Meh. Not sure yet. I will probably give it another episode or two. The future world is very interesting, but the first episode was kind of slow other than the scene where they were looking for Takeshi and his GF.
Why does everyone talk to each other as if it's the first time they meet, commenting on life choices and habits? Feels like forced exposition because the producers think viewers are too dumb to pick up on subtle queues.
Why is there even more nudity than in Game Of Thrones and Blade Runner? If you can't do it right, just adding more and more won't make it look good. I don't mind it as such, but to me it feels like trying to copy GoT and BR but not... quite... getting it. I realize this is probably a very subjective matter, but then again I'm not a reviewer.
Why can't they agree on how to pronounce Kovacs' name? This isn't realistic - it's annoying.
Visually, it's might impressive. I like the art direction and design choices. The various languages are well done with minimal accents from what I can tell and Takeshi's skill of anticipating people's actions reminds me of the Social Enhancer augmentation from Deus Ex.
10 minutes in and the creepiness of something not quite right made me put off finishing it at midnight to this morning. Glad I did that because the agonizingly long waiting period for something, anything, to break off the tension of ever building dread is pure nightmare-fueled. Incredible.
It's an awkward one. On the one hand, this was an absolutely necessary story to tell. On the other, it went on for far too long.
Could easily have told the same story over, say, 9 or 10 episodes and have the last three dealing with the aftermath of Playland with some other threat such as a corrupted Trish/Hellcat taking the true big bad status and resolving Jessica/Trish before the season ended by having Jessica forced to save Trish from herself or something and becoming the true team they should be. Instead that's obviously going to be stretched out over 13 episodes as well and will probably suffer the same fate.
As other people have stated, Jeri's storyline was actually the most compelling. It was also the most inconsequential. Literally at no point does Jeri's plot have any affect on the main plot. Of course Kilgrave returned the way that most of us expected to but even as mental demons he's still the most magnetic presence on the show.
[7.8/10] It’s occasionally hard to know how to unpack an episode of Rick and Morty. The show has so many layers to it, of irony, of parody, of character, of story, of theme, that’s hard to separate each into discrete groups and consider what exactly the episode is trying to say. I consider it a feature, not a bug, but it does sometimes make the show hard to write about.
That said, there’s a few things (I think) we can take away from the episode. The first is that, as evidenced by this episode and the series finale of Community, Dan Harmon does not particularly care for The Avengers and its related films, now the baby of his old friends The Russo Brothers. “Vindicators 3” does a nice job of parodying these films with the Vindicators themselves, poking fun at oddly specific or impractical problems with convenient or unnecessary solutions, and through Rick more directly commenting on them.
The show has fun playing around with colorful superheroes and mixing them into R&M’s sad sack world where people more readily die and friends and families are more apt to turn on one another than be united by the latest adventure. Bringing in Gillian Jacobs certainly helps the proceedings, and the escalation as the heroes keep getting picked off in Drunk Rick’s amusing Saw-like series of death rooms fits the weird creativity of the show.
Now I’m a fan of the MCU movies, so I’ll admit to bristling a bit at the criticisms of the episode, but I also think that’s kind of the point. The mouthpiece of the show (and to some degree, it’s creators) is Rick, and while Rick rails away at the formulaicness and lack of complication to the Vindicators (and by extension, The Avengers), the show also acknowledges that everybody loves them and hates him, and that it’s not unfounded.
One thing I appreciate about this season of Rick and Morty is how the show’s been committed to exploring its protagonist as a bad guy, and filter it through the lens of the people around him coming to realize that. Morty is his companion through all this excitement (and his sandwich shop punch card to pick an adventure is a nice touch) and seeing Rick not only rain on his parade and excitement about working with The Vindicators, but realize that his grandfather is the one keeping him from more of these sorts of adventures, that he’s being treated as guilty by association, is a very interesting tack.
Hell, I love the fake out of this one, where the group supposes that Morty is the only thing Rick thinks is worthwhile about The Vindicators, and the episode plays up a tearful drunken confession, only to reveal that it’s Noob Noob, the Mr. Poopybutthole-esque underling at The Vindicators’ base, whom Rick was blubbering about. More and more, we’re getting indications that Morty’s questioning how much his grandfather cares about him, how much he wants this insane man to be in his life anymore, and I’m more more and intrigued by it.
