audience do, who's responsible? The people who blew up the chickens, not the people who made the movie, ultimately. The whole "guns don't kill" argument in a nutshell, right? But even still, the fact that chickens are getting blown up for jokes, green energy guy is evil, the only black people in the movie (except Ice Cube) are either played for laughs as getting punched and being pissy about it or getting shot because they're criminals - shot by cops - is unconscionable. Realistic, yes, but...they're being shown as "bad guys" and it's clear we aren't supposed to care or think twice about it. There's no due process, tons of suspects are just getting shot on suspicion of dealing what appear to be psychedelics but are treated like effin bath salts - with the excuse that "one kid died from psychedelics". In an era when MDMA and psilocybin are increasingly being found to be extremely useful at mitigating symptoms of depression, schizophrenia, addiction and PTSD among other mental health issues, this fearmongering reinforcement of existing Reagan-era hysterics is in pretty poor taste. A kid could die from tide pods, so should tide dealers be shot without due process? Obvious hyperbole, but nevertheless...

That all being said, the movie gives a fashionable nod to marijuana and booze as being "okay drugs", as opposed to coke (which is the of a rather funny joke). The film is super funny, despite the main characters being generally unkind, dimwitted, selfish and lacking in empathy. I must admit that even the mean humor is at times pretty funny, though it's in poor taste. Some things are just so needlessly cruel and stupid that they are shockingly hilarious.

The tertiary and second characters are quite awesome, and the overall view of the world & modern high school culture is weirdly spot on, making it a less stupid comedy than expected. The jokes are on point, the humor cuts to the core of a lot of pretty realistic situations.

If it weren't for the total amorality / very right-wing leaning of the story, I'd give it 7 stars. But there's just no getting around the fact that the better the comedy is, the better the (accidental) propaganda for really low standards for all the high schoolers, college kids, and generally impressionable idiots of all ages watching this and knowing that just spoils it for me, unfortunately. Channing Tatum gets 7 stars for hotness, and but that phone tapping nerd gets 8. Meow.

For instance, don't watch it with your kids...or your grandmother with a heart condition...or with your pastor, or at a work party, or on date night with your Ken doll or Larry the Cable Guy figurine or a confused confused Door Dash delivery boy you dragged in to pretend to be your date. Okay, maybe the last guy - if he's riding the flow state.

But all in all, it's generally best viewed at new moon art shows, illuminati discos and JP Morgan' annual masquerade ball. If you can deal with abstraction, open ended fantasy and don't need a YouTube commentator to hold your hand and explain what you're watching in lieu of dialogue. If you like Borges stories, Argento films and exploring the primal darkness in the human ego then git in thar & have a looksee.

The panning is invariably the result of Transformers fans getting lured into an arthouse flick by the promise of gorey T&A. Quite likely many of them are the joke here - some people are laughing and they don't get it and it makes them feel anxious, so they lash out with 1 star reviews.

Keanu Reeves slays as a total creepshow. Elle Fanning nails it. There is only one somewhat sympathetic character and we feel that perhaps it was only a matter of time before he succumbed to the viral madness around him. While I don't typically enjoy movies without a character relate to, the underlying conundrum of existence in this world is what's there to empathize with (in place of an audience surrogate character, we have an audience surrogate emotion hanging over the whole narrative, if you were one who could follow it). Realizing that everyone and everything is hostile becomes the most gripping part of a movie that is suddenly holding you captive as the prey. There are jackals circling a small rabbit on screen but soon there are only jackals and they are all looking at you, and you are alone in the dark. Don't blink, don't avert your eyes. Stare it down.

I agree with another reviewer that said it could, perhaps should, have been shorter. The actual ending feels like a bonus scene, an epilogue that could have rolled after the credits. The pacing didn't need to be so slow and the extended closure broke the smooth flow of the film, somewhat, which was essentially resolved at 90 min. However, the 2 hour mark is interesting nonetheless.

