ipokedabadgerwithspoon Reviews

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live (2024)

For the die-hards, and for misty-eyed reminiscing only

[4/10 · 31 March 2024]

Since the main series on "The Walking Dead" came to a close, there was the tantalising preview of a series showing what happened to Rick Grimes; an answer to the question of what really happened. Having watched two other well written mini-series, that further the stories of several of the main characters, finally it was Rick & Michonne's turn.

Having watched the last episode of the season, I can say that I found the series... disappointing!

I knew that a romantic reunion was always on the cards. What I didn't expect was that the walkers took such a back seat to other interweaving plot lines, that they didn't seem to pose much of a threat.

Then the 'big bad' of the series comes across as a badly written, James Bond nemesis. An entire army, and there is no concept of the size of threat as you never see that many of them, and the series doesn't have enough time to flesh out scale. There may be 20... there may be 2000.

However, the worst offence was some of the most contrived, cliché interactions between people, that I had to wonder if the script writer was on a protest.

• "On a dead world, love is dead."
• "Love doesn't die.

• "I just never wanted you to feel alone."
• "I thought I was. Then I realised... I wasn't.

I'm sorry but this series killed years of faithful interest, faster than the apocalypse killed the "walkers".

Buddy Games: Spring Awakening (2023)

I want 1 hour & 35 minutes of my life back

[2/10 · 14 June 2023]

If I had to describe that film, I would tell people to imagine you have a big ball of hair. Now roll it in poop. Then set fire to it. Breathe it in. Taste the smoke. Savour it... that's Buddy Games 2.

It is some of the poorest/laziest writing of a script, that gets over worked & stretched thin into an abomination. Dax Shepard took the wise choice, by not featuring. James Roday Rodriguez, Nick Swardson, and Jensen Ackles accepted roles, but you could remove them from the film and the plot of the film wouldn't suffer.

It stopped being about the characters, and more about a succession of ever increasingly ridiculous situations, to the point where it stopped being mediocre & became unenjoyable... and that was about halfway into the film.

My recommendation is that you watch Grown Ups 1& 2 instead, and that the production company hide all copies of the DVD in the same landfill as 'ET the Extraterrestrial' for the Atari 2600.

Cats (2019)

What a mess

[1/10 · 19 March 2020]

There is nothing about this film that worked apart from the actors who tried their hardest to bring a bad idea to the screen. The CGI is awful and the film relies on it heavily. As for the music, it is destroyed by actors trying to portray the emotion of the story.

"Les Mis" worked as it was a story that people could relate to, turned into a musical, and the film made the best of both. This is a collection of nonsense poems, that had no real theme or story except cats, that was turned into an award winning stage musical. To over-act the imagined emotion of a scene is to destroy the music. It should've been left on the stage. I hope I never hear "jellicle" ever again.