Reviews

First two episodes had promise, then the rest felt thrown all mishmash with a bit of whatnot tossed in for good measure. I loved the cast, great actors with promise in those characters who did what they could with stilted and poor storytelling. But who am I to think DC could tell a good story, shame on me. Of course they change characters to make some PC or SJW producer happy. They have beautiful actors and actresses but only the drag dancing or male-on-male love scenes get any attention (oh and the child pedo scenes, forgot that, they do spend a lot of resources on those).... shame that is where we are now... gratuitous violence, incest/pedo, and profanity to get the TV-MA rating and show no real beauty even with that cast.

This shows tries to be what "Dirk Gently" actually is; quirky, dark, clever at times with some heart and some left over 2000's emo for a bit of angst and rawr- all around a mystery and some sleuthing. But unlike Dirk Gently... it fails. Fire everyone but the cast and let whoever wrote the early "Shameless" episodes write next season and let whoever directed "True Blood" direct and I think it could be salvaged... because you know they are reading IMDB reviews for ideas.

This is still better than Marvel shows, but Marvel shows are unwatchable silly. Scorsese is right, you know it, I know it.

To those people who are giving this anything over 5 or 6.... it is like giving your kid watered down grape juice and telling them it is wine.... when they have had neither. They are excited, think they are drunk and loving it and living the life and there can be nothing better and they are all adult now and cultured.... Compared to Marvel this is Bacchus's top shelf sauce.... until you have a little taste of something real.

There are hints of SJW battle cries in the first two episodes, but by the third episode, the Guy Fawkes masks are off and you are subjected to the full onslaught of irrational nonsense that make up 97% of SJW's world. While demanding that we respect and never objectify women, the director/writers/producers objectify their women cast members, both in this specific episode and the entire series. Typical jock is dumb, man is dumb, woman are always victims, separate out by race, place race cards every chance you get, pit races against each other, pit classes against each other.

If MSNBC wrote a show for the CW, this would be it. Remember the days when Smallville tried to keep us out of the current events, give us an escape from the constant social media hysteria? Well this is the exact opposite, they even call out their own hashtags in the show. Wow

There is no deep thought here, there is nothing but the hypocrisy of the SJW movement on full display. Too bad too, because the story could have been told without any of it, and it could be gripping. So much cliché, so much cringe, so much preaching.

There are bad (wo)men and there are good (wo)men, and then they fight, and struggle with how they must fight, some are greedy, some are righteous and they give a lot of stern looks and grimaces with the choices on how they have to fight... yeah it is that type of show.... the type of show an 8-year-old loves.... but they can't watch this show for all of the gratuitous violence.

I blame Marvel for this, for dumbing down and serving us a lot of meaningless action based shows now, I really do blame Marvel for so many copycats. If you get what I am saying, you will understand the problem of this show. If you love Marvel and think they tell a good story and develop it well on TV... well skip the rest of this review because we live in different worlds.

I had high hopes for Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, I mean I appreciated Smallville for the first 4 or 5 seasons for what it was - balanced cheese served with meaningful moments and a good story with characters you love and hate, with a setting you wished you were in. But this is just terrible. Painfully simple plot, zero character development, meaningless choices were made for their world creation that has a lot of flaws.

So many plot holes and just odd choices by characters and world creators you have to think they wanted to be canceled... but no, AMC was like "we will never cancel this show to punish your awful ideas!"

I was hoping for something gnawing and hyper-real to replace Banshee... a show that may be the last deeper drama/action show for awhile until we can cleanse the plague that is Marvel boy-story-telling syndrome.

I really liked the first Captain America movie, I thought the story was strong, the writing was better than average Marvel, the acting was spot on.... this is not that movie. The story is terrible, like terrible terrible. So much could have been resolved with a simple 1 minute conversation between Captain America and Iron Man, a conversation that would have happened in any situation other than this movie.

Aside from the terrible (have I used that word yet) shaky cam CGI that must make Transformer movie producers proud, the needless never-ending stream of Marvel characters is like watching the red carpet at some nonsense award show... yeah we get it, you love yourself. However, unlike an award show, there weren't any scantily clad beautiful people to watch to keep your attention, both myself and my girlfriend noticed that fact. Lots of pretty people, just as covered as women at a Bahrain beach. Somehow they managed to make Scarlett Johansson look average, that might deserve an award.

So to summarize the entire movie, HUGE spoilers (kinda joking but sadly not really), imagine this exchange between Captain America (CA from here on) and Iron Man (IM respectively), imagine this in your special voice, I prefer Cartman from South Park:

CA: Winter Soldier didn't kill anyone, he my friend

IM: No he kill people, I see the video

CA: Nah uhh, he my friend

IM: I see the video, so I put on my suit and punch you now

CA: No I punch you, and I get my other friends to punch you

IM: No I punch you, and I get MY friends to punch you too

... Time passes after the punches, and IM learns Winter soldier has killed his parents under the brainwashed control of Hydra long ago, and the following ensues.....

