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Stranger Things Review

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I would say how hard it is to believe that Stranger Things started 10 years ago but honestly it does feel like a while. It was never my favorite show out there and it took me months to finally check out the final episode. Still, I have completed the journey…and I found it lacking. This is one of those shows that was going the wrong way for a very long time and basically ended on a whimper. I’d say part of the problem is that the issues just tend to snowball and at the end of the day this is a show that is very character driven. So if you don’t like the characters then that’s going to hurt the show immensely.

The show begins with a few kids playing Dungeons & Dragons. For the most part they aren’t very popular at school but at least they have each other. Unfortunately one of them goes missing one day. He has been taken to the other side by some kind of a demonic presence. The adults aren’t going to be helpful in this case and can’t really be trusted. The kids will have to find a way to save him along with their friend El who has psychic powers. The kid who went missing is named Will and so his mother decides to go and find him as well. It won’t be easy without any real leads though. The small town of Hawkins is about to go through some real turmoil.

Now this is a show with 5 seasons so you can bet that a whole lot happens in between. At its core you could say this is like a slow burn alien invasion as the creatures keep trying to get to the surface world. The kids are determined to stop them but at the end of the day….they are just kids. There are limits to what they can really do here. Make no mistake, they are the underdogs. Since psychic powers are real, at least they have that as a trump card. Unfortunately the government is always at the ready to get these powers back so that’s another thing to watch out for. In some ways the government are the most powerful villains here.

There is a whole lot that went wrong with the series so lets start with some of the positives. I will say that the theme song jingle is pretty good. It has that spooky atmosphere to it and is very memorable. I’ll probably still recall the jingle many years from now after hearing it so many times. Even the Netflix sound is something that I automatically connect with Stranger Things at this point. The two are absolutely linked. The special effects aren’t as impressive. The series is often trying to go for realism which often means making everything look grotesque.

The villains tend to look more weird than intimidating. The characters constantly just have their eyes go white when they focus. The series is at its best with the landscapes. The other world looks very apocalyptic in a good way. I’ll also say that the series tends to have some pretty spooky visuals as it goes on. The series noticeably got darker and more violent for the last two seasons. It was definitely trying to grow up with the cast but I’d say it felt more forced than anything.

We did get some pretty good songs though. While not all of them may have been winners, it was fun hearing some retro tunes. One of them in particular got played a lot as it became the main song used to counter the villain’s mind control. Now we’re approaching the end of the positives for the show but it was nice seeing Dungeons & Dragons getting some hype. It’s not a game that I’ve ever been really into but I definitely get the appeal. You just need to really have a lot of time to devote to it.

Now lets get into some of the core issues. First off we have the fact that the story is an absolute mess. The power levels are all over the place with a few demo demons taking on a squad of hardened soldiers with their guns, then going down to kids and noncombatants. It seems rather easy to defeat them and this is a problem that never goes away. The army really should not be having any kind of trouble with them. These guys are absolutely weak. At est you could say that the most powerful demons at the top should be strong but the minions aren’t serious threats.

Then we have the writing which is absolutely abysmal most of the time. All of the characters are rebounding, cheating, acting like jerks, etc. You really can’t trust anyone here. A very fitting moment is in the final episode when the town is trying to recover after all of the craziness. One of the kids is told to make a speech and instead of unifying the town, he decides to give everyone the birdie, make fun of the teachers, and basically just be a general nuisance once again. A lot of these issues all come down to the fact that the kids are not likable at all.

The show also couldn’t resist making a bunch of their characters decide to get ultra modern so you can expect quite a few gay plots. They are around quite a lot in the final season and take up time that could have been used to move the plot forward or give the villains some more fights. Each scene just gets more degenerate and in the time skip ending we have to give characters very specific jobs that didn’t really need to be around. One guy’s going to have to be teaching people about the birds and the bees. After a while it just seems like the show had other priorities above that of the main story and this came at the expense of most of the characters. These subplots are very preachy and are in your face throughout.

