So where's my invisible motorcycle?
What is it? Animated kidcom based on Henry Danger, in an A-B 11-minute episode format.
Where did it air? Nickelodeon
Who stars in it? Pretty much everyone from the live-action show reprises their voices, which in this case means Jace Norman, Cooper Barnes, Riele Downs and...that guy who's Schwoz.
Why are we reviewing this? It's on Nickelodeon, hence fulfilling the "Nick and Disney Channel Reviewed" requirement.
What happens when you take a Dan Schneider show and animate it? Well, as we saw last week (in our review of Toon in For Danger) and again this week...you pretty much end up with what amounts to a single-cam Dan Schneider show with a practically unlimited SFX budget.
But by no means an unlimited animation budget.
Practically speaking, it's literally just Henry Danger. The plots, the jokes, everything is the same except for the fact that it's animation, and it therefore gives them what for the live-action show would necessitate a practically unlimited SFX budget. Seth MacFarlane put it best in an interview when he talked about the practical SFX advantages of animation verses live-action but...other than that, it's clear Schneider's extremely hesitant to stray far from what he feels makes Henry Danger work.
So that means strained jokes that go on for way too long, a hesitation to actually delve deeper into the type of action Henry and Ray would actually be, you know, doing as superheroes (again despite the practically unlimited SFX budget and this is why I keep pointing this out) and the overall effect feeling like Poochie stealing Itchy and Scratchy's car and driving past the Fireworks Factory and into the sunset, with the episode Fin'ing right there.
It's frustrating, but does it sink the show? Not necessarily. Dan's still good at jokes and especially slapstick humor, despite how (un)sophisticated they be. What does cause the episodes to drag are long stretches in between where it feels to be absolutely in obligation to this one-scene gag that's been dragged to such a length it's obviously meant to carry the entire damn episode. This is a common trope/fault in kidcoms especially, especially animated ones that are nowhere near the calibre of, say, Gravity Falls or Phineas & Ferb or Star vs. The Forces of Evil (although I felt like Star definitely was milking its one trick pony...er, or cow maybe?, far too much its first season) and especially Dan Schneider shows no matter what format they take. Can you name an episode of iCarly you thought was a bit strained? Or maybe VicTORious? Say, Ten Thousand Berry Balls? Or how about Sam & Cat, like, say, almost the entire damn show. Or even Game Shakers with, say, literally the entire damn show. Yeah, chances are it's because Dan did the same damn crap.
We see it in spades in both episodes here: Clone Babies and Flying Spiders, although if I had to pick one, the latter would be the biggest offender. Clone Babies starts out with enough promising jokes and slapstick humor (I'll get to them in the Extra Thoughts section) and then gets bogged down when they find themselves needed to play babysitter, although the idea of using the Ray babies as living shields was not only a clever idea but a hilarious scene. Give us more of that, Dan. And then the final scene is just a complete and total what the fuck. Oh, and a disproportionate chunk of the episode revolves around watching our heroes eat Chinese food.
Then we get to Flying Spiders. I'd call it the weakest episode, but that feels redundant given how it's already implied when I say the episode completely freakin' blew. Again, it still manages to have some...I wouldn't call them "good" jokes as so much as effectively basic jokes, like the kids picking on Kid Danger being a bunch of straight-laced "cool nerds." But most of the episode is just Kid Danger waiting around for Captain Man to get done with his freakin' shopping.
Why do people think plotlines like this are funny?
Episode Grade: Rather than grade the two episodes separately, since it's obvious each episode is going to be paired with the other for all airings I'll split the difference: C-. None of them are as strong as Game of Drones which is the strongest episode so far (granted out of all four of them so far), and Flying Spiders was just total weaksauce, man.
Episode MVP: Is a C- too high a grade to give a joke MVP award? Like, to myself, for instance? Sigh. I'll give it to Jace Norman because...I dunno, because of a coin flip for all I care. I really don't want to spend much time thinking it over, sorry.
Extra Thoughts:
- Clone Babies opens up Henry and Ray playing a video game called Call of Booty, where all the characters are pirates with...huge, literally (yes I'm using that word correctly) inflated asses, and Ray defeats Henry by...cutting off said inflated ass from a cutely-drawn woman pirate. I'm not sure if this might speak to some really weird-ass fetish of Dan (Lord knows he's been associated with more than one by sneaking stuff like this into his shows) or if it's just so freakin' bizarre it loops back around to being strangely...I don't want to say delightful, what's the word I'm looking for? MAD Magazine, that entire title being used as an adjective, maybe?
- Oh and surprise! we're also reviewing Walk the Prank in here. I've always found it to be...weird. The pranks, to be brutally honest, don't seem particularly inspired compared to other prank shows of yore. This was the biggest problem with Rank the Prank, a Nickelodeon UK(?) production imported over for...well, Nickelodeon and ran for a season or two before Nickelodeon decided to double-down on both Paradise Run and more Cinemat productions and other scripted imports like I Am Frankie and Hunter Street instead (and I think it's easy to see how that was a better choice, even if it might be a bit more pricey at the end).Despite having all the pranks being pulled directly from the imaginations of actual kids...well, I guess kids have some severely overrated imaginations of this new generation, is what I'm saying. Another thing that got in the way was the competition element that...just...got in the way and was just a distraction. The way they did the visual representation of team elimination by exploding them (with computer graphics, obviously) was just stupid. The whole thing was...well, when it was clear Nickelodeon wasn't going to show future episodes, I think I'll go ahead and quote Jay Sherman's iconic quote from the ancient animated show The Critic: and nothing of value was lost.
In addition to frankly uninspired pranks, Walk the Prank also has some of its own unnecessary wonkiness going on with...for some reason they decided to actually wrap a plotline around these pranks? And by that I mean, they basically have two shows in one. You have the plot-based parts and the prank-based parts and...other than having some of the same cast they have literally nothing to do with each other. They might as well be two shows completely mashed into each other to the point where instead of having an A-B structure they just end up randomly alternating with each other. Like in the episode I watched from this morning, you've got the prank parts in which one of the pranks featured some WWE superstars (yeah I'm just gonna admit right now I only recorded it because Alexa Bliss was in it and as soon as she wasn't in it anymore I quit watching) and then you have the non-prank plot parts in which...some obligatory mean girls were talking to Bailey, the one girl character of the prank team, and something? I dunno. The end result doesn't really lend itself to watching, unless you happen to be the target demo I guess. I dunno. I don't understand kids today is what I'm trying to say I guess.
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
Lovestruck: The Musical! Movie Mini-Reviewed
I spent a good portion of the 80s worshipping that ass!
What is it? FREEFORM (well, back when it was still ABC Family) original movie/musical from about half a decade ago
Where did it air? FREEFORM although you might be forgiven for the confusion given that it was still ABC Family back then.
Who stars in it? Most immediately recognizable is Jame Seymour, who is most famous forbeing one of the wives beheaded by Henry VIII in his infamously desperate search for a male heir a number of things from being the Bond Girl on Live and Let Die (which perhaps has one of the most awesome theme songs from one of the most awesome bands to ever do a Bond theme) to the quintessentially 90s historical medical drama Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. But beyond that even, we've got Sara Paxton who also starred with Emma Roberts and JoJo Levesque in one of my most favorite guilty pleasures, Aquamarine (as well as being the replacement Marni in the last Halloweentown movie) and most immediately recognizable to Disney Channel fans, both Chelsea Kane and Adrienne Bailon who at this point probably deserve to not need an introduction. Also, Drew Seely, perhaps best known for Selena Gomez's Another Cinderella Story.
Why are we reviewing this? Because it's basically an adult DCOM. Well, slightly more grown-up DCOM. Like if back in 16 Wishes instead of making Abby 22 it just made her, I dunno, a year older.
Incidentally it's...basically the same plotline but in reverse - Jane Seymour drinks magic potion, magically turns into Chelsea Kane, uses that to her advantage to prevent her daughter Sara Paxton from marrying some dude she (the mom, Chelsea) doesn't like.
So, yeah, it's also somewhat similar in plot to Never Been Kissed which we very recently just reviewed, just that instead of a magic potion it's totally grounded in realism by...having a clearly insane and senile magazine owner and his lackey editor assign a still young-enough-to-pull-it-off-looking Drew Barrymore back to high school.
Anyway, Lovestruck: The Musical! is better, end of review.
Movie Grade: B+. Yeah I know I'm a sucker for these guilty pleasures but it at least managed to meet the expectations I had for this way back in the day (see Extra Thoughts immediately below for an explanation on what that's supposed to mean).
Movie MVP: Dangit, I guess I have to give it to Chelsea Kane and Drew Seely here. Their ballroom dance really ended up being a highlight.
Extra Thoughts
- there's actually a funny personal story here that I didn't even realize until I was already halfway through watching. I recorded this one off from Freeform's OnDemand service but I tried to watch it half a decade ago when it premiered on then-ABC Family, but I didn't get the chance because, funnily enough, I had to attend my brother's wedding instead (again, I'm old and granted that was five years ago) and for whatever reason they never bothered to upload it to OnDemand at that time, and so after a short while I just forgot about - until today, I guess.
- I'm watching the movie again this morning just 'cuz, and I completely forgot that the movie opens up on Broadway (both literally and I guess a little bit figuratively) with Jane Seymour (or at least a voice double, I don't think I've ever heard Jane Seymour sing to really know) belting out (and I do mean belting out) Lady Gaga's Just Dance. I guess this was the intended effect but the opening does give the impression that it's a more comedic version of, say, Center Stage (starring the irrepressible Zoe Saldana, one of my most favorite movies of all time and a big reason why I love this genre of movie) or even Backstage (yes as in that long-ass Family Channel/Disney Canada production we recently reviewed two years after its premiere) instead of what it really is, with less then like 10 minutes out of the total run time (which is only 1 hour 27 minutes to begin with) taking place anywhere else other than this ridiculously gorgeous fairytale dreamlike Italian villa...which turns out to be freakin' Pittsburgh.
- BTW I've been to Pittsburgh, that's where the American side of my family's from.
Having a part of Pittsburgh double as a gorgeous Italian villa is like having a part of Cleveland double as a gorgeous Italian villa.
- And since I got this from Freeform's OnDemand service, being a Freeform original and all, I got bombarded by ads for all the hip, cool Freeform originals playing now. That said, Alone Together looks...interesting enough. Maybe kinda like a combination of an FX single-cam sitcom and maybe Girls but with more universal appeal beyond just Greenwich Village and Tribecca. And then there's Siren which I guess is...some paranormal mermaid thing? I dunno. You know how much I love Mermaids though. Alone Together has already been humming along for at least four episodes but Siren doesn't come on until pretty much a whole two months from now.
What is it? FREEFORM (well, back when it was still ABC Family) original movie/musical from about half a decade ago
Where did it air? FREEFORM although you might be forgiven for the confusion given that it was still ABC Family back then.
Who stars in it? Most immediately recognizable is Jame Seymour, who is most famous for
Why are we reviewing this? Because it's basically an adult DCOM. Well, slightly more grown-up DCOM. Like if back in 16 Wishes instead of making Abby 22 it just made her, I dunno, a year older.
Incidentally it's...basically the same plotline but in reverse - Jane Seymour drinks magic potion, magically turns into Chelsea Kane, uses that to her advantage to prevent her daughter Sara Paxton from marrying some dude she (the mom, Chelsea) doesn't like.
So, yeah, it's also somewhat similar in plot to Never Been Kissed which we very recently just reviewed, just that instead of a magic potion it's totally grounded in realism by...having a clearly insane and senile magazine owner and his lackey editor assign a still young-enough-to-pull-it-off-looking Drew Barrymore back to high school.
Anyway, Lovestruck: The Musical! is better, end of review.
Movie Grade: B+. Yeah I know I'm a sucker for these guilty pleasures but it at least managed to meet the expectations I had for this way back in the day (see Extra Thoughts immediately below for an explanation on what that's supposed to mean).
Movie MVP: Dangit, I guess I have to give it to Chelsea Kane and Drew Seely here. Their ballroom dance really ended up being a highlight.
Extra Thoughts
- there's actually a funny personal story here that I didn't even realize until I was already halfway through watching. I recorded this one off from Freeform's OnDemand service but I tried to watch it half a decade ago when it premiered on then-ABC Family, but I didn't get the chance because, funnily enough, I had to attend my brother's wedding instead (again, I'm old and granted that was five years ago) and for whatever reason they never bothered to upload it to OnDemand at that time, and so after a short while I just forgot about - until today, I guess.