IM: Winter Soldier killed my mommy and daddy

CA: No he my friend, he not kill them, Hydra kill them

IM: No I see the video, he killed them

CA: NO! he MY FRIEND, he NOT killed them, Hydra kill them

IM: NO! I see the video, I put on my suit and punch you now

CA: I punch YOU now, I throw my special shield and break your suit

THE END

Your welcome for saving your sanity and your money

Lets get this out of the way. If you have never seen a real animal, even in a zoo, you might think the CGI is okay... breathtaking/stunning/game-changing.... never. We are a long way from realistic CGI for animals, especially furry ones. This film does no favors to advance CGI, so if that bothers you, you will hate this movie. It will be one of those that is unwatchable in 10 years because of how far we will have come, and the acting/story just isn't there.

They should have found a different child actor, most of this movie it seems he is just being told to be annoyed/exasperated at every situation; it doesn't matter if he should be scared, traumatized, fearful, joyful, etc, he just goes to annoyed/exasperated for every scene requiring emotion.

If you thought the boy in "Australia" deserved every award available... this movie will let you down. Seems like a nice kid and has potential, just not ready yet to carry an entire movie.

Now to Bill Murray... saves the day! If you love him, you will love him as a bear, I am fairly certain this is the role he was born to play. If I could find him and stuff him in a bear costume and make him say lines from this movie I would, truly a joy to watch and listen to. He is the bear and the bear is him. This is the ONLY reason to watch this movie.

I feel like there is way to much emphasis if something is odd or weird to immediately claim it is brilliant, mind blowing, and should be a huge success. I felt season 1 was a 4 or 5 (remember people there is a scale from 1-10 for a reason, if everything you rate is between 7-10 you clearly are from the new-math school of thought). Season 1 is a skit show, kudos to the book and to the writers, they make some interesting and hilarious metaphors, analogies, and straight up fantasy in the purest form, taking many things literally and ironically. But there is nothing to carry you through the season or touch your deepies. Season 2 grows on you, it deserves a solid 6 with a wink and a tug at a 7. They carry on with the antics and the characters develop,albeit very slowly. Either way there is a glimpse at something that may turn into a show with real meaning and heart. I hope that for this show, I hope it so hard.

I will admit I was done after about an hour and walked out, not even caring enough to get a comp ticket for another film.

Is a movie that dwells on looking inside of yourself to find more of yourself what society really needs right now? Aren't we all a little too self-absorbed and a little too much of a production as it is? I don't get the premise, but whatever, if it is funny it is funny... but it isn't funny or cute or quality.

Amy Poehler is a bully dressed in pleasantries (as is becoming her typecast), the rest of the cast was much better but the writing was stiff and felt like a bad skit from SNL, the laughs are forced and you really don't care about much other than when it will be done. It tries to be smart and deep but sounds like that person you know who loves to recite facts and news without much else, and you find yourself with the blank half-smile stare you reserve for when JWs are at your door and you forgot to pretend you aren't home.

Don't get me wrong, I love animated film done right, I was impressed by "Wreck It Ralph" and "Up" where the voice acting along with the story and writing fit perfectly, this is nothing near those films. If you find "Tom and Jerry" type antics as the pinnacle of animated film, this is the film for you, if you are looking for something both with a strong story and characters and voices to match, skip it and don't believe the high rating.

The only thing this series has going for it is Ben Mendelsohn. I like Kyle Chandler and he is... well Kyle Chandler. So you get what you are expecting there. But Ben Mendelsohn is by far the star of this show, and no huge spoilers but what is season 2 going to be about? Some call this a slow burner, others a modern tragedy, others a type of mystery... but really I think this is just laziness. Leave out one important detail (events surrounding the death of their sister/daughter) then make sure the characters never speak about the one detail that matters for like 30 years, then give maybe one small hint per episode. By the end of 13 hours you have the whole story. A story that would take about 2 minutes to tell, even less if they spoke about it once in their lives together. NO. That is not what makes a good drama or story. Add to that terrible people, like awful terrible people you pray do not actually exist in real life. NO. If this were to work you would have to have the characters so deep and believable, evil or good (or both), that you care if they fail or succeed. These are not those type of characters. These are the type of people you run across in front of you in line at the supermarket or restaurant and want to get away from as fast as possible, spoiled adults with spoiled children. Danny is real and you do get the feels for him and his life, but man does he make bad choices, choices so bad they are not realistic, but that is the script so he still gets and A+. If you want a slow burner or a mystery turn to True Detective, and for a true tragedy I will go with I,Claudius, can't be beat.