Then we have the fact that this is one of those shows which really can’t bear to just have a villain be evil. Vecna is one of the ultimate evils as he tortures children, murders a bunch of people, etc. Suddenly in the final season they try to play the “he’s just misunderstood” card. I also don’t think this was intentional but Will has the absolutely worst strategy in trying to convert him. It almost sounds like he’s rubbing it in as he explains how Vecna was manipulated and used while Vecna is begging him to cut it out. If there’s one good way to make a villain lose all credibility, it’s to make him beg.

I’d say it’s also just another example of how weak the writing is. The characters can be almost unbearable with how annoying and cringe they are the whole time. They just seem like people you would not want to be around and their dialogue gets more juvenile with each season. By the final season you have characters not giving others guns just to be petty, one kid shows up where his whole gimmick is that he’s really crude, etc.

The biggest story issue has to be the cliffhanger before the final season though. The ultimate evil was finally arriving and we had every character squaring up to fight him. It was going to be absolutely epic and intense. Then the next season starts with a big timeskip as the heroes have scattered and have to fight while undercover. Against the monsters right? Wrong! The government somehow plugged the hole and kept the monsters at bay. The whole thing made absolutely no sense and I’d basically consider the cliffhanger to be a plot hole.

Okay lets go into the characters here. First up is Joyce who is definitely all over the place. She is getting over a divorce which hasn’t been easy and then her kid is kidnapped by demons. So I cut her a little slack with how she gets a bit crazier throughout the series. She wants to help but often times the kids leave her out of the plans. Of course it makes sense why they would because she is always panicking about their plans. Then she gets close to Hopper, rebounds with some random guy, then goes back to Hopper after her boyfriend is brutally murdered by demons. I’m already not big on rebounds but when your boyfriend is brutally murdered?? That should make a rebound even more unlikely.

Of course if I go after every rebound then we’d be here all day. The long and short of it is that Joyce is okay but often doesn’t seem to understand the gravity of the situation. She keeps on holding the kids back and doesn’t want them to get into danger but they are in too deep for any of that. There is no way to turn back at this point and so she just needed to be more supportive at this point. At least she is able to use a gun and everything by the end of the series.

Hopper is one of the only other adults who helps out a lot throughout the series. For the most part he tends to be the standout character. At least he can fight and he takes out a bunch of demons, Russian agents, etc. Hopper is also in charge of looking after El and tries to keep her from being too crazy. She tends to go into self sacrifice mode at the drop of a hat. If not for Hopper then she would have been gone pretty early into the series.

If anything it can be annoying seeing the kids try to order him around all the time. He’s the one with actual experience here after all and if anything he still has to bail them out by the end. Considering that he has no powers, Hopper does really well here. Even when he was captured behind enemy lines, Hopper was able to hold his own pretty well. He still needed some help of course but he never cracked.

Then we have Mike who is essentially the main character of the show. You could make a decent case for Joyce or Hopper but I feel like things always end up centering around Mike. Mike does his best to command the group but is still out of his depth the whole time. The romance with El tends to be pretty weak and you could argue that the ending makes it look even worse. Now granted, the show makes it a point to say that the ending is interpretable but in at least one of those he lost out big time. I also think it would have been nice for him to have gotten to fight a bit.

He’s the guy desperately asking for a gun in the final season only to be trolled over it. Not a very nice thing to do when he is legitimately worried and trying to do his best to help out. Mike tends to get a lot of the emotional scenes so you can expect him to cry a whole lot and get upset at other moments. He’s a highly emotional individual and to an extent I suppose that’s true for all of the kids. Mike’s not as bad as most of the others at least. He was mainly able to stay focused on the mission.

Then we have El who had a really tragic backstory. So for that reason I cut her a lot of slack but she could also be pretty annoying in the present. She wants Hopper to trust her more but always gives him a lot of reasons not to trust her. She tends to be gone on training trips a lot so she misses out on the fights. Even by the end of the series she is still having trouble with the villains. A large part of the series would not change at all if she was a normal human with how rarely she is able to win fights. It just felt like a missed opportunity and the other kids always looked dumb for not including her in the offense teams.