- I'm watching the movie again this morning just 'cuz, and I completely forgot that the movie opens up on Broadway (both literally and I guess a little bit figuratively) with Jane Seymour (or at least a voice double, I don't think I've ever heard Jane Seymour sing to really know) belting out (and I do mean belting out) Lady Gaga's Just Dance. I guess this was the intended effect but the opening does give the impression that it's a more comedic version of, say, Center Stage (starring the irrepressible Zoe Saldana, one of my most favorite movies of all time and a big reason why I love this genre of movie) or even Backstage (yes as in that long-ass Family Channel/Disney Canada production we recently reviewed two years after its premiere) instead of what it really is, with less then like 10 minutes out of the total run time (which is only 1 hour 27 minutes to begin with) taking place anywhere else other than this ridiculously gorgeous fairytale dreamlike Italian villa...which turns out to be freakin' Pittsburgh.
- BTW I've been to Pittsburgh, that's where the American side of my family's from.
Having a part of Pittsburgh double as a gorgeous Italian villa is like having a part of Cleveland double as a gorgeous Italian villa.
- And since I got this from Freeform's OnDemand service, being a Freeform original and all, I got bombarded by ads for all the hip, cool Freeform originals playing now. That said, Alone Together looks...interesting enough. Maybe kinda like a combination of an FX single-cam sitcom and maybe Girls but with more universal appeal beyond just Greenwich Village and Tribecca. And then there's Siren which I guess is...some paranormal mermaid thing? I dunno. You know how much I love Mermaids though. Alone Together has already been humming along for at least four episodes but Siren doesn't come on until pretty much a whole two months from now.
Wednesday, January 24, 2018
The Goldbergs Mini-Reviewed: 1990-something [sic, in case people pester me that the s should be capitalized] (S5Exx - yeah, don't worry we'll get to explaining that too)
If everybody gets a trophy how will the winners know who's faces to rub it in?
What is it? 24-minute-ish (sans commercial breaks) single-cam family sitcom, but moreover a "backdoor pilot" to a new spinoff, hence why it doesn't officially have a Goldbergs episode production number, at least as listed by my service provider's digital programming guide.
Where did it air? ABC
Who stars in it? By perhaps a staggering margin the most recognizable names are going to be Tim Meadows along with Bryan Callen reprising their usual Goldbergs recurring roles along with Octavia Spencer, with Meadows getting to be the headlining star in this one (more than a bit overdue, really) and Spencer taking over from Patton Oswalt's disembodied voiceover from the parent series in this one (incidentally this is nearly the second thing in a row we've reviewed with Octavia Spencer in it). Our usual readership will also likely recognize Rachel Crow who was a regular on...uhhhh...let it come to me, I know the name of it...ugh, some Nickelodeon show from like half a decade ago when I just started watching the network (Big Time Rush? Nah, that already had Ciara Bravo in it) as well as Invisible Sister. Nia Long also plays Crow's mom/Meadow's sister.
Why are we reviewing this? Well...I'm a fan of the Goldbergs and...it's got Rachel Crow in it?
Speaking of which...man, Rachel Crow is not a bad actress by any means but I'm wondering if she's the kiss of death. Or rather if she just has a lot of bad luck.
First of all let's start with her Nickelodeon show which was...FRED?!?! REALLY? ...well, ummm...wow. I guess that speaks for itself. Sorry, Rachel.
Then there's Invisible Sister, which I also think speaks for itself and now we get to...here.
I mean, the actors are fine. Rachel's pretty excellent in it. In the few times I mentioned him I think I've made it clear I'm a huge Tim Meadows fan, and he was freakin' awesome in this.
But....
They say great actors can save a show. Well, that's not true all the time. Sometimes the material just doesn't work.
First of all there's the 90s setting which, despite what Octavia Spencer says is not the greatest decade ever (at least not the first half). Trust me, I know, I actually lived through it. I'm freakin' 32 years old. I was born in 1985, the same year as both Eddie Hwuang's character on Fresh off the Boat (which takes place in roughly the same time period, or at least the back half of the 1990s) and quite possibly Rachel's character Felicia. I'm old enough to have an alcoholic ex-fiancee, for God's sakes. But I'm not here to wax anti-nostalgic, but rather that the series shows off one of its weaknesses right off the bat by diving into some of the most Flanderized cultural tropes that usually pop up from the 90s. I know this is the whole schtick of The Goldbergs in the first place, but 1.) 1990s-something makes even Fresh Off the Boat look like a realistic documentary and 2.) ...the issue is that 80s cultural stereotypes are quite frankly awesome, and 90s ones...just suck.
The episode itself puts one of those tropes front and center - the whole "softening" of the culture as a whole that, again believe me, was a real hot topic of the 90s (Rush Limbaugh couldn't shut his big fat blowhole about it, or in other words nothing's changed in the last 25 years). The idea of participation ribbons and "everyone's a winner." This whole debate of opposing ideas around the value of such extreme inclusion...was tiring back when I actually had to fucking live through that shit, and it's tiring now when, again we're still living through that shit. I'm not validating or invalidating the idea of participation ribbons or "everyone's a winner" philosophy either way - as a solid product of the 90s, I'm...just not sure which approach is right, especially given how both the school systems I went through actually were pretty big believers and practitioners of that kind of philosophy, and at the same time my parents fought tooth and nail to counteract it with their right-wing brainwash/hogwash, to the point where I think I just ended up absorbing the worst of both - hence why Eddie Hwang is a successful Asian Pacific Islander rap star and I'm an Asian Pacific Islander...guy who blogs about tween shows on Nickelodeon and Disney Channel and am desperately scrambling to find a job within the next less-than-a-week despite being the same age.
But my point being, is that it's extremely poor joke material. Also I don't care how much fun Rachel Crow's having watching those kids get beamed with dodgeballs was horrible.
But even that aside...there's something that just pales compared to the parent show. I think it was the moment when the band - I want to make this clear, specifically, the marching band - joined in with Meadows and Callen on the Backstreat Boys beat. If it had just been them two, I think it would've been pretty decent comedy - but throwing the marching band in? Literally at that moment I realized, this show had jumped the shark, 20 minutes into its freakin' pilot.
Again, a part of me wants to force this show to succeed just because of Meadows and Crow but.....ugh.
Episode Grade: C-.
Episode MVP: Tim Meadows in what I confidently feel is one of the most definitive cases of MVP we've ever had on this blog. As it should perhaps be expected from him, he absolutely carried virtually 100% of the comedy scenes. Almost every time he spoke, I laughed, heartedly. Whoever's giving him his lines knows how to write them, but he sure knows how to deliver them.
Extra Thoughts
- I know this episode was a bit controversial given how ABC sat on it and looked as if they were going to just keep sitting on it, as is what happens with the vast majority of TV pilots, and...well I can see why they sat on it for a while.
- Unrelated to Goldbergs but I'm watching KC Undercover as I'm writing this and I can't believe KC threw her best friend Marissa in jail, literally, just to save her own butt, wow.
It's a good thing you reviewed this because the episode would have just collected dust on my DVR.
Before Nick at Nite picked up the show, I had never watched a single minute of The Goldbergs. I remember going to school a few years ago and seeing subway advertisements for the show. I thought to myself, "What is this garbage?" Watching current network sitcoms didn't cross my mind. That's why if I had changed the channel last summer after Monday Night RAW, I would have never become a fan of Modern Family.
But this turned out to be a really good show. The fact that the show is based in the 1980s means that they can use whatever cultural references they want from that decade without coming off as random and unnecessary. You know, like Family Guy or something. Plus, even though they do write stories based on 1980s events, the events are usually just the backdrop for character-centered situations. I feel like The Goldbergs would still work without the 1980s concept because Adam and Barry come off as fully realized characters. And it does help because this show is just a way for us all to see what Adam F. Goldberg's life was like in the 1980s, but you still have to make these fictional versions entertaining and meaningful. This isn't the best version of a period show that I have ever seen (Everybody Hates Chris) but I understand why it exists and why it has a fan base. Plus, I could never hate a show that gave Rowan Blanchard work.
This show seems like something that won't last long. I don't know what you can say about the 1990s that anyone else hasn't. I feel like the pilot episode was more about getting a whole bunch of decade-specific references in there than trying to move the story along. I feel like it would help the show a lot more if they focus on the characters first and the gimmick second. Especially since 90s nostalgia is at its peak right now. If this was one episode where we see life in the 1990s for the Goldbergs, that would have been a much more interesting premise. But I wonder how much mileage they'll get out of doing the same thing with different characters, and they're already at a disadvantage by going after the decade that everyone goes after.
I liked Tim Meadows in Mean Girls, so it has nothing to do with him. I already feel like the casting was done well because Rachel Crow and Summer Parker already feel like their characters. And when The Goldbergs eventually ends, at least it will have a successor. But the writing will definitely have to go beyond "We're in the nineties now" in order for the show to have some longevity.
It's kind of funny that you brought up the story of how you came to end up enjoying The Goldbergs by not changing the channel, since a similar story is how I came to watch Disney Channel (and Nickelodeon) myself in the first place. Before that network comedies were the exclusive comedies I watched. I don't think I even bothered to watch many comedies on cable (other than the super-high profile ones on premium for example or the ones on Freeform which...let's face it is Disney Channel for old teens, I can't really think of any off the top of my head). Oh wait I used to watch [adult swim] of course.
But I definitely agree with you on Goldbergs (especially on "anything that keeps Rowan on television") and...I think you did a better job hitting on how 1990-something failed better than I did. I didn't really have a good grasp on what was going on (or rather, the lack of it) until you pointed it out. The Goldbergs is effectively a sitcom about a family trapped in a world of 80s cultural and entertainment tropes. 1990-something is the sitcom equivalent of a brochure on 90s cultural and entertainment tropes.
We both agree that Meadows carried his material and the rest of the show but...I just don't know what to say about everything else. Not everybody can be Tim Meadows. You can't just cast a bunch of Tim Meadowses (Team Meadows?) and expect them to carry anything and everything because Tim Meadows is pretty much one guy out of, like, a billion. Even if you scour the world, congratulations you've got a team of at the absolute most about seven guys. Even with someone like say Nia Long, she's got to have some material to work with. And I'll even roll back what I just said, Tim Meadows in a way lucked out because they gave him material to work with. They know both the actor and the character and they know how to work with him - and I also take back what I said about Nia Long because she absolutely carried what she had to work with and her scenes and the rest of the show too. If there's one person even remotely contending with Meadows for MVP, it's Long. But I feel disappointed that they, for example, didn't give Rachel Crow material she can work with. She's not even "Chick Adam," as insulting as being Chick Adam is at least it's something. She was just...there, filling in the void that needs to be filled by "insert main character here."
Episode Grade: C+
Episode MVP: Tim Meadows. When I was watching this episode, I was worried they were going to make him this really weak, ineffective authority figure that is in way over his head. But the pilot gives me hope that the characters will be taking him seriously.
EXTRA THOUGHTS
-How ironic is it that this is the second current ABC sitcom to get a spin-off? That Modern Family spin-off shouldn't be that far behind.
-I wonder how much of a role Beverly will have now that her kids aren't going to the school. Like, she'll appear every now and then in the first season and they'll phase her out after that.
-I have to agree with Ray that the "I Want It That Way" scene was pretty cheesy. If this show's going to be taken seriously, that's the kind of material they need to avoid. It feels like this show is begging to be a little more gritty and darker than the original show. It would help if it was left in the hands of writers who were new and could find a distinctive voice for it. It really shouldn't be Goldbergs II.
-Is Lainey ever coming back to the original series or is she done for good? I don't know how much Erica works without someone like Lainey or her family to play off of. It's especially jarring since she's the only original main character.
- Wow the formatting of Blogspot is still really wonky - it's best described as "basically it's just gonna do whatever the hell it feels like, to hell with what the user actually wants." Sadly we're basically stuck here because you get what you pay for, welcome to microtransaction society -_-.
What is it? 24-minute-ish (sans commercial breaks) single-cam family sitcom, but moreover a "backdoor pilot" to a new spinoff, hence why it doesn't officially have a Goldbergs episode production number, at least as listed by my service provider's digital programming guide.
Where did it air? ABC
Who stars in it? By perhaps a staggering margin the most recognizable names are going to be Tim Meadows along with Bryan Callen reprising their usual Goldbergs recurring roles along with Octavia Spencer, with Meadows getting to be the headlining star in this one (more than a bit overdue, really) and Spencer taking over from Patton Oswalt's disembodied voiceover from the parent series in this one (incidentally this is nearly the second thing in a row we've reviewed with Octavia Spencer in it). Our usual readership will also likely recognize Rachel Crow who was a regular on...uhhhh...let it come to me, I know the name of it...ugh, some Nickelodeon show from like half a decade ago when I just started watching the network (Big Time Rush? Nah, that already had Ciara Bravo in it) as well as Invisible Sister. Nia Long also plays Crow's mom/Meadow's sister.
