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ryanarnold-39565
Reviews
One Piece (2023)
It has both good and bad anime vibes
Pros: visually impressive. Effects are great, world is immersive. Plot, while kind of disjointed at times, is engaging. Lead character is charming.
Cons: acting isn't great. Nami is the only character who felt somewhat interesting and could evoke an emotional response. Props to that actor, because the dialogue was awful and near impossible for anyone to make compelling. It was written like a bad anime - total transparency of every thought, total inflexibility of character personality, and even screaming the name of an attack while performing it. It feels patronizing, like it's supposed to make me want to buy an action figure tie-in. Because of this, none of the scenes that are supposed to be suspenseful actually work. You just wait for Monkey to win because, in bad anime, the good guy always wins without a scratch and nothing ever changes. Shrug. Also Buggy is annoying in the bad way. Not just the character, the crappy acting.
I think that's what One Piece fans wanted - a live action version of the anime. Anime can be a wonderful immersion into a brand new world. It can also be irritating with flat characters and grating, dumb dialog. This is both.
Ted Lasso (2020)
Like children's morality TV, except good and for adults
It's corny. It's has painfully obvious social commentary. It has a single villain with zero redeeming qualities. There's virtually no visciousness or physical conflict. It has that bubble-wrapped feel of a those children's TV shows where teaching a life lesson is first and entertaining is second (if at all).
And yet, I like it a lot.
There's something to these characters, how they interact, and how they grow over time that makes them engaging, believable, and likable. Even when you get used to the episodic format of a morose character's emotions causing problems, then learning how to overcome them with a life lesson - you still want to take the ride. There's just enough intensity to the story and just enough doubt of the outcome that you get invested, and the syrupy sweetness of the whole crew doesn't feel like it was written just to make you go "aww". It's not perfect, and it has its weird tangents. But altogether, it works, somehow.
Also, it uses fart jokes with the perfect tone and frequency. That's a pun for some of you.
Baskets (2016)
There's something good here, but it doesn't quite hit right
Yes, Christine Baskets is the biggest reason to watch this show. Longtime Louie Anderson fans aren't surprised: he'd been perfecting an imitation of his mom in his stand up routines for over 30 years. It was fun to see how well he adapted it into a fully-fledged character. Christine's personality feels real, charming, and funny. It feels like a significant number of Christine's lines were unwritten - Louie just riffing in character - and it worked. He didn't nail *every* dramatic scene, but most were strong.
There are a handful of other memorable characters. I liked Martha's ultra-deadpan approach to everything. And Eddie is... well, you just have to see Eddie for yourself.
I think one of the shows biggest issues is that there's too much Zach Galifianakis for no good reason. Chip and Dale did not have to be twins. One Zach is plenty, and I thought he was a decent Chip. Dale just feels like Zach told everyone "Hey, listen to this flamboyant southern accent I can do!" and they turned it into another character. I don't feel like I'm watching brothers argue, I feel like I'm watching Zach argue with himself. I think it would have worked better (i.e. Way less gimmicky) if they gave that role to another comedic actor.
The first two seasons feel kind of groggy, with some odd plot surprises that briefly yank you in weird directions. But if you hang in there, it gets more coherent and you do start to get invested in the characters and satisfied with their growth over time. All in all pretty good.
Flaked (2016)
It expects to have charm that it doesn't have
Spoiler section is marked.
It's a show about 40 year old recovering alcoholics' friendship in a beautiful beach town in California. However, most of the show is these men lying constantly objectifying women and lying in order to sleep with women half their age. So who really cares about these guys? Even if you're not turned off by that concept, it's kind of a played-out one.
A lot of the humor is supposed to come from one-liners - Chip's sarcastic ones, Dennis' awkward ones, or Cooler's stupid ones. Very few of them actually struck me as funny or clever. I don't know if disliking every one of these characters factors into that.
There are interesting twists for sure. However, I feel like they squashed the impact of those twists by immediately spelling them out and spilling everyone's reactions. There's no room for the viewer to have their own revelation when the very next action is someone dramatically exclaiming theirs.
And too many premises are ridiculously hard to believe:
***SPOILERS***
You manslaughtered my brother but now I love you? A woman running on a California beach handing out Euros to panhandlers? A shirtless strange man showing up unannounced to a single woman's apartment saying he's a plumber and that woman (with a child, who did not call a plumber) saying "sure, come on in"?
***END SPOILERS***
I dunno, I suppose it's just not for me.
Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
Great 2 hour movie that's 3 1/4 hours long
Extremely visually impressive! Characters aren't super compelling, but the friction between them feels real. Environments are greatly detailed and immersive. There's a guy in a loincloth the whole time for some reason (?) Action sequences are very engaging. Great 2 hour movie. My biggest complaint is that it's over 3 hours long.
The movie reaches a conclusion, then suddenly starts up again for another 20-30 minutes.
Then it does it again.
And again.
For me, each one of these restarts hurts it exponentially more. It was kind of like approaching the end of a fun amusement park ride, decelerating to the exit point, satisfied and ready to get off to go do something else, but it suddenly speeds down another stretch of track. Again and again. Eventually I got sick of it.
And while I wasn't safety harnessed in the theater seat and could have left anytime, I don't think movies are made to be left in the middle of. I want to see the conclusion that the movie reaches. In this case, it was too many conclusions and far too long to get throught them all. I hope the rest of the planned series avoids that.
Shûmatsu no Valkyrie (2021)
Unbearably slow
I only made it through 1.5 episodes. It was almost torture. The show spends 99% of its time trying to convince you that you're about to see the most epic confrontation ever. Intense staredowns, announcers and crowd members screeching and straining their gizzards to a pulp, seven sets of ripped abs on the same guy whose effortlessly wielding a weapon the size of a Kia Sephora, etc.
AND NOTHING HAPPENS.
For every step a combatant takes, the show distracts itself for another 10 minutes going down some flashback or side story animated as inexpensively as possible. You spend so much time waiting for the action to finally start that you don't even care anymore.
I wanted to at least give it a 2 because I love anime art style, but this feels like the worst anime tropes all rolled into the same show.
Strange World (2022)
A very good family friendly film
It's very good. It has the classic Disney charm of expressive characters and exaggerated physicality. It has interesting examinations of inter-generational strain and environmentalism. In hindsight, it feels like the strange world is a bit too convenient a vehicle for the messages of the movie. But whatever. It's bright and interesting and fun. It's what a good family movie should be.
I'll spend the rest of my required characters trying to figure out how so many people dislike it. It's not an established franchise that's been marketed down everyone's throats for several months, so maybe it doesn't "feel" familiar enough for some people? I really don't know. But I had fun with it.
Tirdy Works (2020)
The kind of show I hate with characters I like.
Who knows how much of the story here was actually from producers... but that aside, at least it's full of likeable people. As far as "reality tv" goes, it's good. I have a feeling most of the negative reviews here are prudes who can't get over themselves and never finished an episode.
American Horror Story (2011)
AHS: 1984 is not good
Lots of twists, but the vast majority of them feel slapped onto the end of the story for no other reason but to stretch it out. After the halfway point of the season, you're not compelled to keep watching; you're just dragged through each additional episode that oh-so-conveniently came out of nowhere.
Dialogue is unnatural and most characters feel like cardboard, just like bad 80's horror movies. I don't give it bonus points for following the theme it chose. It's just gore candy that tastes ok at best.