The logic was that they wanted to keep her as a trump card but sometimes it’s better to just get someone ready for the fights. The heroes essentially outthought themselves by coming up with these convoluted plans. It was also rather brutal how El forced her final opponent to shoot himself with her powers. I know that she’s not a hero and works as an anti-hero the whole time but it was definitely still a brutal moment. El’s self sacrifice personality is also a problem but at the end of the day I think it all just stems from me not understanding why she wasn’t out there fighting. That was a big missed opportunity if you ask me.

Will suffers from the same power level issues. He ended up absorbing some psychic ability for the final season but mainly just gets dominated in every interaction. Will sort of feels like he fell behind in the group after being kidnapped for so long and then it gets worse when he finds out how the villains have been manipulated. Will just feels a bit too sorry for himself the whole time. Then like I said he flubs the final speech with Vecna and honestly there’s no time to be feeling sorry for the guy. Vecna made his choices, I’m not going to buy into the whole mind control stuff now. I’d even say that Will stopping everyone to talk about his personal preferences could not have come at a worse time. They were all dealing with the end of the world after all.

Dustin is the main comic relief character of the show which means that he gets put into a tough situation once the show gets more and more serious. He tries to get serious along with it but often times this makes Dustin come across as a jerk. He puts his pride before the safety of the team by picking fights with bullies when everyone was counting on him. Dustin gets into a lot of fights in the final season in order to prove himself as one of the key members of the crew and it just doesn’t serve to make him look any better. I wouldn’t say that Dustin ever really recovered from this. He’s better than some of the other characters but looks particularly bad in the final season which is rough since that is the one that is freshest in the viewer’s memory.

Lucas is a pretty safe character. He’s better than most because he doesn’t start a lot of drama and knows how to get the job done. The only times he tends to get really emotional are when Max is in the hospital which makes sense. At the same time I guess the catch is that he doesn’t get much of a character arc. For the most part he is just around for the ride. Nothing wrong with that though. He contributes and gets one of the happier endings in the show. He also got to have one of the smoothest rides as he got beat up and tormented way less than the others. That’s definitely my kind of path if I was a character in the show.

Nancy is a character who is simply too indecisive. She goes through her relationships too quickly and then ultimately decides to ditch them all to be a girl boss. In that form she at least gets to fight giant monsters and talk tough but you never know what stage she will be in. I thought they made her too arrogant past a point like when she kept threatening Steve, Jonathan, and even the conspiracy nut. She’s just too violent I guess but hey at least she fought a giant monster with a shotgun. The guns only really work when the kids are using them. Man….as a sidebar I will say that the various gun/war fight scenes don’t work at all. The constant plot armor will make you dizzy as the villains miss every shot and the heroes make each one.

Jonathan is one of those characters who fell off a cliff in terms of character development. He was always wimpy and whiny but it just kept getting worse. Now he started off by peeping through windows so I guess it was always going to be a rocky road for him but then he went off on a business trip and came back depressed. He sounds half drunk during all of his lines and is constantly starting drama. He easily became one of the worst characters by the end and just never really improved. It’s easy to see why the relationships didn’t work out for him.

Dr. Martin is one of those crazy scientist villains so you can’t expect much out of him. He’s mostly just here to check off that box and we get more scientists later on anyway. They try for a halfhearted redemption arc for him too. Maybe redemption’s the wrong word, but humanizing at the very least. It didn’t work so I consider this guy to still be a 2 dimensional villain in the end.

I already talked about how pathetic Vecna is so we don’t have to get back into it. Needless to say, he’s a great example of how to ruin a villain. He just got less and less intimidating the more that he appeared. Unfortunately his boss, the Mind Fray guy never got to really do anything either. In the end he appears more as a mindless monster. It all comes back down to the heroes being too weak so as a result the villains have to be weak too. It’s a negative spiral that hurts all of the parties involved.