Why are we reviewing this? Well...I'm a fan of the Goldbergs and...it's got Rachel Crow in it?
Speaking of which...man, Rachel Crow is not a bad actress by any means but I'm wondering if she's the kiss of death. Or rather if she just has a lot of bad luck.
First of all let's start with her Nickelodeon show which was...FRED?!?! REALLY? ...well, ummm...wow. I guess that speaks for itself. Sorry, Rachel.
Then there's Invisible Sister, which I also think speaks for itself and now we get to...here.
I mean, the actors are fine. Rachel's pretty excellent in it. In the few times I mentioned him I think I've made it clear I'm a huge Tim Meadows fan, and he was freakin' awesome in this.
But....
They say great actors can save a show. Well, that's not true all the time. Sometimes the material just doesn't work.
First of all there's the 90s setting which, despite what Octavia Spencer says is not the greatest decade ever (at least not the first half). Trust me, I know, I actually lived through it. I'm freakin' 32 years old. I was born in 1985, the same year as both Eddie Hwuang's character on Fresh off the Boat (which takes place in roughly the same time period, or at least the back half of the 1990s) and quite possibly Rachel's character Felicia. I'm old enough to have an alcoholic ex-fiancee, for God's sakes. But I'm not here to wax anti-nostalgic, but rather that the series shows off one of its weaknesses right off the bat by diving into some of the most Flanderized cultural tropes that usually pop up from the 90s. I know this is the whole schtick of The Goldbergs in the first place, but 1.) 1990s-something makes even Fresh Off the Boat look like a realistic documentary and 2.) ...the issue is that 80s cultural stereotypes are quite frankly awesome, and 90s ones...just suck.
The episode itself puts one of those tropes front and center - the whole "softening" of the culture as a whole that, again believe me, was a real hot topic of the 90s (Rush Limbaugh couldn't shut his big fat blowhole about it, or in other words nothing's changed in the last 25 years). The idea of participation ribbons and "everyone's a winner." This whole debate of opposing ideas around the value of such extreme inclusion...was tiring back when I actually had to fucking live through that shit, and it's tiring now when, again we're still living through that shit. I'm not validating or invalidating the idea of participation ribbons or "everyone's a winner" philosophy either way - as a solid product of the 90s, I'm...just not sure which approach is right, especially given how both the school systems I went through actually were pretty big believers and practitioners of that kind of philosophy, and at the same time my parents fought tooth and nail to counteract it with their right-wing brainwash/hogwash, to the point where I think I just ended up absorbing the worst of both - hence why Eddie Hwang is a successful Asian Pacific Islander rap star and I'm an Asian Pacific Islander...guy who blogs about tween shows on Nickelodeon and Disney Channel and am desperately scrambling to find a job within the next less-than-a-week despite being the same age.
But my point being, is that it's extremely poor joke material. Also I don't care how much fun Rachel Crow's having watching those kids get beamed with dodgeballs was horrible.
But even that aside...there's something that just pales compared to the parent show. I think it was the moment when the band - I want to make this clear, specifically, the marching band - joined in with Meadows and Callen on the Backstreat Boys beat. If it had just been them two, I think it would've been pretty decent comedy - but throwing the marching band in? Literally at that moment I realized, this show had jumped the shark, 20 minutes into its freakin' pilot.
Again, a part of me wants to force this show to succeed just because of Meadows and Crow but.....ugh.
Episode Grade: C-.
Episode MVP: Tim Meadows in what I confidently feel is one of the most definitive cases of MVP we've ever had on this blog. As it should perhaps be expected from him, he absolutely carried virtually 100% of the comedy scenes. Almost every time he spoke, I laughed, heartedly. Whoever's giving him his lines knows how to write them, but he sure knows how to deliver them.
Extra Thoughts
- I know this episode was a bit controversial given how ABC sat on it and looked as if they were going to just keep sitting on it, as is what happens with the vast majority of TV pilots, and...well I can see why they sat on it for a while.
- Unrelated to Goldbergs but I'm watching KC Undercover as I'm writing this and I can't believe KC threw her best friend Marissa in jail, literally, just to save her own butt, wow.
It's a good thing you reviewed this because the episode would have just collected dust on my DVR.
Before Nick at Nite picked up the show, I had never watched a single minute of The Goldbergs. I remember going to school a few years ago and seeing subway advertisements for the show. I thought to myself, "What is this garbage?" Watching current network sitcoms didn't cross my mind. That's why if I had changed the channel last summer after Monday Night RAW, I would have never become a fan of Modern Family.
But this turned out to be a really good show. The fact that the show is based in the 1980s means that they can use whatever cultural references they want from that decade without coming off as random and unnecessary. You know, like Family Guy or something. Plus, even though they do write stories based on 1980s events, the events are usually just the backdrop for character-centered situations. I feel like The Goldbergs would still work without the 1980s concept because Adam and Barry come off as fully realized characters. And it does help because this show is just a way for us all to see what Adam F. Goldberg's life was like in the 1980s, but you still have to make these fictional versions entertaining and meaningful. This isn't the best version of a period show that I have ever seen (Everybody Hates Chris) but I understand why it exists and why it has a fan base. Plus, I could never hate a show that gave Rowan Blanchard work.
This show seems like something that won't last long. I don't know what you can say about the 1990s that anyone else hasn't. I feel like the pilot episode was more about getting a whole bunch of decade-specific references in there than trying to move the story along. I feel like it would help the show a lot more if they focus on the characters first and the gimmick second. Especially since 90s nostalgia is at its peak right now. If this was one episode where we see life in the 1990s for the Goldbergs, that would have been a much more interesting premise. But I wonder how much mileage they'll get out of doing the same thing with different characters, and they're already at a disadvantage by going after the decade that everyone goes after.
I liked Tim Meadows in Mean Girls, so it has nothing to do with him. I already feel like the casting was done well because Rachel Crow and Summer Parker already feel like their characters. And when The Goldbergs eventually ends, at least it will have a successor. But the writing will definitely have to go beyond "We're in the nineties now" in order for the show to have some longevity.
It's kind of funny that you brought up the story of how you came to end up enjoying The Goldbergs by not changing the channel, since a similar story is how I came to watch Disney Channel (and Nickelodeon) myself in the first place. Before that network comedies were the exclusive comedies I watched. I don't think I even bothered to watch many comedies on cable (other than the super-high profile ones on premium for example or the ones on Freeform which...let's face it is Disney Channel for old teens, I can't really think of any off the top of my head). Oh wait I used to watch [adult swim] of course.
But I definitely agree with you on Goldbergs (especially on "anything that keeps Rowan on television") and...I think you did a better job hitting on how 1990-something failed better than I did. I didn't really have a good grasp on what was going on (or rather, the lack of it) until you pointed it out. The Goldbergs is effectively a sitcom about a family trapped in a world of 80s cultural and entertainment tropes. 1990-something is the sitcom equivalent of a brochure on 90s cultural and entertainment tropes.
We both agree that Meadows carried his material and the rest of the show but...I just don't know what to say about everything else. Not everybody can be Tim Meadows. You can't just cast a bunch of Tim Meadowses (Team Meadows?) and expect them to carry anything and everything because Tim Meadows is pretty much one guy out of, like, a billion. Even if you scour the world, congratulations you've got a team of at the absolute most about seven guys. Even with someone like say Nia Long, she's got to have some material to work with. And I'll even roll back what I just said, Tim Meadows in a way lucked out because they gave him material to work with. They know both the actor and the character and they know how to work with him - and I also take back what I said about Nia Long because she absolutely carried what she had to work with and her scenes and the rest of the show too. If there's one person even remotely contending with Meadows for MVP, it's Long. But I feel disappointed that they, for example, didn't give Rachel Crow material she can work with. She's not even "Chick Adam," as insulting as being Chick Adam is at least it's something. She was just...there, filling in the void that needs to be filled by "insert main character here."
Episode Grade: C+
Episode MVP: Tim Meadows. When I was watching this episode, I was worried they were going to make him this really weak, ineffective authority figure that is in way over his head. But the pilot gives me hope that the characters will be taking him seriously.
EXTRA THOUGHTS
-How ironic is it that this is the second current ABC sitcom to get a spin-off? That Modern Family spin-off shouldn't be that far behind.
-I wonder how much of a role Beverly will have now that her kids aren't going to the school. Like, she'll appear every now and then in the first season and they'll phase her out after that.
-I have to agree with Ray that the "I Want It That Way" scene was pretty cheesy. If this show's going to be taken seriously, that's the kind of material they need to avoid. It feels like this show is begging to be a little more gritty and darker than the original show. It would help if it was left in the hands of writers who were new and could find a distinctive voice for it. It really shouldn't be Goldbergs II.
-Is Lainey ever coming back to the original series or is she done for good? I don't know how much Erica works without someone like Lainey or her family to play off of. It's especially jarring since she's the only original main character.
- Wow the formatting of Blogspot is still really wonky - it's best described as "basically it's just gonna do whatever the hell it feels like, to hell with what the user actually wants." Sadly we're basically stuck here because you get what you pay for, welcome to microtransaction society -_-.
Vampire Academy Movie Mini-Review
For today's opening quote from the movie, we have this trailer clip instead!
What is it? Theatrical release movie from 2014 (wow already four years ago) adapted from a popular series of YA vampire novels of which, I have been very specifically told, are totes not ripoffs of Twilight.
Where did it air? Rebroadcast on MTV2 in this case. Yes, MTV2. The Jedi Force Reboot of cable networks.
Who stars in it? Zack's girlfriend from those very last episodes of Suite Life on Deck, the main character from Geek Charming, and one of the mermaids from Mako Mermaids.
Why are we reviewing this? Please refer to trailer clip above.
I think it's pretty clear now that I'm a huge fan of YA, what with not only just reading a whole bunch of it but writing my own YA (both original fiction and fanfiction) and even dictating entire career decisions around it. And the whole YA TV show and movie angle (including Nick and Disney Channel) is a natural extension of that (or in my specific case, actually the other way around). That said...I'm not all that super-huge a fan of the paranormal YA genre, despite being a huge part of that demo, arguably the biggest and most popular for well over a decade now (even spilling into the "adult" world, uh, in more ways than one with...50 Shades of Grey. Yeah.) I've read a few but they're all...eeehhhhhh.
The biggest problems I've noticed is that they're all big into that whole telling, not showing thing that all your Creative 101 when you were a freshman in high school were warning you about. The first 50 pages or so (and indeed, the first 15 minutes or so of this movie, barring the actual opening which involves Lucy Fry and Zoey Deutch sucking each other...umm, it's not *quite* as sexual as I just made it out, followed by a big action fight scene) is all just a massive infodump, but for the rest of the book/movie it doesn't know what what to do with that infodump. I've never read the Twilight novels, despite coming across a few over the course of cheap or even free garage sale pickups (so yes I actually own some of the books though I don't think I have a complete set, or even the first one oddly enough) but I've read Divergent, as well as at least the first books of two other series that have yet to be made into movies (and the way things are going a good chance they never will): Legend (by Marie Wu who just launched another major dystopian series as of the time of this writing) and Scarlet/The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer (no relation to Twilight author Stephanie Meyer, although, well...you can make your own quality-related jokes here, they pretty much just write themselves just like the actual books). And all three of them are...meh-tastic. Again, infodumps on details that strangely enough come out as extremely broad and vague despite the pages and screen time dedicated to explaining them (and the worldbuilding from these infodumps tend to be very oddly uniform across all of these series), typical YA soft romance schlock and typical soft action schlock. Of all those sins, getting bogged down in the telling, not showing of obsessive yet oddly generic worldbuilding details that don't amount to diddly squat by the books' ends is by far the biggest, especially of The Lunar Chronicles series which, given their typical 500+ page length (the final entry, Winter, is 800 goddamn fucking pages long), is especially great to have in paperback so that they feel nice and soft when you beat yourself over the head with them.
This is why I tend to prefer contemporary YA, and yes, this is why the genre is failing or has failed at least on the big screen and needs a serious overhaul.
Anyway, there isn't really much to say about Vampire Academy itself that Metacritic already hasn't.
This thoroughly doesn't deserve a sequel. Deal with it.