Of course, the whole thing naturally (and amusingly) ends with a big party and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles style rap about the heroes, but the scars are still there. As much as Rick derides The Vindicators (and by extension the du jour superhero movies) as insignificant relative to him and what he can do, they’re something that other people appreciate, something that makes him seem less uniquely brilliant and superlative, and maybe that’s what really bothers him. Rick is the type who always has to kick over someone else’s sandcastle, and Morty’s starting to realize he’s tired of it.
LEEEEROY JENKINS!!!! Never thought I ever would see a guy scream this in a show and run into a room full of baddies.
Exciting, beautifully shot and entertaining for the most part, but it fails to reach it's full potential because of a wasted villain, forced romance and messy plot which culminates in a terrible third act.
For a Steven Spielberg film starring Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks... Boring.
A very disappointing season for one of my all-time favorite shows. Perhaps TJ Miller was the glue that held it all together, as without him this show just doesn't have its usual magic and good flavor.
"How would you like to die today motherf*cker" ... Once again, Jared YOU ARE MY MVP.
Ah, The Americans. What a ride we've had. Simultaneously an exquisitely rich series with superb acting while also being a directionless slog for large periods. When it was good it was top-drawer TV, but it always felt like a show that was lacking in behind-the-scenes navigation. The amount of dead ends, unimportant characters and entire plots which went nowhere far outweighed the intense drama of the core story: Philip and Elizabeth, and their family.
I recognise the hyperbole in saying this, but you could almost watch nothing but the first episode of season 1 followed by this finale and not really miss out on all that much. The status quo set up in the pilot episode had very few changes along the series run, with the only truly big event being Paige discovering what her parent's were doing. I thought we were going to be in for a thrill ride after that happened, but it was quite the opposite. The fact that I was more interested in the fate of Philip's travel agency than in any of the spy work says it all.
There is a lot more to it of course, not least the emotional journey the show took us on. This series finale delivered the emotional moments needed and gave us some truly heartbreaking moments as the story of the Jennings came to an end, and they lost their children while regaining their home. The garage scene with Stan was one of the most intense things the show ever did, and the final phone call with Henry had me in floods of tears. But for me, the finale failed to deliver all that much from a narrative perspective. There is no conclusion here, almost all plot threads are left dangling (Henry? Paige? Stan? Martha? Oleg? Renee? Claudia? Oleg's family? Philip's Russian son? The mail robot??? What about the travel agency?! We'll never know.)
I find myself torn between satisfaction and disappointment. I felt that the show has been largely going in the wrong direction since season 4 (that is to say, no direction at all). Circular plots went round and round again, Philip and Elizabeth grew more and more apart as the work drained them. Characters and plots kept being introduced with no bearing on what was truly important to the show's core.
I feel very let down that the show decided to leave everything until the last episode. The amount of great story opportunities concerning Paige and Stan that could have happened over the past few seasons but never did is overwhelming. As it stands, this last season of The Americans managed to go out on a higher note than I had expected but it feels to me like a show that will not be remembered as one of the TV greats (it never helped that the UK broadcast was put on an obscure channel in the early hours of the morning), but provided characters that will stick with me for a long time.
Okay. Here's the thing. You go in knowing this is a Jackass movie so stupid stunts. You see the commercials and think "Hey! It's Meatballs, but with a theme park." The original Action Park is such an interesting story, you figure this will be fun.
But not really.
It is not really fun. First, a completely unnecessary wraparound story is thrown on this thing. Unneeded except I think they wanted to make sure it was feature length. Then there are the stunts which look painful, but with it being a narrative film...you just don't care. The jokes are all rather flat and the SLOBS vs. SNOBS theme is more "Ernest Goes To Camp" than "Meatballs." Most interesting...this was an R rated comedy but I didn't see any nudity, the violence was of the variety the Three Stooges has, and maybe one or two drug references. So it must have came down to the cursing and the references to drunken and reckless behavior. The only sex onscreen was between 2 doggies, so I guess it gets an R, but surprising this is how they went about it.
Overall, not painful to watch, but didn't bring much joy either.