Max is one of the younger main characters and the heroes are already fairly young. She had to go through a lot growing up and it’s molded her into a very tough figure. Lucas helps her come out of this shell and then she has a real trial by fire with how the demons go after her. I appreciate that Max talks a tough game so she does beat most of the other kids. She also had to take a commanding lead in the final season with most of the other kids being busy.

Steve is one of those messy characters who has one too many crushes throughout the show. His whole rivalry with Jonathan honestly just made them both look bad. It’s always going to be hard to become friend with your ex and usually I’d say that you shouldn’t even try. Of course it kind of works out here but I’d argue that all of the relationships would be cooked at that point. Steve is meant to be the tough guy of the group. He’s the only jock surrounded by a bunch of nerds.

So there is some fun potential there but the characters all just take everything way too personally. When he’s not fighting with Jonathan, he’s fighting with Dustin. I think this is supposed to be relatable and all but it would be nice if the characters could have had some more unity. The in fighting is fun as long as the characters don’t take it too far but they all take it super personally throughout.

Robin didn’t join the gang until later on but was a nice foil to Steve. For a while there was nobody to really mess with him so she fills that role in well. Of course she is also used to squeeze in another gay plot which was always the real intention for her character. I appreciate how she always makes every conversation more awkward than the last and that’s saying something with this group. She had more personality than the others and was a bit older so she could hold her own more. I’d at least give her those props.

Murray is one of those crazy conspiracy guys who tends to be fun. They maybe try a bit too hard to make him funny at times but he works better than 90% of the case. He doesn’t become a main character until we’re pretty deep into the show but still makes his scenes count. The heroes definitely would have been doomed without him and he does try to keep them focused which is a really difficult job for anyone.

I don’t really understand why we needed to add Dr. Kay as a character. We already had 4 different mad scientist characters in the series, what’s the point of another one? Her role isn’t even anything unique. She’s another character who wants El and loves talking down to all of her colleagues. Kay gets a ton of hype but she’s just an old lady who gives out a lot of orders. There really isn’t anything for the characters to fear about her. She barely even gets closure by the end so I’d say the character was absolutely filler all the way through.

Of course the biggest filler characters were the psychic runaways from one of the earlier seasons. We had a long subplot about all of them having powers like El. It seemed like this was supposed to go somewhere but the whole storyline dropped off. One of them shows up in the final season to cause some drama but doesn’t ultimately do a whole lot. I feel like the series was tempted to go in a more supernatural direction but then decided it would take away from the horror so they decided to keep El as the only main hero with powers.

I was glad to see those guys go because it just led to more flashbacks of the lab with the kids being experimented on. I definitely didn’t need to see all of that but then that also means the whole subplot was just a waste of time. We were always going to see El’s origin story so we didn’t need to see the parts around that. The show ultimately just gets gritty and violent for no real reason.

I’d also say as a closing note that a big problem with the series is how jaded it is. On the surface this may seem like a classic coming of age story for the kids but on deeper scrutiny I don’t think this is the case. Most of the side characters are bullies and antagonists. The school never makes a move to stop the excessive bullying. You have abusive characters like Max’s brother and then a whole gang that tries to murder Lucas. The whole government is almost explicitly evil in this one and Vecna’s whole point about humanity being easily manipulated is proven right many times over. As the series ends, none of the characters have really learned their lessons either. There just isn’t a lot of sincerity in any the supposed heroes here.

Overall, Stranger Things is definitely not a title that I would recommend. To me the whole thing fell flat. It had a lot of issues like the violence, terrible writing, poor characters, etc. Pretty much every staple of what you’d be worried about in a long running live action title like this one. The good parts were never able to overcome the bad ones. Of course it all does trickle down from the characters so if you like them, then you’d probably like the show. It’s a bit of an oversimplification but that’s really what it boils down to. If you like the characters then by extension you’ll likely appreciate their constant emotional scenes and victory speeches. If you don’t like them, then the scenes feel like empty padding to stretch out the episodes. Multiply those scenes by every episode and that will really determine how good the episodes were. I think you could make a decent video game out of this, but the franchise doesn’t otherwise hold much potential if you ask me.