Movie Grade: F. I haven't even finished watching the movie - yes I'm actually still watching the movie as I type this, although I'm near the very end where Lucy Fry is facing those...weird CGI dog thingies - but I'm pretty confidence I've already seen enough to make a judgement call on it. Is it bad enough to be good? Hell no, but it is bad enough to justify watching it for curiosity's sake just so you can witness that yes there's a movie this bad on this side of 1985 that isn't The Room that was produced and financed by a very major studio and assumed to be an automatic hit given its built-in fanbase.
I hear the final scene with Sarah Hyland is really bonkers but...yeah.
Movie MVP: Sarah Hyland because see trailer clip above.
Extra Thoughts:
- not that I'm going to "officially" give this movie an LVP award, but if I was it'd solidly go to...Zoey Deutsch,for reals. Her acting in this is just...awful. Around the same caliber and feel as Rowan Blanchard's incredibly bizarre acting direction in Invisible Sister, which I'm going to insist is pretty bad too. She spends the entire movie looking like she's constipated. For reals, man.
- oh and speaking of that, this blog has a standing, still unclaimed reward regarding the first person who can successfully explain to me and convince me as to why Invisible Sister isn't one of the worst DCOMs ever.
- And speaking of Disney Channel, yeah given the filming and release dates I guess my question of "why did Lucy Fry leave Mako Mermaids?" got answered.
- You know a movie that's strangely at the same time so bad it's good and yet so bad it's just plain old bad? The Room. The most redeeming feature about that movie isn't even anything in the movie itself, it's for giving us both the book (which I've read, it's excellent) and the movie The Disaster Artist. As for Vampire Academy...you'll recoil in horror all right, as to how bad this movie is. I mean it.
- So now I finished the movie (told you I was almost done) and...yeah, it's still a solid F.
What is it? Theatrical release movie from 2014 (wow already four years ago) adapted from a popular series of YA vampire novels of which, I have been very specifically told, are totes not ripoffs of Twilight.
Where did it air? Rebroadcast on MTV2 in this case. Yes, MTV2. The Jedi Force Reboot of cable networks.
Who stars in it? Zack's girlfriend from those very last episodes of Suite Life on Deck, the main character from Geek Charming, and one of the mermaids from Mako Mermaids.
Why are we reviewing this? Please refer to trailer clip above.
I think it's pretty clear now that I'm a huge fan of YA, what with not only just reading a whole bunch of it but writing my own YA (both original fiction and fanfiction) and even dictating entire career decisions around it. And the whole YA TV show and movie angle (including Nick and Disney Channel) is a natural extension of that (or in my specific case, actually the other way around). That said...I'm not all that super-huge a fan of the paranormal YA genre, despite being a huge part of that demo, arguably the biggest and most popular for well over a decade now (even spilling into the "adult" world, uh, in more ways than one with...50 Shades of Grey. Yeah.) I've read a few but they're all...eeehhhhhh.
The biggest problems I've noticed is that they're all big into that whole telling, not showing thing that all your Creative 101 when you were a freshman in high school were warning you about. The first 50 pages or so (and indeed, the first 15 minutes or so of this movie, barring the actual opening which involves Lucy Fry and Zoey Deutch sucking each other...umm, it's not *quite* as sexual as I just made it out, followed by a big action fight scene) is all just a massive infodump, but for the rest of the book/movie it doesn't know what what to do with that infodump. I've never read the Twilight novels, despite coming across a few over the course of cheap or even free garage sale pickups (so yes I actually own some of the books though I don't think I have a complete set, or even the first one oddly enough) but I've read Divergent, as well as at least the first books of two other series that have yet to be made into movies (and the way things are going a good chance they never will): Legend (by Marie Wu who just launched another major dystopian series as of the time of this writing) and Scarlet/The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer (no relation to Twilight author Stephanie Meyer, although, well...you can make your own quality-related jokes here, they pretty much just write themselves just like the actual books). And all three of them are...meh-tastic. Again, infodumps on details that strangely enough come out as extremely broad and vague despite the pages and screen time dedicated to explaining them (and the worldbuilding from these infodumps tend to be very oddly uniform across all of these series), typical YA soft romance schlock and typical soft action schlock. Of all those sins, getting bogged down in the telling, not showing of obsessive yet oddly generic worldbuilding details that don't amount to diddly squat by the books' ends is by far the biggest, especially of The Lunar Chronicles series which, given their typical 500+ page length (the final entry, Winter, is 800 goddamn fucking pages long), is especially great to have in paperback so that they feel nice and soft when you beat yourself over the head with them.
This is why I tend to prefer contemporary YA, and yes, this is why the genre is failing or has failed at least on the big screen and needs a serious overhaul.
Anyway, there isn't really much to say about Vampire Academy itself that Metacritic already hasn't.
This thoroughly doesn't deserve a sequel. Deal with it.
Movie Grade: F. I haven't even finished watching the movie - yes I'm actually still watching the movie as I type this, although I'm near the very end where Lucy Fry is facing those...weird CGI dog thingies - but I'm pretty confidence I've already seen enough to make a judgement call on it. Is it bad enough to be good? Hell no, but it is bad enough to justify watching it for curiosity's sake just so you can witness that yes there's a movie this bad on this side of 1985 that isn't The Room that was produced and financed by a very major studio and assumed to be an automatic hit given its built-in fanbase.
I hear the final scene with Sarah Hyland is really bonkers but...yeah.
Movie MVP: Sarah Hyland because see trailer clip above.
Extra Thoughts:
- not that I'm going to "officially" give this movie an LVP award, but if I was it'd solidly go to...Zoey Deutsch,for reals. Her acting in this is just...awful. Around the same caliber and feel as Rowan Blanchard's incredibly bizarre acting direction in Invisible Sister, which I'm going to insist is pretty bad too. She spends the entire movie looking like she's constipated. For reals, man.
- oh and speaking of that, this blog has a standing, still unclaimed reward regarding the first person who can successfully explain to me and convince me as to why Invisible Sister isn't one of the worst DCOMs ever.
- And speaking of Disney Channel, yeah given the filming and release dates I guess my question of "why did Lucy Fry leave Mako Mermaids?" got answered.
- You know a movie that's strangely at the same time so bad it's good and yet so bad it's just plain old bad? The Room. The most redeeming feature about that movie isn't even anything in the movie itself, it's for giving us both the book (which I've read, it's excellent) and the movie The Disaster Artist. As for Vampire Academy...you'll recoil in horror all right, as to how bad this movie is. I mean it.
- So now I finished the movie (told you I was almost done) and...yeah, it's still a solid F.
Sunday, January 21, 2018
Double-Feature Movies Mini-Reviewed: Arabesque and Never Been Kissed
For this review's opening quote taken directly from the movie(s), just imagine a very drunk Gregory Peck bullfighting with typical busy motorway traffic, then randomly reenacting the iconic bicycle scene from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, and then finally randomly reenacting the iconic police crash scene from Blues Brothers. And yes, this is something that actually happens in the movie.
(Arabesque)
What is it? Theatrical-released crime/spy thriller starring Gregory Peck and Sofia Loren with a run time of approximately 1 hour 26 minutes released all the way back in 1965. Arguably the golden age of this genre of movie (and family and romantic comedies, for that matter), except it'd be hard to tell with this one.
Where did it air? Well, again, it was originally a theatrical release back in the day (a pretty big budget one, in fact) - in this case it aired on TCM which if it's in your cable package you can probably just wait for it to inevitably return (or set your DVR to auto-record anything with Gregory Peck and/or Sofia Loren), but more conveniently you can probably either find it directly off an OnDemand/streaming service or just get it from your local library.
Who stars in it? Well, I already mentioned it stars Gregory Peck and Sofia Loren, and those are going to be far and away the biggest names/the ones people most care about now.
Why are we reviewing this? For the same reason why the third thing ever reviewed on this blog ended up being Fox's series version of Minority Report.
So I know I labeled this a mini-review but we're going to open up with a rant first.
One of the things you most often hear when you write a blog reviewing Disney Channel and Nickelodeon shows, or when you read a lot of YA or are actively a YA enthusiast, is how for some reason things that are meant for tweens or teens can't be great. Granted aiming for a certain age demo doesn't automatically make it great, but it doesn't automatically make it awful either - and that "quality isn't automatically determined by age demo" thing works both ways. I'll concede something aimed for the extremely young demos as seen on Disney Junior and Nick Jr is more than likely not going to be praised for having a lot to offer to adults - like, say, PJ Masks or this new Top Wing show or Sunny Day or even say PAW Patrol.
...except apparently PAW Patrol has a huge older peripheral demo, who apparently tunes in for if nothing else how cute the pups are. And Doc McStuffins (at least the first few seasons, before they got stuck in that stupid Toy Hospital) and Elena of Avalor are legitimately really good. And apparently Mike really likes Mutt 'n Stuff - and I really like Blaze and the Monster Machines, especially since I can appreciate that they actually do a really good job explaining STEM concepts at this junior level (remember, despite how I present myself as being in the literary field with these critical reviews and book discussions, I'm an engineering background by undergrad degree!) And of course that expanding peripheral demo appeal has the potential to get larger the older you go - as we saw or are seeing with Good Luck Charlie, iCarly, Liv and Maddie, and Andi Mack.
So I don't buy the whole thing about "outgrowing" say for example YA or any given media, for that matter. Quality knows no age restriction, up or down. Something like 40-60% of YA readers are adults, depending who you ask. People who complain about "outgrowing" YA are probably reading the wrong kind of YA - or more specifically, utter schlocky crap like the kind that utterly flooded the market the previous decade and still gets pumped out a lot, or maybe just a genre YA book that's...just...written...very...poorly (believe me, there's a glut of those too). And true not every show is going to be like Andi Mack, and I have really weird tastes seeing as how I regard Every Witch Way to legitimately be great television (and hey it and Stuck in the Middle gives me something to share with my fake-abuela) but anybody who just writes off everything of this genre as being complete and total crap probably had a sampling size consisting of Bunk'd, Game Shakers and probably nothing else. Or had their hopes violently dashed by Girl Meets World.
...or they write for Deadspin.
Now obviously this doesn't exclude you from watching or reading "adult" stuff too. Yes, I read "grown up" novels too, and I watch "grown up" TV. But just because it's all "grown up" and especially just because it's "old" (or comes from some "golden age") doesn't mean it's going to be automatically good either.
Case in point - Arabesque. Let's start with that title, which, yes, it's exactly what you think it is. They wanted to give the film a foreign and exotic feel - so they do like what we Millennials do today and just stick "-esque" on the end like it's just a real, free-use suffix and not something someone makes up when they have two seconds to convince a teacher into a passing grade. Shockingly enough the genius who came up with this bright idea was Gregory Peck himself, WTF?
Anyway, the movie is essentially a copycat of a slightly earlier film, Charade, starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Charade happens to be the only film those two had done together (although fun fact, Grant was originally up for the role opposite Hepburn in Roman Holiday but ultimately declined due to not wanting to be upstaged by Hepburn - yeah Grant had quite an ego on him - and to bring it back to this movie, of course that role ended up going to Gregory Peck instead) and while I've seen quite a few Grant and Hepburn movies (including the aforementioned Roman Holiday, which of course is hands down my favorite Hepburn movie) Charade still ranks as one of the top for either of them. What's funny enough is that the director of Charade went back to do, yes, Arabesque, this movie - hoping that lightning will strike twice.
Unfortunately, all it left was a big giant smokin' hole in the ground.
Where Charade had a smart, sophisticated plot that kept you guessing until the very end and tightly woven intrigue that never bothered to venture far from its main physical locale (most of the movie takes place in a singular hotel), Arabesque is just a big giant confusing mess, dropping most of its intriguing pretenses and starting the chase sequences 20 minutes in and consequently destroying much of the suspense or mystery. Yet it still manages to find time to introduce enough plot twists to make a Westworld android's head spin and fly off, the end effect being each plot twist effectively cancels out the preceding one and, again, just leading to an overburdened, confusing movie in search of any point to keep the viewer watching.
And on top of all that, I don't know if the action sequences are cheesy enough to watch even ironically.
Movie Grade: Yeah, I'm giving this one a big, ole' fat F, for reals. Not bad enough to be good, just bad. It's on the same level as FOX's Minority Report or NBC's Grounded (oh, don't remember that show? Yeah, there's a reason).
Movie MVP: Ugh. You know what, I'm going to give it to Sophia Loren, for two very particular, specific reasons:
1.) She was in Howl's Moving Castle, and Howl's Moving Castle is badass
2.) She plays herself on an episode of The Sopranos, where Tony Soprano's nephew Christopher robs her and punches her in the face, in what has to be one of the greatest scenes in television history.