"Your uncle Basil died!" lol
I came here to write a review on how great the season ended. I was, however, sadly made aware that this was the series finale as well. I started watching the show since it release three years ago. Over the three seasons you've seen the two main characters (Mickey and Gus) change. Sometimes for the best, others for the worst.
With the way this season felt, the creators had no indication that this would be their last; this is shown through the few character plots that were left open-ended. However, despite this - i feel we were able to see something of a ending. What we learned over our time with Mickey and Gus is that LOVE isn't easy. There is no cupid that shoots an arrow, that results in everything becoming great from there on out. Ney! The opposite. LOVE brings ups and downs. But! Most importantly, LOVE for Mickey and Gus brought out a better versions of themselves. Especially Mickey - and this season, we got a glimpse into Gus changing.
This series has brought me to tears a handful of times. Not many shows can do that. There has to be a connection, something that the viewer can relate to that allows for them open up emotionally. I'm saddened that the series is done, but i'm glad to have known it for as it was, when it was. Thanks!
I'm surprised at the number of positive to almost glowing reviews. While the end is a great twist, I'm not sure it makes up for the rest of the film. Far too long, and the terrible accents were incredibly disappointing and distracting (perhaps, hire an actor that actually speaks the language and can act?!). I never bought Jennifer Lawrence as a spy/ballerina/deadly weapon of the state, it just never felt plausible. With so many incredible movies out, unless you're a die-hard Lawrence fan or Russian-moviephile, don't go out of your way to watch this one.
[7.6/10] I hadn’t seen Dead Poet Society in full the first couple of times I saw this episode, which added a new layer of appreciation to this one (especially when Jeff yells “this is no way to teach accounting!”) John Michael Higgins doing his best Robin Williams riff, while Jeff struggles at the ultimate blow-off class was largely a hoot, even if the ending veers into some corny will they/won’t they territory that often makes me roll my eyes in the show’s first season.
The only issue is that it doesn’t cross-pollinate well with the episode’s other major story, where Britta pays for Abed’s film class against Abed’s dad’s wishes. The tack of making Jeff and Britta Abed’s surrogate parents runs out of gas a little too soon, but I really like where the story goes. Abed subtly tormenting his friends who are trying to help him because of a single-minded focus on his creative project has seeds of things to come. His film conveying his insecurity about maybe having broken up his parents’ marriage is actually pretty sad and touching in its way. And the way Mr. Nadir turns around after realizing that film helps Abed, who has trouble communicating, to express himself, is really well done.
The C-story sees Pierce coaching Troy up on how to sneeze like a man, and it’s pretty forgettable and light on laughs, but also so brief as to be inoffensive.
Overall, a funny episode that give us a lot of good Abed character development.
This film is a alternative of the pixar film UP, how it should of been between the old man, and the boy ha so this is where Sam Neill got to, from hunting dinosaurs.. to now hunting wild pigs while on the run in the bush with a kid that calls him uncle.. This film takes you on a crazy, funny, wtf adventure, you also get a good sound track on the way, and you'll meet some weird characters on the way like Psycho Sam... yes that's what he calls himself..
I wanted to love this so much, but it just felt... Empty. The characters didn't connect at all and the Fantastic Beasts themselves felt like an afterthought to the franchise they're actually trying to build.
Overall a watchable movie with some charming moments but damaged by a muddy story and atrocious pacing. I expected more from the HP universe.
[8.4/10] My first (semi) live IASIP premiere! Huzzah!
Like everyone, I wondered how the show was going to deal with Dennis’ absence, but I probably should have expected what we got, a delightfully meta riff on what the absence of an essential character means, replete with boatloads of raunch and comedic takes on co-dependence and remaining static.
Maybe that’s a little high-falutin for a show as juvenile as IASIP, but I don’t think so. Especially as this show has gotten older, it’s gotten more ambitious, and dare I say deeper, even as it slings episodes where people play a sex doll like a tuba.
I think my favorite thing in the episode is how it explores the ways in which The Gang is fixated and dependent on Dennis as an ingredient in their group, while being blind to the ways in which he holds them all back. It’s striking how better situated and successful everyone seems to be with Dennis gone and with Cindy (Mindy Kalig, ably taking part in the show’s particular banter) calling the shots. The plans are better formulated, there’s more positivity, and everyone seems do be doing well overall.
