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Reviews
The PJs (1999)
Hilarious, Technically Brilliant Comedic/Satiric Classic
This overlooked gem of late 90's comedy gold is pure hilarity and genuine claymation art brilliance. It's amazing to read reviews here that DO NOT UNDERSTAND SATIRE OR IRONY (a sad cultural phenomenon which started to take hold in the late 20teens and is now totally ubiquitous.) The PJ's is a super smart sendup of various tropes done in a brilliantly original way. The creators and writers understood what is utterly lost on 1/2 hour 'comedy' writers today: it's all about the setup, payoff, and the jokes in between, which should never be more than three lines apart. The PJ's did all three terrifically. The 'situations' of this sitcom were clever and always paid off, and the joke writing was razor sharp, on point. And based in honest, reality-based takes (all good comedy is, phoniness is always sussed by an audience and lands like a lead balloon, i.e. Today.) The voice over performances from a who's who of Black comedic talent of the era, led by the inimitable Eddie M and Loretta Devine, were perfect and side-splittingly funny. An easy 10 out of 10. I honestly feel bad for those who never lived in an era of creative freedom, genuine satire, irony, and art for art's sake (again: all are tragically totally lost arts today.) Those that think scripted content should be, instead of an artists honest personal take on a slice of the world, some sort of bitter medicine to raise the audiences' consciousnesses (most of which were raised to the level they expect, and beyond, by about 12 years of age, and have been for at least three decades) and who see an 'ist' everywhere they look--which, of course, says more about how they see than what they see (and likely more than a little projection of their own hangups.) If one is a hammer, everything is a nail. Ignore them, actually enjoy your lives, and check out this piece of late 90's solid gold! Thank me later.
A Man in Full (2024)
Terrible Adaptation Of One Of Wolfe's Worst Books
Among many terrible problems with this AWFUL adaptation of what's universally understood to be one of Wolfe's few epic failures is the fact that it takes place in the MID 90'S, yet they set it in contemporary times. The entire story and milieu is 30-THIRTY-years out of date yet pretends it's not. Jeff Daniels is horribly over the top. The issue with his accent (and the other bad accents) is NOBODY IN CONTEMPORARY ATLANTA HAS A SOUTHERN ACCENT OF ANY KIND, it's not a 'southern ' city any more than, say, Miami is, therefore it's not that his is a badly done one (it is) but it''s a stupid, dated (by easily half a century) cliche, i.e. Bad writing and storytelling. Ditto the scene with the white tow guy, boot lady, cops and the black guy...80% of APD cops are black (and virtually all boot-putter-oner's, tow truck drivers are) so the racial dynamic is bogus and city and it's racial dynamics are portrayed in a hack, sub-stereotypical manner that manages to be insulting and pandering to everyone. Another catastrophic error of this project is that it's played straight, as soapy melodrama. Wolfe's book WAS A SATIRE. It cannot be translated or even understood as anything but. But sadly David E Kelley cannot do satire, never has, and seems to be the guy Netflix has a deal with to do bad TV versions of material done much better in original form. The guy that created original, heartfelt classic TV like 'Picket Fences' has turned into a hack, and this flop is the epitome of all that's wrong with the streaming era.
Palm Royale (2024)
Abysmal Sub-Pastiche Cartoon
PALM ROYALE is what I'd call Ryan Murphy lite: a more surface than surface sub-bad sitcom cartoon pastiche look at a very specific world the writer(s) and director know nothing about and thus don't even have enough of a reality-based point of view to attempt satire. Obviously shot in Southern California (everything about the looks of South Florida and SoCal are different...the lush genuinely tropical Palm Beach world of Royal Palms, laser bright light, bluer-than-blue skies, turquoise ocean and ever-present ballooning cumulous clouds are vastly different from CA and very much part of what makes Palm Beach unlike anywhere on earth) It totally misses the icy cold and closed Old Money East Coast mores and social norms (and even-badly-the period styles) that have defined PB forever for the far more open and egalitarian air-headed West Coast ones, epitomized by the first scene with the Kristen Wiig character approaching the table of the group of women with Carol Burnett's character....um, no. Firstly she would never be in there to begin with, secondly she would have been totally iced with blank, 'go away NOW' stares.
