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Reviews
God Friended Me (2018)
From Someone Who's Non-Christian: It's... okay?
*This review contains minor spoilers, none of which are integral to the overall narrative of the entire show.*
God Friended Me is clearly a religiously-charged show, following someone identifying as an atheist who received a friend request from "God". In the show, it seems heavily implied that this Facebook account is actually the Christian God, but no one is 100% sure it isn't being run by a regular human.
So, for some context: I'm not a Christian. I'm also not an Atheist. I follow a different religion entirely. An episode of this recently came on my television randomly while I was in between shows. I decided to let it play, despite avoiding it in the past due to disdain for the premise, because I was a bit curious if my past suspicions were correct.
I decided I would write a review because I have the opportunity to offer a unique perspective as someone who's non-Christian but also not an Atheist.
In the episode I watched, the main character - who, remember, was an Atheist at the pilot of the show - seems to hold unwavering faith in God at this point in time. Most main characters in this show identify as Christian, and they make a point to express this frequently. If you are Christian, a lot of you probably don't care about this. However, I get the feeling if this were a show where it was expressed people were Jewish or Muslim frequently instead, that might potentially annoy a lot of Christians. JUST a hunch. It gets to be a bit much, and I think there was a huge missed opportunity to have main characters with more diverse worldviews. I have seen other shows with Christianity as a huge theme do that a lot better.
The overall plot structure of the show seems to go something along the lines of this: there's a weekly one-off mini-story based on the friend request the God account sends to our protagonist, Miles. During that mini-story, there are other subplots going on, primarily following the family members and friends of the protagonist or the mystery behind the strange God account. If you watch TV dramas a lot, you're probably very familiar with this format. It's nothing innovative, but for the sake of this sort of show, it does serve its purpose well. I can't speak for the all of the stories and the subplots, but the ones I watched were at least entertaining enough to keep my attention so that I understood what was going on. With a stronger team of writers, I could see these plots genuinely being really good.
Where this show starts to lose me a lot, aside from the strong Christian aspect, is the dialogue and acting. There is a lot of very average acting in combination with extremely cheesy dialogue. There are a couple actors that I've seen in other things who have delivered amazing acting, but they're underused here. Some of the scenes made me cringe really hard when I thought about it too much, because the stuff they're saying is the sort of thing no one actually says in real life. It's very stilted and awkward at times. There are a lot of shows currently on air with this sort of format when it comes of acting and dialogue, so I can only assume this must be appealing to some demographic of the viewer base... or it's just very cheap to produce, which may be the cynic in me talking.
I can't speak on all of the characters over a long period of time, but I found none of them very interesting. There was one character that appeared in the one-off story that greatly annoyed me, and those characters were even worse when it came to things like cheesy dialogue and poor acting.
Ultimately, it's a very okay show. A lot of atheists are screaming about how it's Christian propaganda. In this case, I feel like this was unintentional on the writers' part. I think they thought they were showing off a nuanced worldview that wasn't overtly Christian originally, but they seem to have failed at this. On the other hand, you have a lot of Christians singing the show's praises and ignoring everything bad about it - which I'm not judging them for. I think I may be equally excited if there was a show very explicitly about my worldview and religious beliefs, as unlikely as that is to ever exist with as high of a production value as God Friended Me.
TL;DR - If you're a Christian who's devoted to your religion and make a big point of making it part of your everyday life, you might enjoy this show a lot. In fact, you probably do. If you're someone who's looking for some mindless, feel-good entertainment, it's acceptable for that. There are worse things to watch. For everyone else, myself included, this is definitely something I'm changing the channel on next time it comes on.
5/10
Bless the Harts (2019)
Not actually that bad?
I don't understand all the hate this show has gotten right off the bat. I don't think the writing's laugh out loud funny, but it's pretty entertaining. It's very slice of life-y so far. I think it has the potential to be a lot funnier once we get to know the characters better. I mean, hey. I'd pick this any day over a recent Family Guy episode.
It's especially relatable if you grew up poor or have been poor at any point in your life. A lot of shows on TV are really out of touch with how much of a struggle it can be for the lower class, so it's honestly kinda nice to watch something in a more realistic setting. You'll have characters in a lot of shows complaining about how broke they are when they live in basically a small mansion and can literally do whatever they want on a whim, and it's a lot different with this show. I'm curious to see where it goes, and I hope y'all give it more of a chance.
Kim Possible (2019)
Wooooow...
I'm sorry, but this is just... They've completely butchered so many characters - especially Kim herself. It's got none of the charm of the original writing. They took the vague concept of Kim Possible, and the names of certain characters, and just... UGH.
Fine. Yes. You have to change some things when adapting from a cartoon to a movie, but the new versions of the characters aren't that well-written.
Not to mention Athena... She comes across as some sort of weird self-insert from a fanfiction or something.
I haven't finished the movie yet, but... GOD. This thing is like watching a car crash. The only good things about this movie are Rufus and Shego.
I reallyyyy wanted to like this. I grew up on this show. I was expecting the worst, and I'm still disappointed.
Edit: This was a little dramatic. I am sorry. After finishing the movie, I still stand by this.
However, I will amend that Drakken's actor was quite good as well, and I think there was a lot of effort put into this. They just really missed the mark on this.