Everyone except Mac, that is. I appreciated the tack where Mac, most of all, is still fixated on Dennis, and without his sexuality to repress, he’s now just repressing his crush on Dennis, replete with a lifelike and disturbing sex doll. The meta humor of Charlie and Dee assuring Cindy that no one knows why Mac does what he does (probably just a cry for help or attention) and to ignore it and move on was well done in that vein.
But Mac gets The Gang stuck on the “Dennis-shaped hole” in their lives in the same way that Mac does. The bell tolling as the camera zooms in on the unnerving face of the Dennis-esque sex doll is a great running gag, and I like how the episode uses it. Dee is feeling self-confident, Mac is proud of his body, and Frank and Charlie are competently executing (and appreciating) the plan for once, only for them to hear Dennis’s negging and have it still bring them down.
It’s a frickin’ neurosis, and the show uses it both for humor and for its dark character explorations. The way everyone instantly regresses, and falls back into old habits is well done. I even like how they tie things in with The Waitress, using the whole “absence” thing to tie into Charlie never wanting to talk to her and then tying that into her hearing the Dennis doll too, showing that he’s burrowed into everyone’s brains. Community’s pulled the same trick (and with a similar, albeit more network-friendly version of the same archetype), but it still works in IASIP’s more sophomoric setting.
And I like how the show turns that into a miniature referendum on whether the show itself will evolve (which it has, despite maintaining much of the same style and humor) or whether it will remain the same, reuse the same ryhthms, and so on. It’s not the first time the show’s tackled this sort of thing, but it does it well here, with Cindy representing change and something new, and a surprise return from Dennis himself representing the comforting but sclerotic business as usual.
Of course, this is The Gang, so they go with the easy and familiar. Dennis returns, the status quo is maintained, and with it, the rest of the group are doomed to confidence-shattering insults and failure once more. There’s something implicit in that -- the show kind of admitting that it’s not inclined to evolve or get better in a self-aware but kind of cynical way -- but then again, maybe they know that those familiar rhythms are part of what we love about the show, even if tired bird jokes start to grow thin for both writer and audience. Either way, it’s good to have IASIP back.
I was surprised by how much I liked this. I went in with low expectations of just a dumb action movie, which it still kinda is, but it is also a decent sci-fi and the action is pretty great. The beginning is a little slow but once Grey gets Stem then it picks up. Logan Marshall-Green (or better known as the Tom Hardy look-alike, Tom Hardly) does a good job here. He moves like a robot pretty well. The action is great. There are plenty of action scenes and the short runtime makes it move fast. There are a few decent laughs too. The cinematography was very interesting too. The way the camera moves in certain action scenes are really cool, it makes a normal scene stick out as something special. One of the best things was the world it set up. Modifying humans with different upgrades is really cool. The whole gun in the arm is stupid but a crazy, cool stupid and I want to see more of that. I would like a sequel.
9.5/10. I have never seen Glee, so a lot of the direct parody was over my head, but this is such an enjoyable episode. Having the show's X-mas episode turn into a cross between Glee and Invasion of the Body Snatchers was an inspired choice that both makes the holiday-themed story both distinct and gives it a direction as the episode progresses.
The songs themselves were unique and each had their own shade of humor. The two stand outs in my opinion were Annie's (in a perfect parody of the weirdness of songs like "Santa Baby"), and Shirley's (which perfectly seized on her character's achilles' heel). But the episode had lots of great Community wordplay ("well-documented historical vanity" is just a hilarious phrase in and of itself), and ridiculous moments like Britta "singing her heart's song." Everyone in the cast was on point. If I have one small nit, it's that Taran Killam occasionally went a little too broad in his performance for my tastes, but he did capture the "bright-eyed psychopath" role well.
Of course, Community being the quality show that it is, still manages to ground the outsized premise in something character-based. Abed wanting to spend the holidays with his friends, and worrying about making things darker when trying to make things brighter, culminates in a heartwarming moment of the gang showing up at his apartment. Sure, it's a bit easy, but it absolutely works as a great capper to tremendously creative and amusing holiday episode.
This show is streets ahead.