First off, I watched every episode of every season. This is not some hit piece, but a thought-out explanation of what was rubbing me wrong this whole time... rubbed raw by the end of it.

The comparisons to The Office are fine and well, especially in the first two season, but those two seasons were actually the best in the series... should have stuck with what worked. First the good: nearly ever single major supporting cast member. Pratt was Fantastic and lovable. Plaza was good weird. Ansari took many episodes and made them epic, especially whenever Ben Schwartz and Jenny Slate were involved. Ansari and Retta were also perfect together (treat yourself). Rashida Jones was the girl everyone wants to marry in real life. Rob Lowe eventually got going and really had some good moments, I never knew how funny he could be; his new DirectTv commercials take what he mastered in Parks and Rec to a whole new level. There are so many other supporting actors no one will read this if I list each one... so onwards and downwards.

Now the bad. The root of all issues lie with Leslie Knope, but I will come back to her character in a moment. Jerry/Gary/Larry - love this guy and how Jim O'Heir played him, I wish he was in my family... now why all the putrid bullying? If this character was a woman would anyone stand for this? It was out of left field many times with no reason given, just wrong. I thought maybe they were trying to find a "Toby" character to beat up on, but unlike Toby Gary/Jerry/Larry did NOTHING wrong EVER aside from being clumsy. It was strange and I think if the character was played by an overweight woman someone would have lost their job over the meanness of it all, what a double standard. Just go back and watch some of the bullying of him and mentally replace him with an overweight woman, you will see what I am saying.

Ben Wyatt. I have been a fan of Adam Scott since Party Down, and I think he did a good job here... but again Leslie Knope. The closer his character got to the Knope character the more emasculated he became, by the end there was no doubt who wore the pantsuit and who wore the pants. Too bad, I liked the board game obsession, the smart quirkiness, the general unique qualities to his character. It seemed all stripped away by the end and he was just some odd political husband without meaning. Also the entire romance was so unbelievable, absolutely zero chemistry.

Ron Swanson. He was great, Nick Offerman was great. The storytelling was awful. Ron is supposed to be the Anti-Knope. The libertarian/conservative reasonableness to the progressive pushings of Leslie Knope. But in every single standoff Ron Swanson gives in to his values and bends to Knope's wishes because she "really believes" or "really fights" or "really tries" to do something. I am sorry, but if you believe in the opposite of someone else, just because they are "really trying" hard doesn't mean you forsake all of your own beliefs. This was no more evident than the end when he gives in to Knope one last time to work for the Federal Government to essentially be a park Ranger. The Ron Swanson I would have liked to see would have somehow finagled the land from the Federal Government and opened up his own Wilderness park to teach kids not to be such sissies and depend on themselves and each other for survival, all the while respecting what he loves most... nature.

So let's get this over with... Leslie Knope was the biggest bully of them all. She bullied every single character to do her bidding, relentlessly, degradingly, sometimes with a smile, sometimes with a tantrum, sometimes in "their" best interest... but it got annoying real fast. If the series would have shifted away from her as a central character and instead someone they all had to deal with, that would have been ideal and would have let the truly exceptional characters shine. I could handle the antics 5 minutes an episode, way too many other characters I would have preferred seeing.

Keeping the Knope character in the spotlight quickly turned this series (which would have been great with the true ineptitude of government bureaucracies as a backdrop for hilarious people doing hilarious things) to a huge progressive love-fest with every progressive cliché and politician making a cameo.

Towards the end (seasons 6-7) it was very formulaic writing and was basically reduced to a bunch of small skits to get each one's shtick in, absolutely no effort or thought was put in to the overall story. The giant take away is that government rules best when ruled by people who really want to rule you...

I love me some Karl, I thought he was the best part of Derek, and in an Idiot Abroad he was truly remarkable and a breath of fresh air in the overdone travel show genre. But something was missing here in the Moaning of Life and after I watched the entire series I realized Ricky Gervais was 100% correct when he said Karl is at his best when he is stuck in the corner getting poked with a stick. I didn't even care too much for Ricky or Stephen in an Idiot Abroad, I thought they could have shown more compassion for Karl and his misadventures once in awhile. But now I have to admit they are vital for the success of this type of program with Karl. Karl needs his anti-karl as much as superman needs bizarro superman to make a truly epic show. Might be painful, might be uncomfortable at times, but well worth it for the insight that only comes in those circumstances where Karl excels. An Idiot Abroad felt like a true adventure with Karl, this not so much.