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Jim15936
Reviews
Earth 2: First Contact (1994)
Politically correct absurd Premises and Puts you to sleep.
The show lost me from the first episode. It has the following politically correct Hollywood clichés: (1) A super smart child barely out of diapers who is wiser than adults (shades of Star Wars episode 1. 2) A cripple (the kid again) whose physical disability means that (while white) he is a minority Above Criticism.
3) An Older Black Man (who resembles the Slimy UN boss Kofi Annan) who hovers over the kid, like a substitute father, but whose enthusiasm for little boys makes him appear to be a possible molester. (at least in Subtext).
SPOILER BELOW: 4) Absurd opening premise: Why would Earth spend billions creating a fully outfitted colonist ship, and plan to blow it, if on the off chance they found a new Earth offering "hope?" Because the colonists were supposed to fail so that some mysterious military junta world Government (The UN?) can maintain "control." If that was so, why build the ship? The whole mood feels like it was written by a bunch of anti-military left-over hippies who flunked their science courses in college, since they were so stoned on weed From the opening premise on, it simply makes no sense whatsoever. If the creators wanted to show that the colony was good, and that some evil UN-type junta took over by force, and that the colony represents freedom, that might have been more plausible.
The worst sin: It literally put me to sleep. I cant stay awake to finish the opening episode. Network News excites me more! It starts off with glacial slowness, and we never are given a reason to care one whit about any character. If they all died I wouldn't care less.
The annoying genius cripple kid is simply not believable, and he is subtly obnoxious, shoving his disability in your face, as though it gives him the right to park all over you. Someone put him in an airlock -- PLEASE! The hovering African man looks like a potential child molester, who simply hasn't purchased his own Wonderland Zoo -- yet. The kid's Mom is boring, her acting is flat and unconvincing, and her cool relationship to the old black man makes her look like a desperate single mom whose an enabler to a potential abuser.
The set design was better in Star Trek: the Original Series, from the late 1960s! I'm returning my box set. Ads on TV are more entertaining.
The Simple Life (2003)
The Simple Life is just the 2 Stooges for the Y Generation.
Nearly every review of the Simple Life misses its essence -- its a staged show. ALL reality shows are in fact staged, with a script. The "reality" part is a bit of improv. allowance, and the illusion that its really happening.
The Simple Life is just as staged as the Lucy show in that generation. Most of the jokes are already written. All the bits, even down to Nicole's purse getting stolen, are staged. If the girls did some of this stuff in real life, they know they would at least get a misdemeanor offense. Instead, a little town is signed up to play along with the jokes and pretend.
The moral condemnation of Paris and Nicole, as spoiled rich girls with low IQs, is just what the producers want adults to think. Any kid with a brain knows they are just goofing off, and its no more real than the Three Stooges. Relax, folks, the stealing and lying and screw ups are all jokes.
Thirteen (2003)
Fake Reality Show -- Lurching Handheld camera made me seasick
ONE STAR on both the technical and emotional levels.
If it is possible to have a fake reality show (all reality shows are largely fake, trust me I know from relatives in the business, they are scripted and edited, with a few real unscripted moments left in), then this one resembles a totally faked reality show. The target audience seems to be other teens with microscopic MTV-level attention spans.
There is no real introduction to the characters; we are launched into a set of jarring moments in the life of these characters that we are given no reason to care about. I thought this was a piece of MTV-era trash from the first minute of the movie, and hoped I was wrong.
Why are we supposed to care about two airheads when from the beginning when we are given no emotional reason to sympathize with them? If a car had hit them by surprise I would have cared more about the horror suffered by passing children.
They did not use a simple steadycam. Could they not afford one? No, we are supposed to think this is cool. The camera rolls so badly early in the film, I felt like I was back on the lurching deck of a little scuba boat in the Caribbean that made me heave over the side. It made me ill and I had to look away from the nauseating screen. Did they think that made the scene real?
Furthermore, in several scenes, the characters go in and out of the frame and the cameraman seems to be refocusing the camera as the characters move. Is this supposed to be MTV genius or just incompetence because someone's Mom did the camera work?
The sound quality is sometimes atrocious. I just turned the subtitles on to catch the occasional whisper or slurred speech. Didnt they know about voice-overs, or is this another failed attempt to seem real?
We are supposed to be shocked, shocked that mere thirteen year old white girls that look pretty normal have a secret life drinking, taking drugs, stealing from a store, using the "F word", and kissing black boys in a kind of group grope on the lawn. I never suffered from the illusion that teenagers were ever angels. I used to be one and nothing is wrong with my memory of that warped era of desperate conformists looking to get laid and sometimes drunk and high. But these girls were not those typical ones I recall from my high school.
I know what my Mom would have called these girls when I was in High School: "Just low class trash. Avoid them." This film, like so much trash from Hollywood, takes the lowest dregs of society and tries to convince us that this is the norm.
I get the sense that another fake "reality show" at the high school level would be more real than this. The Osborne kids kept it more "real", despite their freaky appearance.