(Never Been Kissed)
What is it? Theatrical-released movie from 1999 (yes I know we're reviewing two super-ancient movies this time)
Where did it air? I think I've beaten the whole "you could've seen it in theaters" thing to death and given how long ago that was that's not helpful, but the idea is to emphasize that it should be readily available on DVD/Blu-Ray and pay-per-stream services, if not OnDemand from premium cable channels or even less. In this case I happened to have recorded it from TBS back around last Thanksgiving.
Who stars in it? Drew Barrymore by far the most famous star, Jessica Alba in one of her first film roles while adult-sized, a few other notable names here and there that...I can't remember and I'm too lazy to look it up. Octavia Spencer (who's a pretty big deal right now, thanks to movies like Hidden Figures and The Help, but was also the main villain in one of the Wizard of Waverly Place WizTech multi-episode arcs) is also in the movie...for, like, literally 48 seconds. I think she has like a line or two.
Why are we reviewing this? Well it's closer to what we ostensibly review here than Arabesque at least....
So, umm, this movie....
Like the last couple of movies I reviewed, excepting the other one included in this multi-review spectacular (D.E.B.S. and Ice Princess) this is another one of those tween/teen/young adult demo movies that I talked about in the last review, right at the beginning of that era I was talking about soon after the first American Pie. Unlike American Pie (and more like those other two) instead of being mostly a delivery vehicle for sex jokes with some semblance of plot, Never Been Kissed is actually pretty plot-heavy. But unlike any of those movies (well, I've never actually seen American Pie so I'm not sure...) Never Been Kissed is just...pretty terrible.
First of all, the basic plot itself is pretty skeevy - the owner and managing editor of the Chicago Sun-Times decides to send one of their reporters (Drew Barrymore) undercover to a local high school to try to dig something up. What something? Well, anything, they don't particularly care, and later they decide to try to have her seduce one of her teachers to drum up a sex scandal. Besides being arguably entrapment under false pretenses (Drew's character is the same age as herself, 25) it's just skeevy as hell. And the rest of the plot, when it's not so skeevy (admittedly that plot point is the skeevyist, although there's a minor subplot involving Drew's also adult brother trying to seduce a teen girl), well...it's pretty clear that the writers have very little clue in terms of how actual teens behave, or people who work and write at a newspaper...or just people in general. I do think being able to go back to high school as an adult with all that hindsight and maturity and being able to rock it where you'd previously barely survived being a big pile of social fail is a pretty common form of serious wish fulfillment there, but this movie just majorly bungled it up.
I wouldn't go so far as to pull out what AV Club said about The Secret Life of the American Teenager being written and developed by aliens whose sole conception of humanity comes from watching Freeform, but one has to wonder just who they were writing this movie for, who they were writing this movie about and indeed if they have any connection with reality regarding what teens or living, breathing people are looking for in this genre, or just how actual real people even behave. Or even caricatures of something vaguely resembling the type of walking talking being one would observe inhabiting the same universe as The Simpsons.
Movie Grade: D-. Yup, in addition to being really old, both these movies also have being really terrible in common. It's getting a D- mostly because, upon further reflection, I think I'd still rather watch this than a typical Bunk'd episode. But it's pretty close.
Movie MVP: Leelee Sobieski because...ugh, this is gonna date me sooo bad...but around the time this movie came out I was just becoming a high school freshman, and in this movie she looks and acts like the type of girl I was really into at that time, much more than even Jessica Alba's character.
Not to mention, she probably ends up being the best actor with the most human-acting character out of this whole mess anyway.
Extra Thoughts:
- Just that this movie seemed like it had a lot of promise but...yeah. Big gigantic mess.
- Something was also brought to my attention regarding my mini (well, rather not-so-mini) review of Matchwits, a high school quiz show on local PBS namely concerning its host Craig Eliot. In regards to where the hell they'd get this putz?, he's apparently the weatherman for one of the Colorado Springs stations, and...he's apparently survived a horrible accident that's left him with a brain injury.
Yeahhhhhhh...gonna have to wise up and admit to having egg on my face when I advocated firing him, and I guess I'm also forced to take back any criticism about him.
That said, it's very clear that the majority of the show's faults lie in how the competition is organized and run, much of which have nothing to do with Eliot - including the ridiculously lopsided blowouts from most matches (again, most matches being mathematically decided well before the halfway point) so I stand by my F grade.
(Arabesque)
What is it? Theatrical-released crime/spy thriller starring Gregory Peck and Sofia Loren with a run time of approximately 1 hour 26 minutes released all the way back in 1965. Arguably the golden age of this genre of movie (and family and romantic comedies, for that matter), except it'd be hard to tell with this one.
Where did it air? Well, again, it was originally a theatrical release back in the day (a pretty big budget one, in fact) - in this case it aired on TCM which if it's in your cable package you can probably just wait for it to inevitably return (or set your DVR to auto-record anything with Gregory Peck and/or Sofia Loren), but more conveniently you can probably either find it directly off an OnDemand/streaming service or just get it from your local library.
Who stars in it? Well, I already mentioned it stars Gregory Peck and Sofia Loren, and those are going to be far and away the biggest names/the ones people most care about now.
Why are we reviewing this? For the same reason why the third thing ever reviewed on this blog ended up being Fox's series version of Minority Report.
So I know I labeled this a mini-review but we're going to open up with a rant first.
One of the things you most often hear when you write a blog reviewing Disney Channel and Nickelodeon shows, or when you read a lot of YA or are actively a YA enthusiast, is how for some reason things that are meant for tweens or teens can't be great. Granted aiming for a certain age demo doesn't automatically make it great, but it doesn't automatically make it awful either - and that "quality isn't automatically determined by age demo" thing works both ways. I'll concede something aimed for the extremely young demos as seen on Disney Junior and Nick Jr is more than likely not going to be praised for having a lot to offer to adults - like, say, PJ Masks or this new Top Wing show or Sunny Day or even say PAW Patrol.
...except apparently PAW Patrol has a huge older peripheral demo, who apparently tunes in for if nothing else how cute the pups are. And Doc McStuffins (at least the first few seasons, before they got stuck in that stupid Toy Hospital) and Elena of Avalor are legitimately really good. And apparently Mike really likes Mutt 'n Stuff - and I really like Blaze and the Monster Machines, especially since I can appreciate that they actually do a really good job explaining STEM concepts at this junior level (remember, despite how I present myself as being in the literary field with these critical reviews and book discussions, I'm an engineering background by undergrad degree!) And of course that expanding peripheral demo appeal has the potential to get larger the older you go - as we saw or are seeing with Good Luck Charlie, iCarly, Liv and Maddie, and Andi Mack.
So I don't buy the whole thing about "outgrowing" say for example YA or any given media, for that matter. Quality knows no age restriction, up or down. Something like 40-60% of YA readers are adults, depending who you ask. People who complain about "outgrowing" YA are probably reading the wrong kind of YA - or more specifically, utter schlocky crap like the kind that utterly flooded the market the previous decade and still gets pumped out a lot, or maybe just a genre YA book that's...just...written...very...poorly (believe me, there's a glut of those too). And true not every show is going to be like Andi Mack, and I have really weird tastes seeing as how I regard Every Witch Way to legitimately be great television (and hey it and Stuck in the Middle gives me something to share with my fake-abuela) but anybody who just writes off everything of this genre as being complete and total crap probably had a sampling size consisting of Bunk'd, Game Shakers and probably nothing else. Or had their hopes violently dashed by Girl Meets World.
...or they write for Deadspin.
Now obviously this doesn't exclude you from watching or reading "adult" stuff too. Yes, I read "grown up" novels too, and I watch "grown up" TV. But just because it's all "grown up" and especially just because it's "old" (or comes from some "golden age") doesn't mean it's going to be automatically good either.
Case in point - Arabesque. Let's start with that title, which, yes, it's exactly what you think it is. They wanted to give the film a foreign and exotic feel - so they do like what we Millennials do today and just stick "-esque" on the end like it's just a real, free-use suffix and not something someone makes up when they have two seconds to convince a teacher into a passing grade. Shockingly enough the genius who came up with this bright idea was Gregory Peck himself, WTF?
Anyway, the movie is essentially a copycat of a slightly earlier film, Charade, starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Charade happens to be the only film those two had done together (although fun fact, Grant was originally up for the role opposite Hepburn in Roman Holiday but ultimately declined due to not wanting to be upstaged by Hepburn - yeah Grant had quite an ego on him - and to bring it back to this movie, of course that role ended up going to Gregory Peck instead) and while I've seen quite a few Grant and Hepburn movies (including the aforementioned Roman Holiday, which of course is hands down my favorite Hepburn movie) Charade still ranks as one of the top for either of them. What's funny enough is that the director of Charade went back to do, yes, Arabesque, this movie - hoping that lightning will strike twice.
Unfortunately, all it left was a big giant smokin' hole in the ground.
Where Charade had a smart, sophisticated plot that kept you guessing until the very end and tightly woven intrigue that never bothered to venture far from its main physical locale (most of the movie takes place in a singular hotel), Arabesque is just a big giant confusing mess, dropping most of its intriguing pretenses and starting the chase sequences 20 minutes in and consequently destroying much of the suspense or mystery. Yet it still manages to find time to introduce enough plot twists to make a Westworld android's head spin and fly off, the end effect being each plot twist effectively cancels out the preceding one and, again, just leading to an overburdened, confusing movie in search of any point to keep the viewer watching.
And on top of all that, I don't know if the action sequences are cheesy enough to watch even ironically.
Movie Grade: Yeah, I'm giving this one a big, ole' fat F, for reals. Not bad enough to be good, just bad. It's on the same level as FOX's Minority Report or NBC's Grounded (oh, don't remember that show? Yeah, there's a reason).
Movie MVP: Ugh. You know what, I'm going to give it to Sophia Loren, for two very particular, specific reasons:
1.) She was in Howl's Moving Castle, and Howl's Moving Castle is badass
2.) She plays herself on an episode of The Sopranos, where Tony Soprano's nephew Christopher robs her and punches her in the face, in what has to be one of the greatest scenes in television history.
(Never Been Kissed)
What is it? Theatrical-released movie from 1999 (yes I know we're reviewing two super-ancient movies this time)
Where did it air? I think I've beaten the whole "you could've seen it in theaters" thing to death and given how long ago that was that's not helpful, but the idea is to emphasize that it should be readily available on DVD/Blu-Ray and pay-per-stream services, if not OnDemand from premium cable channels or even less. In this case I happened to have recorded it from TBS back around last Thanksgiving.
Who stars in it? Drew Barrymore by far the most famous star, Jessica Alba in one of her first film roles while adult-sized, a few other notable names here and there that...I can't remember and I'm too lazy to look it up. Octavia Spencer (who's a pretty big deal right now, thanks to movies like Hidden Figures and The Help, but was also the main villain in one of the Wizard of Waverly Place WizTech multi-episode arcs) is also in the movie...for, like, literally 48 seconds. I think she has like a line or two.
Why are we reviewing this? Well it's closer to what we ostensibly review here than Arabesque at least....
So, umm, this movie....
Like the last couple of movies I reviewed, excepting the other one included in this multi-review spectacular (D.E.B.S. and Ice Princess) this is another one of those tween/teen/young adult demo movies that I talked about in the last review, right at the beginning of that era I was talking about soon after the first American Pie. Unlike American Pie (and more like those other two) instead of being mostly a delivery vehicle for sex jokes with some semblance of plot, Never Been Kissed is actually pretty plot-heavy. But unlike any of those movies (well, I've never actually seen American Pie so I'm not sure...) Never Been Kissed is just...pretty terrible.
First of all, the basic plot itself is pretty skeevy - the owner and managing editor of the Chicago Sun-Times decides to send one of their reporters (Drew Barrymore) undercover to a local high school to try to dig something up. What something? Well, anything, they don't particularly care, and later they decide to try to have her seduce one of her teachers to drum up a sex scandal. Besides being arguably entrapment under false pretenses (Drew's character is the same age as herself, 25) it's just skeevy as hell. And the rest of the plot, when it's not so skeevy (admittedly that plot point is the skeevyist, although there's a minor subplot involving Drew's also adult brother trying to seduce a teen girl), well...it's pretty clear that the writers have very little clue in terms of how actual teens behave, or people who work and write at a newspaper...or just people in general. I do think being able to go back to high school as an adult with all that hindsight and maturity and being able to rock it where you'd previously barely survived being a big pile of social fail is a pretty common form of serious wish fulfillment there, but this movie just majorly bungled it up.