Everything about high-low, broad (verrrrrry broad in this case, the writing is as subtle as a 2x4 to the head) comedy has to be based in a rock solid truth in order to have a contrast to play off of, PALM ROYALE most certainly does not. I honestly have no idea what the intent of the creative powers that be behind it was. This is just an embarrassing waste of a very classy cast of actresses, who ham up their terrible lines I suppose in an attempt to make SOMETHING out of it, but in vain. They all deserve better. The gaping maw of streamer's original content needs long ago diluted the filmmaking talent/idea pool to the point that things we used to call 'programmers' i.e. C-level stuff just to fill up airtime now seem like Emmy quality compared to the likes of PALM ROYALE. We have to have hit the bottom of the barrel by now...there's no further down to go.
Apples Never Fall (2024)
Really REALLY Bad TV
I had hopes this would be a David E. Kelley BIG LITTLE LIES ish show, set not in Monterey, CA this time but rather lush, monied and dangerous Palm Beach County FL. The plot begins with an absurd twist: the San Neill and Annette Bening characters not only open the door for a random, crazed knock late at night (that just would NOT happen in South Florida, also people like this, Neill being a successful pro tennis player and clearly of means, almost certainly would live in a gated community) when they open it and discover a frantic young woman claiming to be running from her abusive boyfriend, they not only let her in, THEY LET HER STAY! And not just for the night...she just ups and MOVES IN! This absurd nonsense immediately destroys all credibility in the narrative. The writing is D+ at best. The cast, besides old reliables Neill (with a strange, gravelly voice) Bening (even when semi-phoning it in, like here, she's great), Jake Lacy doing his uptight East Coast d-bag thing quite well, as always, and Allison Brie making more out of a character than what's on the page, as usual, is made up of more or less awful Aussie actors paying Americans. They obviously shot this on the cheap, doing AU as S Fla and using mostly local cast, and it really hurts the show. Although with this nonsensical drivel of a story there's not much hope for it even if well cast. It's hard pass from me, and I'll save you time time: it should be for you, too.
Mea Culpa (2024)
MEA CULPA's existence and Typer Perry's Wealth and Success Are Why America's Great
The fact that Netflix and others make his beyond parody awful movies like MEA CULPA and a filmmaker/actor as artless, hack, and all-around awful as Tyler Perry can be as incredibly rich and successful as he is is proof that America is the land of opportunity...money is just lying on the floor waiting to be picked up if that's what you want to do with your life. While other vastly more talented filmmakers and performers languish forever in obscurity and waiting tables, Perry lives like a feudal lord in his manor while pumping out garbage like this. MEA CULPA is like a bad parody of a paperback legal thriller you'd buy at the airport before a long flight, hoping it will bore you to sleep. Terrible shooting, the usual TP stilted melodramatic emotional tone, nonsensical plots, and wooden acting (from talented actors mind you) it's almost like he's trolling his audience (and financiers) now: look, I deliver product THIS TERRIBLE yet you continue to make me ever richer and more famous. But I give him all the credit in the world as a businessman: he's relentlessly turned his creative lemons into wealth creating lemonade, sort of like, keeping with the Atlanta spirit, Coke making billions selling sugar water. It's all in the branding and promotion, and Perry is nothing if not a brilliant self promoter. These other reviewers wondering why he doesn't use his resources to try to make something 'good' make me laugh as the miss the point so badly. His net worth is VERY good, and that's clearly the only metric he cares about. And no Mea Culpa is needed for that.