I'm someone who was loathe to use the Trump name when I heard the first pronouncements after the escalator introduction. I've adopted different monikers to try and stem the tide of his overwhelming influence. I'm more dead inside than the frothiest pundit attempting to explain the exponentially terrible and long term consequences of what his reign will bring. I felt obligated in a kind of cultural accounting to watch The President's Show, despite the sinking and desperate feeling of wishing for it to all be over. I never much cared for when the cartoon version showed up in The Late Show. I understand that there's a whopping mental discord that needs to be contended with even before we pretend we can piece together the extent of the destruction.
All that said, the case for this show is almost too explicit. They are cartoon characters. This could be a dozen different short-lived cartoon shows from MTV or Comedy Central over the years. What made them exist in the first place were chuckle moments or an exploration of a particular pathology. Here, because the cast of characters is so large, you get to see a slightly broader take on each person. It's one thing to hear a dozen renditions of the same joke from late night hosts, it's another to see it transposed into a light-hearted attempt to not choke to death on what all of the real world examples truly mean.
It's not a particularly good or intriguing show on it's own so far (2 eps). It's more of a therapy session and slightly cranked up mockery. But that's almost the point. Where do we go from here but into tyrannical ever-escalating death? If you can't imagine it as a cartoon, how can you much cope with anything coming out of this saga? Consider the wholly uninspired "Donald Trump is the President" end credits song; when you can't parody anymore, you just repeat it over and over in disbelief.
The main strength is that it doesn't solely rest on another 25 minutes of Trump-isms, but there's plenty. The whole party gets to be implicated and you get a sense of the collective absurd psychosis that has taken hold. This is a show that is looking for laughs after you've conceded you're broken and if life can't be a cartoon, at least this can be. I've been unable to find the funny in Trump from the beginning, which I think stems from a deep appreciation for consequences and historical understanding. His idiot cartoon sons or gonzo Ted Cruz don't feel as much an explicit betrayal to the idea of us ever pulling our shit together and taking responsibility for what's really happening, and were hence what got the chuckles from me. Is it also a cynical small-minded cash and attention grab attempt utilizing an ongoing disaster? Probably. Can it serve as a bridge between the monstrosity and one day feeling capable of cleaning it up? Hopefully.
I don't know man. I'd trade this for a second of hope for the future.
I was concerned halfway through this season that the show had set up too many leads, too many loose ends, that it was pointing too many fingers in too many different directions that would give the show an easy out (as well as the opportunity to leave an open edning which I don't care for) , but it tied itself together in a fairly compelling way.
When the truth comes out though, while it all makes sense, it felt kind of sickening.
The villain is treated almost as an off-shoot, which on the one hand I prefer, it means they get no attention in the faux-documentary happening within the show, but I kind of wanted a little more of them. One scene, one interview, give me something to hate, because all we get are interviews and wrap-ups with victims - not necessarily innocent victims but victims nonetheless - and it leaves a really bitter taste in my mouth. Just a real undercurrent of sadness and loneliness.
Good season of TV. Hope there's at least one more to come. Could watch this show on a loop.
They do it once again - the last episode is the best one, like in the first season. To be honest I thought that the second season will be just a pale copy of the first one. There is no way to enter the same river twice. But... They have managed to add something new and have found another topic to address in the show.
[5.4/10] Why do I still watch this show? That’s not a rhetorical question. I’m a firm believer in letting lauded shows find their voice before you give up on them. I absolutely believe that living through a series’s rougher stretches makes you appreciate and enjoy their better stretches more. And I think that over time, you can grow to really like shows that you may have been resistance to at first.
But after 50+ episodes, a show pretty much is what it is. Sure, show’s can get much better or much worse after that point, and some can even blow up the status quo and shift into something different (hello Friday Night Lights!). But once you’re half a c-note into a series, after it’s had four years to hone its voice and decide what it wants to be, the tone, the style, the presentation of a show isn’t going to change much from there.
And I really haven’t liked The League at this point. It’s generally crass without being clever. Its 90% of its characters are unlikable 90% of the time. And its connections to the world of football, both real and fantasy, continue to become more tenuous and contrived. I have given this show chance after chance and only rarely rated it as even a hair above “good” through most of that run.