I wouldn't go so far as to pull out what AV Club said about The Secret Life of the American Teenager being written and developed by aliens whose sole conception of humanity comes from watching Freeform, but one has to wonder just who they were writing this movie for, who they were writing this movie about and indeed if they have any connection with reality regarding what teens or living, breathing people are looking for in this genre, or just how actual real people even behave. Or even caricatures of something vaguely resembling the type of walking talking being one would observe inhabiting the same universe as The Simpsons.
Movie Grade: D-. Yup, in addition to being really old, both these movies also have being really terrible in common. It's getting a D- mostly because, upon further reflection, I think I'd still rather watch this than a typical Bunk'd episode. But it's pretty close.
Movie MVP: Leelee Sobieski because...ugh, this is gonna date me sooo bad...but around the time this movie came out I was just becoming a high school freshman, and in this movie she looks and acts like the type of girl I was really into at that time, much more than even Jessica Alba's character.
Not to mention, she probably ends up being the best actor with the most human-acting character out of this whole mess anyway.
Extra Thoughts:
- Just that this movie seemed like it had a lot of promise but...yeah. Big gigantic mess.
- Something was also brought to my attention regarding my mini (well, rather not-so-mini) review of Matchwits, a high school quiz show on local PBS namely concerning its host Craig Eliot. In regards to where the hell they'd get this putz?, he's apparently the weatherman for one of the Colorado Springs stations, and...he's apparently survived a horrible accident that's left him with a brain injury.
Yeahhhhhhh...gonna have to wise up and admit to having egg on my face when I advocated firing him, and I guess I'm also forced to take back any criticism about him.
That said, it's very clear that the majority of the show's faults lie in how the competition is organized and run, much of which have nothing to do with Eliot - including the ridiculously lopsided blowouts from most matches (again, most matches being mathematically decided well before the halfway point) so I stand by my F grade.
Saturday, January 20, 2018
Double-Feature Theatrical Movie Review: D.E.B.S. and Ice Princess
You're doing that babbling thing again. Alternatively, I do not get the point of this concept, nobody tunes in to HBO for the static, that is not a beloved sound.
(D.E.B.S.)
What is it? Theatrical-release movie from 2005 or so, about 90 or so minutes long. It's also apparently a light remake or inspired from a super-obscure 50s/60s movie called Teenage Gang Debs? It's also effectively an expanded version of a 2004 short/student film with basically an identical plot.
Where did it air? Well, like I just said, theatrical-release movie so originally it could be seen in theaters. As for today...that's a really good question, actually. I just happened to have caught it in time to have the DVR record it back about a year ago (and only recently got around to watching it), on one of Starz' 480p channels nonetheless. Yes for whatever reason they didn't want to bother to have it on one of their actual high-def channels, the whole damn reason you got the Starz package in the first place, whatevs. Despite programming my DVR to record it any and every time it appeared on TV since, well...it hasn't. So, ok, fine, I'll hunt through my local library's system and see if they have it. They don't. Ok, maybe through inter-library loan? Nope. My librarians can't find it from any library system in the entire country. That said, it's apparently available on Google Play for an ok price, and it's also available on DVD on a compilation disk that also includes Charm School, Feel the Noise and Seeing Double. Unless Seeing Double is referring to a DCOM or something, Charm School's the only one I've ever vaguely heard of.
Who stars in it? The most recognizable name by far is going to be Jordanna Brewster, most famous for espousing the virtues of living life a quarter mile at a time with her older brother, Groot Riddick. Beyond that you've got typical yeoman (or woman, I suppose) players who tend to be in B-ish and, let's face it, C-ish roles like that or television work. Of those the most famous is probably going to be Megan Good, who you might recognize from the (thankfully!) short-lived FOX series Minority Report, one of the very first reviews on this blog and the first to establish the precedent of occasionally venturing outside of the tween/teen genres especially if something's just bad.
Why are we reviewing this? Well, it's a silly teen/college-age adult movie that's surprisingly entertaining and deserves a fair shake, especially given how apparently obscure it is.
I keep thinking that the late 90s and early 2000s was the beginning of this trend of movies marketed to older teens and newly-minted adults with the start of the first American Pie, but really it's a trend that's been going on since the 50s if not far earlier and it's never really died down, becoming less a "trend" and more a genre in its own right, even if its not thought of in the same vein as say action movies or general romcoms. That said, I think there's just that...something that serves as a tell towards what decade a certain one of these movies is made. D.E.B.S....certainly has that feel, although (like the best movies of this genre and period, like Mean Girls of around the same time) it's not so punishing that it comes off as dated but rather nostalgic (or perhaps I'm just colored by how I see the movie). Unlike Mean Girls, which is actually a very brilliantly composed script utilizing the best talents and genius of Tina Fey, D.E.B.S. takes quite an opposite approach - being cheesy as hell, but a winking parody of this demo and genre (and all the other genres it borrows from) with a pretty interesting story and an actual message to tell not deeply buried underneath at all.
The D.E.B.S. themselves are...an extremely vaguely defined organization of exclusively teen girls who are trained as...well, again it's extremely vague but they're international police super spies, or something. Apparently there's a hidden test in the SATs and certain responses measure you're ability to be an assassin, a seductress, a leader or even a liar which apparently is what all super spies are good at. And then these girls get recruited and do...super-spy stuff. And date guys from the CIA and FBI during missions.
And then we have Jordanna Brewster's character (Lucy Diamond - yes really, and now I'm getting flashbacks to The Mysteries of Laura which has ruined The Beatles for me, permanently) who...is a supervillain for some reason? And, oh yeah, she's a lesbian. Spoiler alert: this movie's about lesbians. Her main lackey hooks her up with a female Ukrainian assassin to date, and the D.E.B.S. and the CIA think it's a meeting for, well, supervillain-y stuff.There's a big shoot-out and during the ensuing chaos the main character Amy (played by Sara Foster) runs into Lucy and...well they basically suddenly discover that they have a lesbian attraction to each other despite Amy's big lug of a CIA boyfriend whom she not-so-secretly hates.
And...yeah, the rest of the movie is basically a Romeo and Juliet parable, except they're both lesbian chicks. And super-spies. Amy's best friend/chief lackey ends up getting pulled into one of their dates by accident and develops a crush on Lucy's chief lackey, and in addition to the lesbian Romeo and Juliet angle it starts to develop a "make love not war" message too.
I mean...they're not bad messages, by no means. In fact, despite what you'd think would be pretty heavy messages about finding yourself and sexuality...the movie's a pretty light, fun romp. Is it entertaining? Certainly. Is it more than that? Ehhhhh...just enough. Certainly by enough that it really deserves to be more remembered, and it's a ton better than many, many movies aimed squarely at this demo before or since but have lingered in the cultural memory longer for some reason.
Movie Grade: B+. I was really tempted to give this an A- but...that might be a bit much even for me.
Movie MVP: Jill Ritchie, whose Janet effectively serves as the glue to keep Lucy and Amy bonded until...well...they bond, I guess.
I mean that in the physical sense.
Extra Thoughts:
- Just that...again, for however many times I've said it now, I wish this movie had a better shake than it ended up getting. It's not the greatest movie in the world. I don't even know if it's Mean Girls quality. But it is Mean Girls 2 quality at least. And before you start thinking that's a weird insult for a movie I just praised, Mean Girls 2 is the most underrated movie in history.
(Ice Princess)
What is it? Theatrical release movie from around...actually about the same time as D.E.B.S. and Mean Girls, 2005. Huh, two movies for the teen(ish) demo released at around the same time, I didn't even realize that until writing this. Oh, and Ice Princess is also a Disney movie.
Where did it air? Well again, it's a theatrical movie so you originally saw it in theaters a whole dozen years ago. Wow, time flies. As for now...it's virtually perpetually on HBO OnDemand (which is how I saw it), so if you can watch John Oliver command Jamie Lannister to make sounds with his mouth, you can watch this movie readily and immediately. It's also probably occasionally shown on other cable networks but HBO's probably the best means given again it's ready availability OnDemand, and in 1080p glory and without any commercial breaks guaranteed. I bet it's also available readily on DVD too, if you'd like to buy it in physical media or get it from the library.
Who stars in it? Kim Cattral and Joan Cusack are going to be by far the most recognizable names especially for people who were older when the movie was released, but of course the main star is Michelle Trachtenberg who...I guess this was obviously meant to be her star vehicle but beyond this and a few other roles it didn't really seem to pan out ;_;
Why are we reviewing this? Well, it is a tween/teen live-action Disney movie....
This might come as a shock to you (unless you follow my Twitter feed which...I'm pretty sure is exactly two of you) but I absolutely adore figure skating (or "ice dancing" as us patricians call it). I remember being about 8 or 9 years old and after Saturday morning cartoons (yes that was a thing when I was that age) they'd usually throw up some sports-related event and usually I'd just change the channel because it was something I didn't care about, but one Saturday after cartoons the sporty-thingie was this ridiculously gorgeous girl gliding gracefully on this ginormous skating rink (how's that for some Cap'n Turbot-style alliteration?) and I swear it was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen in my life (well, I was like 9 but still). And I'd been hooked ever since, looking forward to something extra after Saturday morning cartoons to watch every skating season (it's typically...well, right now, especially with the build-up to the Winter Olympics, but on non-Olympics years they have internationals around March, competitions around October-December, and January and February they have non-technical, non-judged, strictly artistic exhibition "spectaculars" which are my favorite because they usually choreograph with gymnasts and other performers to actually put a legitimate show together, usually with pop singers providing vocals. Last year it was Olivia Holt!) Without a doubt since that age figure skating's been my favorite part of the Winter Olympics - I developed huuuuge crushes on Tara Lipinski and Sasha Cohen (not that Sasha Cohen - ehhh, you wouldn't even know who the real Sasha Cohen even is anymore) and I spent many, many hours on the Internet staring at (work-safe, since that's all we had) pictures of them (and before you're wondering, they're both quite a bit older than me). And while the Saturday morning cartoons have gone away, the figure skating (and other random sports hodgepodges) are still around.
So anyway, obviously something like Ice Princess is going to grab my attention, with the multi-threat of being a figure skating teen Disney movie. In many ways it's like the DCOM Genius if it were about the main character's figure skating friend instead - a girl in her very last semester in high school is a physics genius, but she needs to do a physics project to win a Harvard grant; one day she stumbles onto an ice rink where her rival popular girl happens to be practicing figure skating for a competition but she's hit with the inspiration to do her project on the physics of ice skating; in the middle of the project she's bitten with the figure skating bug herself and decides to abandon the scholarship altogether to go pro full-time.
It's about what you'd expect plot-wise, and it bears more than a little resemblance to an old movie from the 70s, Ice Castles (which incidentally would be remade for direct-to-DVD format in 2010, five years after Ice Princess - and yes, I've naturally seen both versions and even tracked down a copy of the super-rare novelization of the original movie). And even if it is somewhat inevitably paint-by-numbers, it still leaves behind a beautiful tale of a young woman finding expression, beauty and legitimate (in fact near-superhuman based on how quickly she picked it up) talent in something she'd only very recently discovered. After all, I think most everybody knows the basic plot to Shakespeare's most popular plays even if they've never seen any of them, but in many ways it's the individual performances and the direction that sets the ever-permeating versions apart. And I think Ice Princess manages to add a little bit of that Disney magic people like to think of (or perhaps even think has been lost) to this story.
That doesn't mean there's more than a little wonkiness to the story, though. Especially regarding...ehhh...The Jumping Shrimp. Yeah. There's a scene almost right at the very end of the movie - in fact it's the second to last scene period, and the last scene featuring here - where the movie kind of goes off the rails and even a little bit out of character given how Casey (that'd be Trachtenberg) helped her out to even get to this point and what friendship they had to...make a point about the cutthroat world of competitive figure skating? I guess?
Movie Grade: B+
Movie MVP: Well, it's kinda hard not to go with Michelle Trachtenberg with this one, though Kim Cattral and even Hayden Penniterrie (yeah she's in this one, she's the "rival" girl, in one of her first teen film roles) come very close. Even Joan Cusack too.
Extra Thoughts:
- Yeah speaking of having crushes on figure skating stars...I say this of a lot of women but I think Carly and Gracie Gold are the most beautiful women on the planet.
- And yes Gold is seriously their name.
