Change Your Image
eldar-finwe
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
The Protector (2018)
Child game like story, waste of a good cast and a good production
First, I must say superhero and fantasy genres are not very common in Turkish TV and in Turkish cinema. To make these genres interesting for common Turkish watchers, the trick has always been about putting some strong historical elements from Ottomans or Seljuk, or religious elements from Islam. Even though there is nothing wrong using these elements as part of a fantasy story and it is surely a very common approach in Hollywood too, still, these elements are always make Turkish watchers more blind than it should, on the matter of seeing the actual quality and the value of a production. And this show was no different.
As for the story; it was a story that could be written by a 12 year old fiction writer. As much as the main super-powers side of the story was a complete disaster, there were also too many gaps and too many inconsistencies, both in the backstories and current events. They used cliches from first generation superhero movies, PLUS, they used cliches from classic Turkish soap-opera culture; such as the poor and the rich, and such as business people living in Plaza..
All aside, they clearly used a big budget for the show though. Cameras, locations, post-production, the cast, etc.. These are pretty much in the same level with a serious quality U.S. TV show in the same category. Acting was also good enough. Considering the unrealistic child-like conversations in the script, the talented cast still handled the script very good and made it at least bearable to watch.
Derek (2012)
Made with beautiful intentions, but too cheesy to watch
This is definitely not a Ricky Gervais comedy show that you'd expect to be watching after seeing The Office, Extras or Life's Too Short. I want to say, I appreciate the social awareness part of the project about elderly people and struggles in retirement homes. And I understand how the show is trying to give watchers some life lessons through Derek's words. But to be honest, that's all it is about the show, nothing else to watch there.
Ricky Gervais is trying to play a character who is having somewhat mental/social disabilities. Yet, he is failing so bad at it, he looks more like making an insulting mimic of someone.
Half of every episode is filled with cheesy TV commercial looking scenes, so cheesy even for the year 2012. Slowly moving cameras, sad piano/violin/guitar solo music in the background, one of the characters is talking to you about some life lessons. First time I saw a scene like that in the show, I personally thought it was part of some sarcastic joke of him, mocking with those type of cliché video clips. But appaprently, it wasn't a joke and in fact, it was the central idea of everything about the show. It almost felt like Ricky Gervais was forced to make this project as a community service punishment of some sort, so he was only trying to get it over with it.
Comedy-wise, there weren't any moments in the show that I could say it was really funny. Only maybe, some naive situations and conversations that Derek's got into made me smile. I would just say "this was never meant to be a comedy, so it's fine", only if they didn't put those extra dorky characters into the show like Dougie and Kev. It is very obvious it was meant to be more comedy than a drama, and they were failed so bad at it. Unless of course, you find it funny that a twisted minded freak character (Kev) making sexually perverted comments every once a while, then you might be okay with the show.
Basically, they made a very bad job at combining drama and comedy in this title. They could easily make a brilliant full-length drama movie out of the story itself, without Ricky Gervais in front of the cameras.
Crazy Rich Asians (2018)
Poorly Scripted and Almost Childish
An extreme dose of boredom was inflicted deep into my bones by watching this movie.. The only reason I kept watching was that maybe something interesting would happen at some point. Or maybe a last minute plot twist.. but no.. If we were in '80s or '90s, I would call this movie as a mediocre cliche love story.. Nowadays, even barbie doll animation movies for children don't have such a poor script like this one has..
And also, don't get tricked by the "comedy" genre it has here on IMDB.. Because that was my mistake starting to watch it in the first place.. There is a little effort to make one or two funny scenes, but only the effort. The result is a complete failure when it comes to comedy.. If there were a couple of moments this movie made me only smile, it would probably balance the whole other scripting disaster..
I can only guess the title became "relatively" popular because there are some "relatively" famous actors are in the cast, especially on social media.. and because they obviously spent pretty good money on staging and production.. So much of a better movie could be done with that budget..