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: Crimson Witness (1965)
Brilliant Surrealistic Abstract Art Imitates Life Television
The brilliance of this episode is subtle, and takes a few viewings to truly appreciate. It goofs on so many uptight American social norms that were just starting to be questioned in the mid 60's. (and many, for good or ill, ultimately rejected.) The idea that being a good 'company man' would always lead to reward and a long ever-rising career and the gold watch at the end. The scene where Lawford is called to his boss' office to learn he's been demoted in favor of his brother is a hilarious satire of how arbitrary, ruthless, and stupid corporate leadership can be, the semi-demented boss played perfectly by. Alan Baxter. It plays with the notion that the perceptions we take for granted as being 'reality' are superficial presumptions...that there is a deeper, weirder reality at play. Subtle breaks of the fourth wall reveal some postmodern-ish deconstruction, some 'air quotes' telling us this is a TV show, a constructed reality. One of these moments is when brother Farnum and Lawford's wife walk off after telling him she's leaving him for Farnum, they're in perfect lockstep. There's also a theme of no matter how slick, how 'in', how goodlooking etc. You are, life can kick you in the face at any time with no rhyme or reason required. Lawford had been ruthlessly, totally booted from Frank Sinatra's life at this point, which meant no more Rat Pack membership and the loss of all the future highly lucrative gigs that entailed. The loss of one f the most important friendships and relationships, business or otherwise, in Lawford's life. For a reason that was 100% unfair, something Sinatra blamed him for that he was not only blameless but utterly powerless to do anything about (and he tried desperately): JFK (then Lawford's brother-in-law) snubbing Sinatra during his celebrated Palm Springs visit in favor of Bing Crosby, due to the Kennedy's (totally legitimate) concerns about how Frank's mob ties would impact his image. Lawford was the only reason Sinatra even had a relationship with JFK at all, and now he blamed him when it came to a humiliating end, as Lawford's character blames and ultimately murders his brother for. I'm not entirely certain Lawford was even aware of what they were trying to do and say with the episode, he seems a bit confused and lost about how to play the bizarre and absurd goings-on, which is actually perfect for the character and episode. What at first watch may seems like a throwaway episode, one of the lightest weight of the entire series, actually reveals itself as the opposite. And: it's also just massively entertaining and often hilarious. A hidden classic of American episodic television, and a must-watch. A few times.
Mayday (2021)
Which Out Of Town Sucker Did They Roll To Finance This Turkey
You can just tell the type of feature that some Hollywood insiders have convinced one of the endless parade of monied fools who hit town with open checkbooks having decided they WANT TO BE IN THE FILM BUSINESS, mistakenly believing the glamour the industry sells itself with as being remotely real. All the junk that's been rejected all over town and is sitting is someone's sucker drawer is submitted to them post haste, along with VERY important meeting with C/D-list talent who couldn't get things made in their prime (which was a long long time ago) and some random sharpie agents and managers angling for exec producer fees all of whom dazzle said monied fool into producing unreleasable films like MAYDAY. I'll bet that's pretty close to how this one went down, yes? Said agents and managers will collect their fees and try to get the director some commercial gigs from the demo reel posing as a feature film said dumb money financed. The moment dumb money is perceived to be either running out of it or getting hip to the game, their calls to agents at the Big 4 will suddenly go unreturned, ditto the managers and talent. Then if they're lucky they scurry back to NYC or London or Seattle or wherever and lick their wounds and try to revive the careers they gave up upon moving to LA 'for Hollywood'. Am I warm? MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY.