- I might have even further bias towards this movie on top of what I already explained since the first time I ever saw this movie - well, about 40% or so since I tuned in during the middle of it and this was before I had a DVR or access to HBO OnDemand or HBO period - was over five and a half years ago during the summer of 2012, when I was just very recently engaged to, well, the woman who'd still later turn out to be my ex-fiancee and started me rolling down the path to...well, starting up and writing this blog. Needless to say that was still during the happy times of our relationship and at the time I thought Michelle Trachtenberg kinda looked like my ex (then again I pretty much say this of everyone). But...things, especially movies and TV shows for some reason, really have a powerful ability to take me back to that time which is why I got hooked on the shows and movies that really resonated with me during that time, which being how a chunk of those shows were Disney and Nick, led me to being hooked and eventually to this blog (and to the very closely related field of YA literature and ultimately to me becoming a YA expert and the job I'm...trying to get now).
- it might also explain why...I find the shows on Disney Channel and Nickelodeon severely lacking now in very early 2018 than I do compared to this same time of the year back in 2013 and the last quarter of 2012 especially.
- or it could be with the likes of Bunk'd and Game Shakers the average quality of Disney Channel and Nickelodeon show just does legitimately stink in comparison now.
- Speaking of YA, the history of Ice Princess itself is pretty interesting - the script is written by none other than Meg Cabot, who also gave us The Princess Diaries and Avalon High, which is of course a pretty well-known DCOM. Now, she didn't write the scripts to either of those movies - she wrote the books they're based on (believe me, the book of Avalon High is totes diffs from the DCOM). Ice Princess is, in fact, her sole scriptwriting credit and the only movie she's associated with that wasn't in book form first or in any form, just being a movie (and they still brought in a script doctor to come in afterwards). She has stated on her blog that scriptwriting...isn't for her, which is sad given how much I ended up liking this movie. Apparently in her original draft Ice Princess was going to be more like the DCOM Go Figure in reverse, where a girl fakes being a hockey player so she can go compete in figure skating instead.
- but still speaking on YA and my career goals this provides a unique opportunity - as part of the practice process to become a professional YA novelist, I'm going to write the fan-novelization of Ice Princess for Meg, and I'll be posting a link to this very blog, so stay tuned! In fact I was hoping to start work on it today but I ended up doing some housecleaning instead...and writing this blog entry, too.
- oh and speaking of the garbage-quality Nickelodeon has gotten lately...yeah, tonight's episode of Thundermans was on at the same time I was writing it but the previews made it look like absolute terribad garbage not worth watching, so I didn't watch it. You're getting this reviewed instead.
(D.E.B.S.)
What is it? Theatrical-release movie from 2005 or so, about 90 or so minutes long. It's also apparently a light remake or inspired from a super-obscure 50s/60s movie called Teenage Gang Debs? It's also effectively an expanded version of a 2004 short/student film with basically an identical plot.
Where did it air? Well, like I just said, theatrical-release movie so originally it could be seen in theaters. As for today...that's a really good question, actually. I just happened to have caught it in time to have the DVR record it back about a year ago (and only recently got around to watching it), on one of Starz' 480p channels nonetheless. Yes for whatever reason they didn't want to bother to have it on one of their actual high-def channels, the whole damn reason you got the Starz package in the first place, whatevs. Despite programming my DVR to record it any and every time it appeared on TV since, well...it hasn't. So, ok, fine, I'll hunt through my local library's system and see if they have it. They don't. Ok, maybe through inter-library loan? Nope. My librarians can't find it from any library system in the entire country. That said, it's apparently available on Google Play for an ok price, and it's also available on DVD on a compilation disk that also includes Charm School, Feel the Noise and Seeing Double. Unless Seeing Double is referring to a DCOM or something, Charm School's the only one I've ever vaguely heard of.
Who stars in it? The most recognizable name by far is going to be Jordanna Brewster, most famous for espousing the virtues of living life a quarter mile at a time with her older brother, Groot Riddick. Beyond that you've got typical yeoman (or woman, I suppose) players who tend to be in B-ish and, let's face it, C-ish roles like that or television work. Of those the most famous is probably going to be Megan Good, who you might recognize from the (thankfully!) short-lived FOX series Minority Report, one of the very first reviews on this blog and the first to establish the precedent of occasionally venturing outside of the tween/teen genres especially if something's just bad.
Why are we reviewing this? Well, it's a silly teen/college-age adult movie that's surprisingly entertaining and deserves a fair shake, especially given how apparently obscure it is.
I keep thinking that the late 90s and early 2000s was the beginning of this trend of movies marketed to older teens and newly-minted adults with the start of the first American Pie, but really it's a trend that's been going on since the 50s if not far earlier and it's never really died down, becoming less a "trend" and more a genre in its own right, even if its not thought of in the same vein as say action movies or general romcoms. That said, I think there's just that...something that serves as a tell towards what decade a certain one of these movies is made. D.E.B.S....certainly has that feel, although (like the best movies of this genre and period, like Mean Girls of around the same time) it's not so punishing that it comes off as dated but rather nostalgic (or perhaps I'm just colored by how I see the movie). Unlike Mean Girls, which is actually a very brilliantly composed script utilizing the best talents and genius of Tina Fey, D.E.B.S. takes quite an opposite approach - being cheesy as hell, but a winking parody of this demo and genre (and all the other genres it borrows from) with a pretty interesting story and an actual message to tell not deeply buried underneath at all.
The D.E.B.S. themselves are...an extremely vaguely defined organization of exclusively teen girls who are trained as...well, again it's extremely vague but they're international police super spies, or something. Apparently there's a hidden test in the SATs and certain responses measure you're ability to be an assassin, a seductress, a leader or even a liar which apparently is what all super spies are good at. And then these girls get recruited and do...super-spy stuff. And date guys from the CIA and FBI during missions.
And then we have Jordanna Brewster's character (Lucy Diamond - yes really, and now I'm getting flashbacks to The Mysteries of Laura which has ruined The Beatles for me, permanently) who...is a supervillain for some reason? And, oh yeah, she's a lesbian. Spoiler alert: this movie's about lesbians. Her main lackey hooks her up with a female Ukrainian assassin to date, and the D.E.B.S. and the CIA think it's a meeting for, well, supervillain-y stuff.There's a big shoot-out and during the ensuing chaos the main character Amy (played by Sara Foster) runs into Lucy and...well they basically suddenly discover that they have a lesbian attraction to each other despite Amy's big lug of a CIA boyfriend whom she not-so-secretly hates.
And...yeah, the rest of the movie is basically a Romeo and Juliet parable, except they're both lesbian chicks. And super-spies. Amy's best friend/chief lackey ends up getting pulled into one of their dates by accident and develops a crush on Lucy's chief lackey, and in addition to the lesbian Romeo and Juliet angle it starts to develop a "make love not war" message too.
I mean...they're not bad messages, by no means. In fact, despite what you'd think would be pretty heavy messages about finding yourself and sexuality...the movie's a pretty light, fun romp. Is it entertaining? Certainly. Is it more than that? Ehhhhh...just enough. Certainly by enough that it really deserves to be more remembered, and it's a ton better than many, many movies aimed squarely at this demo before or since but have lingered in the cultural memory longer for some reason.
Movie Grade: B+. I was really tempted to give this an A- but...that might be a bit much even for me.
Movie MVP: Jill Ritchie, whose Janet effectively serves as the glue to keep Lucy and Amy bonded until...well...they bond, I guess.
I mean that in the physical sense.
Extra Thoughts:
- Just that...again, for however many times I've said it now, I wish this movie had a better shake than it ended up getting. It's not the greatest movie in the world. I don't even know if it's Mean Girls quality. But it is Mean Girls 2 quality at least. And before you start thinking that's a weird insult for a movie I just praised, Mean Girls 2 is the most underrated movie in history.
(Ice Princess)
What is it? Theatrical release movie from around...actually about the same time as D.E.B.S. and Mean Girls, 2005. Huh, two movies for the teen(ish) demo released at around the same time, I didn't even realize that until writing this. Oh, and Ice Princess is also a Disney movie.
Where did it air? Well again, it's a theatrical movie so you originally saw it in theaters a whole dozen years ago. Wow, time flies. As for now...it's virtually perpetually on HBO OnDemand (which is how I saw it), so if you can watch John Oliver command Jamie Lannister to make sounds with his mouth, you can watch this movie readily and immediately. It's also probably occasionally shown on other cable networks but HBO's probably the best means given again it's ready availability OnDemand, and in 1080p glory and without any commercial breaks guaranteed. I bet it's also available readily on DVD too, if you'd like to buy it in physical media or get it from the library.
Who stars in it? Kim Cattral and Joan Cusack are going to be by far the most recognizable names especially for people who were older when the movie was released, but of course the main star is Michelle Trachtenberg who...I guess this was obviously meant to be her star vehicle but beyond this and a few other roles it didn't really seem to pan out ;_;
Why are we reviewing this? Well, it is a tween/teen live-action Disney movie....
This might come as a shock to you (unless you follow my Twitter feed which...I'm pretty sure is exactly two of you) but I absolutely adore figure skating (or "ice dancing" as us patricians call it). I remember being about 8 or 9 years old and after Saturday morning cartoons (yes that was a thing when I was that age) they'd usually throw up some sports-related event and usually I'd just change the channel because it was something I didn't care about, but one Saturday after cartoons the sporty-thingie was this ridiculously gorgeous girl gliding gracefully on this ginormous skating rink (how's that for some Cap'n Turbot-style alliteration?) and I swear it was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen in my life (well, I was like 9 but still). And I'd been hooked ever since, looking forward to something extra after Saturday morning cartoons to watch every skating season (it's typically...well, right now, especially with the build-up to the Winter Olympics, but on non-Olympics years they have internationals around March, competitions around October-December, and January and February they have non-technical, non-judged, strictly artistic exhibition "spectaculars" which are my favorite because they usually choreograph with gymnasts and other performers to actually put a legitimate show together, usually with pop singers providing vocals. Last year it was Olivia Holt!) Without a doubt since that age figure skating's been my favorite part of the Winter Olympics - I developed huuuuge crushes on Tara Lipinski and Sasha Cohen (not that Sasha Cohen - ehhh, you wouldn't even know who the real Sasha Cohen even is anymore) and I spent many, many hours on the Internet staring at (work-safe, since that's all we had) pictures of them (and before you're wondering, they're both quite a bit older than me). And while the Saturday morning cartoons have gone away, the figure skating (and other random sports hodgepodges) are still around.
So anyway, obviously something like Ice Princess is going to grab my attention, with the multi-threat of being a figure skating teen Disney movie. In many ways it's like the DCOM Genius if it were about the main character's figure skating friend instead - a girl in her very last semester in high school is a physics genius, but she needs to do a physics project to win a Harvard grant; one day she stumbles onto an ice rink where her rival popular girl happens to be practicing figure skating for a competition but she's hit with the inspiration to do her project on the physics of ice skating; in the middle of the project she's bitten with the figure skating bug herself and decides to abandon the scholarship altogether to go pro full-time.
It's about what you'd expect plot-wise, and it bears more than a little resemblance to an old movie from the 70s, Ice Castles (which incidentally would be remade for direct-to-DVD format in 2010, five years after Ice Princess - and yes, I've naturally seen both versions and even tracked down a copy of the super-rare novelization of the original movie). And even if it is somewhat inevitably paint-by-numbers, it still leaves behind a beautiful tale of a young woman finding expression, beauty and legitimate (in fact near-superhuman based on how quickly she picked it up) talent in something she'd only very recently discovered. After all, I think most everybody knows the basic plot to Shakespeare's most popular plays even if they've never seen any of them, but in many ways it's the individual performances and the direction that sets the ever-permeating versions apart. And I think Ice Princess manages to add a little bit of that Disney magic people like to think of (or perhaps even think has been lost) to this story.
That doesn't mean there's more than a little wonkiness to the story, though. Especially regarding...ehhh...The Jumping Shrimp. Yeah. There's a scene almost right at the very end of the movie - in fact it's the second to last scene period, and the last scene featuring here - where the movie kind of goes off the rails and even a little bit out of character given how Casey (that'd be Trachtenberg) helped her out to even get to this point and what friendship they had to...make a point about the cutthroat world of competitive figure skating? I guess?
Movie Grade: B+
Movie MVP: Well, it's kinda hard not to go with Michelle Trachtenberg with this one, though Kim Cattral and even Hayden Penniterrie (yeah she's in this one, she's the "rival" girl, in one of her first teen film roles) come very close. Even Joan Cusack too.
Extra Thoughts:
- Yeah speaking of having crushes on figure skating stars...I say this of a lot of women but I think Carly and Gracie Gold are the most beautiful women on the planet.
- And yes Gold is seriously their name.