Subtextually, this film is chilling time capsule portrait of the moment the U.S. lost its innocence. It's not something I ever thought about before, because the movie exists in a time of social shift between old school conservative values and lifestyles and "hippies", or at least more open minded sorts. It doesn't deal with these topics in a self aware or heavy handed way, which makes it great! Aside from the girl's remark, "Oh, cut your hair!" (which could be seen as a bit didactic) it doesn't come off as propaganda of either sort.

One thing I've always loved about this movie is the realism & unflinching pragmatism about the situation. The only caveat to that is that it's still difficult to imagine how they paid for all the kids!

But the happy ending is undermined by the real world history that soon followed. We know that the one who left was going to a doomed situation that would forever shift the consciousness of American society. We know that this was the point at which the long term economic downturn began, with massive deregulation of industry and socioeconomic stratification. Some of us will also think about the people we didn't see in the crowd, because of persistent segregation, or the amount of waste generated by all the disposable packaging a suburban family of this size consumes. It's actually really annoying to not be able to overlook all these things (that the time was oblivious of) because it's no less a great movie and Lucille Ball is an angel and Henry Fonda isn't half bad! Some of the old time blokes in these movies are just teeth grindingly patronizing to the 'dolls' but he was written as a sympathetic man's man and holds up today as old fashioned but good hearted and caring.

Awesome outfits, too. Love this movie. If someone wrote a sequel, it wouldn't be a comedy but rather just as grim as the BBC 7 Up series most likely. Highly recommend, no less!

It's hard to rate this film in conventional terms. I am a sucker for this golden age of sci-fi fantasy. I did see it as an adult for the first time, so didn't imprint on it as a child. The good was wonderful and the bad was amusing. It's certainly derivative, but shines in moments of originality.

Plot: 6/10 (derivative fantasy; a cornucopia of Star Wars, Willow, LOTR and other classics) Art direction: 10/10 World/Magic: 10/10 Characters: 6/10 (none evoke much empathy, development is mostly shallow) Acting: 4/10 (mostly - a few good actors stood out) Locations: 9/10 Pace: moves quickly, stays dynamic. Definitely doesn't drag.

Better than Legend, not as good as Willow. Similar in overall style & quality to Labyrinth, except no Bowie, no muppets.

Lowkey cameos by: Galadriel/Shelob, ponyta, Starlord, Highlander, the princess from Legend, Fin Raziel, Sauron, Capt. Archer's beagle, necromongers/stormtroopers/ringwraiths, light sabers, Obi Won, John Carpenter's The Thing, Mt. Doom, Sarumon, Road Warriors, Lothlorien x Death Star, Jodorowsky's Dune. Granted, in some cases this came first. Watch the madness unfold. Enjoy.

Seasons 1 & 2 are totally perfect; one of the best shows of all time. The jokes are consistently on point; characters are nuanced and layered with flaws and strengths. There is an undercurrent of compassion, a silver lining, amid the rampant yet strangely believable faux pas and inevitability of failure in life.

Season 3 abandons all that with manufactured drama; characters become shells of themselves, everyone is more selfish and less empathetic. The jokes become more slapstick and cringe for spectacle rather than because it's believable and relatable. The writers were clearly grasping at straws. Romantic drama is super contrived. Karen's character appears and never gets developed in the whole series; she's a boilerplate foil with few, if any, distinguishing character traits. That was a big opportunity lost for the story. Most of the character arcs are complete at this point and it seems like what's left is largely unwarranted cruelty, unrealistic gaffs and pratfalls. The opportunity arises to inject some fresh blood into the mix, and that is also ignored. One of the most sympathetic characters gets reduced to a running gag about powerful females, with regular slut shaming, and I keep waiting for the punchline but I guess the joke is caring, competent women in positions of power and "kinkiness = crazy & worthy of ridicule". Jim is such a petty punk throughout season 3 that it's impossible to care what happens to him and even a happy ending for him ceases to be a happy ending for anyone else because he was written in such a way that we now know he totally lacks character, and is a petulant, inconsiderate coward deep down under all the jokes. There's also a fair amount of callousness toward animals, which are repeatedly used as idiotic gags in season 3 and none of the characters seem to take any issue with it. They're either afraid of, murderous toward or completely callous to vertebrate life, which isn't totally unrealistic, but it is pretty lame. If the other changes after season 2 hadn't been so horrid, any one of these things might have been overlooked, but all in all it speaks to lazy writing and results in only 2 characters being at all redeemable and sympathetic by season 4, and one is nothing the of a neverending "b-tches be crazy" joke with no apparent punchline.