This episode is a great example of its flaws. This a big wet lump of a finale, with juvenile jokes that give you nothing but broad humor and a fourth grade sensibility without anything resembling layers. There’s the little bit of set up and payoff with Rafi’s women’s self defense course culminating in Baby Jeffrey’s dick punch to Ruxin, but otherwise this is a whole heap of “See! They’re hitting each other in the nuts! It’s hilarious! Andre’s girlfriend is allergic to semen! How wacky! Oh look! Taco made everyone poop! And Rafi’s ejaculating at the same time!”
This is the lowest common denominator of comedy. I am far from above enjoying the particular charms of scatalogical humor, as my appreciation for the likes of South Park and The League’s stablemate, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia can attest. But this isn’t smart comedy draped in the sophomoric. This is just a bunch of shit and jizz jokes with nothing supporting them beyond the fact that we’re supposed to laugh because shit and jizz are involved. That is the well that this show keeps going back to.
And the group continues to be abjectly awful to one another. Nevermind the “scroat squad” bit, which at least has the spirit of knucklehead camaraderie to it. Rather than having the slightest bit of sympathy for Andre for not being able to conceive a child with a fiancée, or heaven forbid concern for the woman having a severe allergic reaction, everyone not only insults and makes fun of Andre over it, but then they hang onto the pictures of the event happening in the photo booth. That’s on top of the fact that it’s such a contrived setup for Andre and Trixie to do that in the phone booth in the first place.
Hell, even Rafi, who is usually the breath of madman fresh air that livens up this show, was too much for me here. His over the top “ballsyguard” routine went to ridiculous extremes with him going for the nut check while Kevin is roof-surfing on top of the Shiva-mobile. I’m all for T.V. being exaggerated or heightened in comedy, but this is a show that nominally has a tether to reality, and we’re just going for hidden car attacks that lead to people getting into car accidents and coming out unscathed.
Throw in the fact that Taco has somehow unlocked the key to the brown note. (Something, I’ll note, that South Park did better.) Throw in the fact that the show continues to do weird incest/semen donor humor with Sofia. Throw in the fact that the culmination of Pete’s arc with Gina is that he undercuts his own fantasy team over her dating Adrian Peterson, replete with another fawning depiction of an NFL star and another unrealistic excuse to include them in the proceedings. You just have a finale that lands with a thud.
Maybe Shiva really did lay a curse on The League as much as she did The League. There’s promise of something of a fresh start for next season, with name changes and different draft locales and the prospect that we’ll meet another one of the mysterious out of towners. But the fact that Shiva (who really shouldn’t want anything to do with these assholes) has removed her hex doesn't fill me with much hope for whatever the series has to offer in season 5.
So why am I still watching? I don’t really know. It is, at best, a bit of a slog to get through every time. A good number of my good friends like the show, so I suppose there’s a part of me that wants to see what they see in it. Part of what prompted me to watch the show in the first place was catching a random episode at a friend’s house and thinking it was hilarious, so I’m tempted to watch at least until I get to that episode. And there’s also the simple fact that there’s not really another scripted comedy so devoted to the NFL and the ridiculousness of fandom and fantasy football. As a fan of the gridiron, I keep wanting the show to make good on its stellar premise and become a funny reflection of the great but also terrible game that I love.
So now, as we approach Superbowl 53, I am going to take a break. I started this show in September when the NFL season was starting, and so ending it with the close of the season seems right. Maybe seven months away will make me apprecicate coming back to the show in the excitement of a new season. Maybe The League turns a corner in season 5. Maybe my problems with the show will fade in the background and the improvements it showed in season 3 will come to the fore again.
If I was smart, I would probably just dump the series, but like the fan of a bad football team, I still imagine I’ll be back next season, naively thinking that “this might just be our year.”
This is one of the movies that is really hard to rate for me, and I am torn between two sides. On the positives:
I liked the acting of this rather unknown cast. Acting for a normal movie is hard enough, and I believe that musicals are the supreme discipline, as you do not only have to have the ability to be a good actor, but you also need to both, be able to sing and dance and it has to sound good and look good. And here I have to say: They are excellent. All dance choreographies where really challenging, and had really funny ideas that made me smile a number of times. Comparing it to other musicals I have seen in the last year I have to say, those choreographies where even better than those in the beloved La La Land. Those choreographies where also well designed and scripted - for instance take the very first dance choreography in the high school - it is used to convey all the relationships of the different characters and their (hidden) feelings for each other, which I think was really great.