- I might have even further bias towards this movie on top of what I already explained since the first time I ever saw this movie - well, about 40% or so since I tuned in during the middle of it and this was before I had a DVR or access to HBO OnDemand or HBO period - was over five and a half years ago during the summer of 2012, when I was just very recently engaged to, well, the woman who'd still later turn out to be my ex-fiancee and started me rolling down the path to...well, starting up and writing this blog. Needless to say that was still during the happy times of our relationship and at the time I thought Michelle Trachtenberg kinda looked like my ex (then again I pretty much say this of everyone). But...things, especially movies and TV shows for some reason, really have a powerful ability to take me back to that time which is why I got hooked on the shows and movies that really resonated with me during that time, which being how a chunk of those shows were Disney and Nick, led me to being hooked and eventually to this blog (and to the very closely related field of YA literature and ultimately to me becoming a YA expert and the job I'm...trying to get now).
- it might also explain why...I find the shows on Disney Channel and Nickelodeon severely lacking now in very early 2018 than I do compared to this same time of the year back in 2013 and the last quarter of 2012 especially.
- or it could be with the likes of Bunk'd and Game Shakers the average quality of Disney Channel and Nickelodeon show just does legitimately stink in comparison now.
- Speaking of YA, the history of Ice Princess itself is pretty interesting - the script is written by none other than Meg Cabot, who also gave us The Princess Diaries and Avalon High, which is of course a pretty well-known DCOM. Now, she didn't write the scripts to either of those movies - she wrote the books they're based on (believe me, the book of Avalon High is totes diffs from the DCOM). Ice Princess is, in fact, her sole scriptwriting credit and the only movie she's associated with that wasn't in book form first or in any form, just being a movie (and they still brought in a script doctor to come in afterwards). She has stated on her blog that scriptwriting...isn't for her, which is sad given how much I ended up liking this movie. Apparently in her original draft Ice Princess was going to be more like the DCOM Go Figure in reverse, where a girl fakes being a hockey player so she can go compete in figure skating instead.
- but still speaking on YA and my career goals this provides a unique opportunity - as part of the practice process to become a professional YA novelist, I'm going to write the fan-novelization of Ice Princess for Meg, and I'll be posting a link to this very blog, so stay tuned! In fact I was hoping to start work on it today but I ended up doing some housecleaning instead...and writing this blog entry, too.
- oh and speaking of the garbage-quality Nickelodeon has gotten lately...yeah, tonight's episode of Thundermans was on at the same time I was writing it but the previews made it look like absolute terribad garbage not worth watching, so I didn't watch it. You're getting this reviewed instead.
Monday, January 15, 2018
Matchwits Mini-Reviewed
What is it? Locally-produced half-hour quiz show for high school competition
Where did it air? On local area Colorado Public Broadcast Stations, so you can only view it if you live in this specific geographic area (or go to the Matchwits website, I guess. I don't know where that is, uhh, Google Matchwits I guess?)
Who stars in it? Craig Eliot, the "quizmaster," and...I'm sorry, but he's a complete and total putz. He's got all the personality and presentation skills of toast - but not just any toast, specifically an attempt to make toast by taking a slice of Wonderbread and leaving it out under the Colorado sun on a cloudless day in early January, between the start of a rerun of Henry Danger and when you get it back during the first commercial break. But I'll rant on that more during the actual review. Beyond that, it's strictly whatever random high schoolers happen to be competing in whatever particular episode, very likely in their only television appearance for their entire lives.
Why are we reviewing this? Well mostly because I want to rant but in my defense it does fall within the incredibly broad, expanded purview of "Nickelodeon and Disney Channel."
So a little bit (more) background about me: when I was in high school, when I wasn't pissing my precious social time away arguing not just Star Wars, but Star Wars canon status (yeah, seriously, don't do that) I was really into the local quiz bowl competition scene. Like really into it, hardcore. It was my sport. I have particular, fond memories of that time, my fondest memories of high school by far. Yeah, it was a simpler (and sadder) existence.
Anyway, and so that is why I feel I have the authority to piss all over Matchwits, because as far as something actually being on television for entertainment's purpose is concerned, it's a gigantic flaming trainwreck of epic proportions.
I understand that's not strictly the primary purpose of the show, but really - if you're going to televise it at all, put some effort into it. From an objective television standpoint, it's an extremely poor, amateurish and outright sloppy production to the extent where it makes you wonder just want kind of care are they actually putting into it. From the standpoint of just being a high school quiz bowl competition - it's still an extremely poor, amateurish and outright sloppy production. Really, it's freakin' embarrassing. I mean it.
Of course don't blame the kids on this, they're just along for the ride really. The fault lies two-fold at the feet of Craig Eliot himself, who is just woefully under-equipped to be in front of his own selfie, let alone any camera even a modicum a step above that (no seriously where the hell did they find this guy?) and the general behind-the-scenes team.
I mean, if you're in the Colorado area watching this (or if you can find it online) and if you've ever had quiz bowl experience, you'll know exactly why this is such a shocking embarrassment.
For starters, the rules and structure of the competition itself is rather sloppy, if not outright thrown together. Inconsistent rules, frequent acceptance of flat-out wrong answers, categories are often esoteric beyond any possible genuine audience interest (and unsurprisingly often beyond any ability of the competitors to get more than a measly handful of points) and I swear are stacked to favor certain teams over others, to the point where utter blowouts are the freakin' norm. Seriously, competitions are often decided well before the second round, or about 8 minutes of air time (being a local PBS station production, there's no commercial breaks). And by that I mean, there have been many if not most games where by the end of the second round (out of four or so) the ability of the team falling behind to catch up is mathematically impossible, as in there are not enough points left to be awarded in competition to allow them to tie or exceed the score of the other team. You know what that is the result of? Extremely bad competition design.
Then there's Craig Eliot who...hooo boy. I should get clips of this. Frequently slipping up questions, frequently mispronouncing even relatively basic words or just stumbling over his speech, all the while eating up valuable competition time and just being a genuine liability to the competitors. I'm absolutely serious when I mean, get this guy otta there.
Putzes like Eliot severely undermine the teams, the players, and the entire competition in their ineptitude and utter inability to actually be proper quiz hosts, and when combined with his Wonderbread toast-under-the-sun personality makes the frustration for the viewer a palpable endurance test. You just can't help but feel sorry for the kids and their parents and family in the live audience (let alone those who are there thinking they're in for a legitimate treat) who are forced to sit through this.
I'm not even kidding when I say my old freshman math teacher who served as our school's host did a far better job, not only in the liveliness of his presentation but in his actual fairness - careful enunciation of words so that there wasn't any fatal misinterpretation, professional delivery so to avoid tripping over his words, and done in a way such that the question was delivered clearly, but didn't obviously cut into competition time. Hell, I can literally be a far superior host to Craig Eliot. I mean it. Consider this my official application, Rocky Mountain PBS.
TL;DR: Matchwits is a fucking trainwreck. Fire Craig Eliot.
Series Grade: F. Given how much of an embarrassment this entire spectacle is, I feel I have no moral choice to award any grade other than this. These kids seriously deserve better.
Series MVP: The students who compete in this, definitely
Series LVP:Craig Eliot by a wide country mile. Again, who the hell is this guy and where the hell they'd get him in the first place? It's been brought to my attention just exactly who the hell Craig Eliot is - a weatherman for one of the Colorado Springs stations, and...he's also a survivor of a horrific accident that resulted in a brain injury so...I'm officially withdrawing all criticism I have of him, and removing him from being the "LVP." That said, I stand by my original grade because it's very clear to me that the problems are endemic to the basic structure and organization of the competition, and that wouldn't change with Eliot or someone else in his place. So I'm instead awarding LVP to the behind-the-scenes runners and organizers as a whole.
Extra Thoughts:
- for some reason this competition seems to favor schools up in the mountains on the Western Slope; schools along the Front Range and even on the plains (that'd be the flat part) seem to do rather poorly.
- Oh yeah when my alma mater competes from what I've seen they kinda suck too, although I think they won the championship last year, for what it's worth
Where did it air? On local area Colorado Public Broadcast Stations, so you can only view it if you live in this specific geographic area (or go to the Matchwits website, I guess. I don't know where that is, uhh, Google Matchwits I guess?)
Who stars in it? Craig Eliot, the "quizmaster," and...I'm sorry, but he's a complete and total putz. He's got all the personality and presentation skills of toast - but not just any toast, specifically an attempt to make toast by taking a slice of Wonderbread and leaving it out under the Colorado sun on a cloudless day in early January, between the start of a rerun of Henry Danger and when you get it back during the first commercial break. But I'll rant on that more during the actual review. Beyond that, it's strictly whatever random high schoolers happen to be competing in whatever particular episode, very likely in their only television appearance for their entire lives.
Why are we reviewing this? Well mostly because I want to rant but in my defense it does fall within the incredibly broad, expanded purview of "Nickelodeon and Disney Channel."
So a little bit (more) background about me: when I was in high school, when I wasn't pissing my precious social time away arguing not just Star Wars, but Star Wars canon status (yeah, seriously, don't do that) I was really into the local quiz bowl competition scene. Like really into it, hardcore. It was my sport. I have particular, fond memories of that time, my fondest memories of high school by far. Yeah, it was a simpler (and sadder) existence.
Anyway, and so that is why I feel I have the authority to piss all over Matchwits, because as far as something actually being on television for entertainment's purpose is concerned, it's a gigantic flaming trainwreck of epic proportions.
I understand that's not strictly the primary purpose of the show, but really - if you're going to televise it at all, put some effort into it. From an objective television standpoint, it's an extremely poor, amateurish and outright sloppy production to the extent where it makes you wonder just want kind of care are they actually putting into it. From the standpoint of just being a high school quiz bowl competition - it's still an extremely poor, amateurish and outright sloppy production. Really, it's freakin' embarrassing. I mean it.
Of course don't blame the kids on this, they're just along for the ride really. The fault lies two-fold at the feet of Craig Eliot himself, who is just woefully under-equipped to be in front of his own selfie, let alone any camera even a modicum a step above that (no seriously where the hell did they find this guy?) and the general behind-the-scenes team.
I mean, if you're in the Colorado area watching this (or if you can find it online) and if you've ever had quiz bowl experience, you'll know exactly why this is such a shocking embarrassment.
For starters, the rules and structure of the competition itself is rather sloppy, if not outright thrown together. Inconsistent rules, frequent acceptance of flat-out wrong answers, categories are often esoteric beyond any possible genuine audience interest (and unsurprisingly often beyond any ability of the competitors to get more than a measly handful of points) and I swear are stacked to favor certain teams over others, to the point where utter blowouts are the freakin' norm. Seriously, competitions are often decided well before the second round, or about 8 minutes of air time (being a local PBS station production, there's no commercial breaks). And by that I mean, there have been many if not most games where by the end of the second round (out of four or so) the ability of the team falling behind to catch up is mathematically impossible, as in there are not enough points left to be awarded in competition to allow them to tie or exceed the score of the other team. You know what that is the result of? Extremely bad competition design.
Then there's Craig Eliot who...hooo boy. I should get clips of this. Frequently slipping up questions, frequently mispronouncing even relatively basic words or just stumbling over his speech, all the while eating up valuable competition time and just being a genuine liability to the competitors. I'm absolutely serious when I mean, get this guy otta there.
Putzes like Eliot severely undermine the teams, the players, and the entire competition in their ineptitude and utter inability to actually be proper quiz hosts, and when combined with his Wonderbread toast-under-the-sun personality makes the frustration for the viewer a palpable endurance test. You just can't help but feel sorry for the kids and their parents and family in the live audience (let alone those who are there thinking they're in for a legitimate treat) who are forced to sit through this.
I'm not even kidding when I say my old freshman math teacher who served as our school's host did a far better job, not only in the liveliness of his presentation but in his actual fairness - careful enunciation of words so that there wasn't any fatal misinterpretation, professional delivery so to avoid tripping over his words, and done in a way such that the question was delivered clearly, but didn't obviously cut into competition time. Hell, I can literally be a far superior host to Craig Eliot. I mean it. Consider this my official application, Rocky Mountain PBS.
TL;DR: Matchwits is a fucking trainwreck. Fire Craig Eliot.
Series Grade: F. Given how much of an embarrassment this entire spectacle is, I feel I have no moral choice to award any grade other than this. These kids seriously deserve better.
Series MVP: The students who compete in this, definitely
Series LVP:
Extra Thoughts:
- for some reason this competition seems to favor schools up in the mountains on the Western Slope; schools along the Front Range and even on the plains (that'd be the flat part) seem to do rather poorly.
- Oh yeah when my alma mater competes from what I've seen they kinda suck too, although I think they won the championship last year, for what it's worth
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)