The Insurrectionist Next Door (2023)
Repugnant Quasi-Doc Confirmation Bias Exploitation Fest
Title says it all. That this is a supposed 'liberal' 'progressive' perspective is all you need to know about how hijacked term, which has lost all meaning in a contemporary philosophical or political sense. Sneering down it's elitist, Big Everything/Wall Street nose at the sort of people that used to be the bedrock of the Democratic Party, the forgotten middle and working classes, the very forgetting of whom by the Clinton/Obama-era Wall St/Welfare/Warfare Obama Phones & Predator Drones Democrats ALLOWED a character like DJT onto the scene (and whether or not he was an unwitting tool for them or working in tandem is an open question) along with his exploitation and false dreams he offered up. Terrible production quality, if my money financed this I'd be wondering why so little of it wound up on the screen, with even by Michael Moore-style pseudo-doc polemic standard is a gross excersie in violating every ethical guideline of doc making (everything is leading, insiuating, an answer that lays out its cartoon 'questions' afterwards. This box of Total filled with Capn Crunch is authoritarian propaganda posing as an expose of the very same. The reality is these people cheered with bloodlust as a gentle vegan hippie with no criminal record was locked up for two years-nine months of which were in solitary confinement-by definition, torture, for walking into a building he was told by police he was allowed to enter, hurting nobody nor would he ever dream to. This is repulsive, phony passive-aggressive nonsense that every one of the people I was watching with--about as diverse a group politically as could be possible--understood immediately to be such. Only the MOST easily gulled unsophisticated insecure wannabe nitwits will be fooled by it. Of the 20-30K total that will ever see it, that is. Not surprising to see the producers hack reality and tabloid TV backgrounds...they sure honed their skills. Now HBO buys their rancid wares. What does that say? Who knows, or cares. These fake PR intern-written positive reviews are hilarious. Enjoy that $200 folks, AI is taking your gigs very soon. Or maybe it already has?
Loot (2022)
A Satire That Has No Idea What it's Satirizing, A 'Comedy' With No Comedic Point Of View
What is the point of this? What is the point of VIEW? Comedy has to have a subject...what IS it here? The fact is there is no satirical subject as the creators clearly see nothing in this milieu worth satirizing. It's simply stupid ridiculous people acting stupidly and ridiculously just....because. There's no link, no connection to the real world, the world that this supposedly takes place in. It bears no relation anything that actually EXISTS either as human behavior or as part of the human condition. You can't even call the characters or situation cliches, as cliche indicates at least some basis is human reality. LOOT consists of scene after scene of actors doing beginner workshop-level comedy improv takes while reading words meaning nothing. It's a very 2020's type of bizarre non-comedy 'comedy' resulting from a 'creative community' (and society) so unable to laugh at itself and indeed seemingly unaware at what's funny about themselves and their lives (and there's LOTS to laugh at) tied up into knots worrying about what they're 'allowed' to say (which changes arbitrarily from from moment to moment. A very significant element is the dilution of the creative talent pool by the bottomless pit of content needs, the seemingly insatiable demand of streaming platforms to produce original content. The desperation to fill the pipelines results in something like this--less-than-half-baked (the oven isn't even on) soulless pointless drivel created by talentless writers that probably never would have been put into development in the pre-streaming era (or if it was, NEVER would have gone to production)--probably being a series commitment buy in the room. Maya Rudolph (a C- list talent at best) as a billionaire divorcee? And....? And NOTHING! OK good enough for us, we have 300 hours we need to fill...SOLD! Just cast it correctly--get our meaning--and we're cool! We don't even need to see outlines, let alone scripts. Notes? What are those? A show bible? Huh? We don't CARE! Just go make the damn thing, keep it on time, on budget and get us locked episodes by deadline. We don't care WHAT it is. We'll air it.
We have sunk culturally/creatively/artistically so far beneath the bottom of the barrel it boggles the mind. We are bankrupt. I fear an entire generation will never see contemporary scripted entertainment that has even a shred of artistic merit (or even as sheer quality entertainment.) As the period of THE SOPRANOS, THE WIRE, etc. Was known as a neo-Golden Age of television, this one will be known as the Dust Bowl Age (or something.) Shows like LOOT with be exhibit A. And that Golden Era now seems a million years ago.
The Social Dilemma (2020)
Propaganda Posing As Doc
Title says it all. Agenda driven elitist corporate propaganda presented as the opposite. The irony is too hilarious. Unbelievably wealthy people telling you what to believe, because you're too stupid and poor to figure that out for yourself. It's so awful it plays like a satire of a Michael Moore film.