And speaking about great ideas - the entire movie is a absolutely great idea - when did you ever see a Christmas-High-School-Coming-of-Age Musical with Zombies? A really innovative idea, creating something new, which is really hard, in today's movie landscape.
The movie uses a lot of absurd ideas and interesting camera angles (e.g. the burning tire or a few of the deaths) and the humor that is conveyed using these angles was also really good. The movie doesn't take itself serious, there are a number of splatter scenes that are really funny, many things look unrealistic, because they avoid CGI and everything is made of practical effects (and those are simple) but with this I think they pay homage to the stage musical where you don't have CGI and use simple practical effects throughout - and also these things make the movie look even more funny.
And last but not least, the movie has a lot of soul, everybody seems to be really invested into this movie and giving his or her very best. It is a really charming movie.
If I point out that I have found a number of positive aspects that means that unfortunately I also have found some aspects that I consider negative:
Probably the most important one for me: The jokes that they made on purpose in movie where absolutely bad, and I couldn't laugh at any of the dialogues or one liners (e.g. "Oh no" - "What?" - "Justin Bieber is a zombie" - how is that even remotely funny?). I thought most of the jokes where either embarrassing, not funny at all or even annoying. And for me that really harms the movie.
Obviously Shaun of the Dead is an inspiration to this musical and it's even referenced. The parallels however are often really obvious and the problem with that is: Whenever Anna and the Apocalypse "copies" something we already know in Shaun of the Dead the later makes it so much better than this movie does. For instance they use the typical cut technique we know from Edgar Wright (e.g. in Worlds End where they order their beers and a water), but when they do, they do not try to convey a funny moment and therefore it seems unnecessary and wasted (for instance they use it in a random scene where the guys get into a car, which has no funny moment and does not compact something that needs to be shown).
Musicals are called musicals because they have music, and for me, a good musical has a song that captures me and that stays with me even after I've seen the movie for the first time (without rehering the soundtrack, etc.). Take La La Land, for instance. I've just seen that movie once, yet when I read the three words "City of Stars", I have an instant earworm that will stick with me the entire day. The Greatest Showman's "This is me" is equally catchy. With "Anna and the Apocalypse" there is no song that stood with me, no song that stood out, that captivated me, and a few weeks later if you'd play a song from this movie to me, I believe I wouldn't recognize them).
And when it comes to the genre of Zombie movies, this movie does not bring you anything new. And even for Zombie comedies there are a lot of better options to turn to. The only thing unique to this movie is it's setting at Christmas time, but they don't really cash in on the Christmas spirit, so other than the date and the decorations, this movie does not feel like a Christmas movie at all - take classics such as Home Alone, you can see that it is possible to convey a Christmas feeling even though your movie is not really about Christmas but cool action. And here - again - Anna and the Apocalypse falls short.
Last but not least - I am not really a musical fan. It's just not my genre. So convincing me is just as much harder, and in that aspect "La La Land" really did an excellent job, while all of the other current musicals didn't - this one included. I would have loved it to become a Christmas steady, I am always open for good new and unconventional Christmas movies (I feel like there are too few Christmas movies that I actually like - you can fill them into one evening, so I would love to have some additions to that list) but I am not sure if this movie could fill that spot - unfortunately.
Still I have to also honor all the positive aspects that I have mentioned, and I am sure that everyone who enjoys musicals will find this movie a great pick - it's no La La Land, no Shaun of the Dead and no Zombieland - but for a low budget independent movie with an entire cast of new inexperienced actors this movie this is really worth your time, so I would still recommend to give it a chance, and I am sure that it will find its fandom.
One of those movies that's almost too unique to really be good, but maybe that's ok. It's still plenty entertaining. There's some fun, gory, zombie kills and the musical numbers are generally pretty great. It's got a weird, good, off-kilter energy. I wasn't particularly satisfied by the time I finished it, but I didn't regret my time with it either. It's certainly unique - unlike anything else I've ever watched.
I think I might just prefer season one of The Orville to season two.
Every episode lately feels like it's own short story, too much so.
We had two episodes in a row that dealt with dating someone in a situation where romantic feelings might be deemed unacceptable socially.
And we don't see as much of the captain. In season one, it was more centered about his struggles. Now he's seen as much as everyone else. But that said, this was a good episode.