I wanted to like this movie more than I did, to pride myself on it in a film school snobbish way. However, are compelling as the visuals editing were, the characters weren't terribly engaging, but for the creepy villain.

I think that Touch of Evil, in comparison, achieved the same cinematic highs without hitting any of the low points (tedium, excessive film length, emotionally flat main characters). Perhaps the latter film was informed by the former, but regardless, I don't think there's much to be gained by watching an archaic model of the same genre when a newer, better version is available, with improved features. Unless the goal is to study the evolution of film for historic reference rather than merely to enjoy a movie's craftsmanship and quality.

That being said, had I not seen better film noir since, had the expectations for this movie not been so lofty due to the hype, it could have been a surprisingly enjoyable film. For that reason, I'm giving it 6/10 stars out of courtesy and respect, rather than 5/10 which better reflect my enjoyment of watching the whole thing from start to finish. If it had been more succinct, it would have been 7/10 stars.

Perhaps my take is too rigidly logical, but the absurdism often felt like an excuse to be lazy. I suspected as much in the beginning, at which point the writer clearly established "this is just a bit of fun" with deliberately silly, nonsensical choices - like the idea that God lives just the same as humans, like God invented washing machines and there were skyscrapers in the Garden of Eden, etc.

In a sense, this silliness paralells the silliness of man creating god unimaginatively in his own image. So I thought perhaps this wasn't a portent of lazy writing but a deliberate social commentary. 'Soft' magic systems can render beautiful fiction, when the writer uses them sparingly and poetically. Leaving the viewer or reader with questions rather than simply boxing everything up in a dense technical manual of exposition is usually a wise and bold artistic choice.

However, to make the poetry of 'soft' magic explicable, it should either be handled sparingly or in a very surreal manner. The first three quarters of the movie handled this rather well, but the ending - all elements of conflict resolution - were a slapdash afterthought of fanciful but uncreative wish thinking, along the lines of 'and everyone gets a pony'. Why a pony? Why not a leopluredon? It's a shame to take such potential and then wind it down with cliches. All in all, the ending was quite lazy and pedestrian, as well as deliberately outrageous, but only in that narrow, limited scope of what's politically fashionable at the moment. These facts cheapened the film and will inevitably date it.

For instance, they use the vehicle of a very absurdist and silly film to endorse a trans boy as a sad and heroic character, but only did so in the sense of "and look, we have a boy in a dress! How crazy is that?" - but 'bringing up this issue' in context was a bit reminiscent of the time the Twilight series abruptly and haphazardly tried to tackle the topic of abortion. It felt forced and a little of out of place, like all of the sudden a clearly very silly film decided to deliver a message - easily lost amid the litany of other propositions which were clearly intended as jokes. If the discussion was 'aberations of the status quo' created by a cruel and capricious deity, it wasn't pushed far enough. In other words, it was a very carelessly executed Harry Potter level of fantasy.

None of the characters were very likeable, but for Jean-Claude and Victor. I've noticed that this is a common trait of European film: making amoral characters sans heroicism. Not in the black and white, complicated HBO way in which they have extraordinary highs and lows of valour, but in the sense that people are almost all equally uninspiring but in different ways. A lot of European films seem to celebrate the sad, eclectic banality of ordinary people, and this was no exception. In this case, there was an especially loathsome glibness toward sadism, including the frivolous murder of animals - which was nothing but a cheap joke. The murderer on question goes on to be treated to a happy ending and casually 'redeemed', as though nothing he'd done was very bad & as though he just needed a new perspective.

Lastly, one must wonder - why bother with "just a bit of fun"? Why not reach for something greater? This movie embodies the notion of "Don't let perfection get in the way of good enough", and that slack disrespect for the audience's time is just a bit more glib than I would have preferred.