Overall 2/10

Moonstruck Review

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Oh no it’s time for one of those messy romance films where everyone is cheating on each other. Obviously a romance is going to automatically be a bad one when there is cheating involved because that isn’t true love. Cheating immediately shows that there is a rebound and that neither character can be trusted. They have broken their word and honor by engaging in the act right from the start. Even if it’s meant to be a way to show how dramatic these adventures can be or to try for a jaded sense of realism, that’s not going to be enough to save this. It is absolutely possible to have a film that is good in spite of the characters being terrible but this was not that kind of film.

The movie starts off with Loretta finally getting proposed for marriage by her boyfriend. She has been waiting for this moment for a long time after her first marriage fell apart. This is really her chance in order to land a man before she has become too old. Johnny is excited as well but he has to go on a work trip for a while so he heads on out. Unfortunately this gives time for his brother Ronny to show up and this guy falls for Loretta right away. He is determined to get her and unfortunately her willpower may not be all that strong. Can she stay loyal to Johnny?

Well obviously she doesn’t and I wouldn’t even call that a spoiler because she doesn’t even last 5 minutes. Instead she tries to just say they should forget about it and her strategy is to hang out with Ronny but not let things get too serious. It’s a terrible plan right from the start to be honest and she was just being in denial. Once you’ve already crossed the line then there is no way back out. You just have to accept the fact that you’re a terrible person and retreat from all relationships. Johnny certainly didn’t deserve his and keeping it a secret would also be a terribly toxic way of handling things. Loretta was just a really terrible character all the way through. Ronny takes a ton of blame as well but I always put more on the person who is actually in a relationship.

Obviously Ronny broke the unspoken rules about not dating someone who is already dating a family member. He also shouldn’t be going after women who are taken and so there was no saving this character either. Just a poor character all the way through. The only correct option for him would have been to stay away from Loretta. Even if he truly fell head over heels in love with her, e was simply too late and just has to accept that.

Meanwhile Loretta’s father Cosmo is also a terrible character all the way as he decides to cheat on his wife the whole time. She handles this a little too calmly as well by just telling him to stop and things will be fine but he is taking all the blame here for being the one to start the cheating relationship. The guy wasn’t even sorry that he did it, just that he was caught.

Johnny is mostly innocent in all of this but then looks absolutely terrible in accepting the circumstances at the end of the film. A betrayal like this is not something that you just accept and cheer on. The whole ending is laughably bad and while I think that is part of the whole point of the ending, it still makes you shake your head. Johnny wimping out was ultimately for the best as he would have been in a terrible relationship but that’s only with knowledge from being outside the film. From in-universe it is just a bad look all around.

There really aren’t any good characters here. At least Loretta’s mother resisted the advances of one guy who tried to get with her but she was definitely playing with fire by eating with him in the first place. There is nothing wrong with having friends even once you’re married but you really need to be very smart about each interaction. You have to be able to read the other person and make sure that they aren’t going to try and make a move on you because at that point it would be too late to do anything about that. It’s easy to say you have too much willpower to do anything until it ends up happening. I wouldn’t trust any of the characters in this film at all.

In short there just weren’t any really strong elements to the film. Their conversations tended to be on the annoying side and are the kinds of dialogue that just ruin the reputation of romance itself. Characters settling because they are getting old, cheating just so that they can postpone death, etc. It’s basically a combination of all the worst tropes about romance and what some people think it is all about. I definitely tend to prefer the more idealistic version of romance with true love and each person never falling for a rebound. That’s how it is supposed to work after all and this film just wasn’t able to understand that. A relationship is about pure trust and pure love. If you’re settling or still checking out the market afterwards then it’s a bad romance definitionally.

Overall, Moonstruck is definitely one of those films that I would avoid. The romance is pretty terrible, we’re talking on the level of the Titanic here. Maybe even worse than that to be honest with how many pairings there were. There was just no saving any of these characters and the film is reasonably long. That time could have been used to make a good romance instead. I’m all for having a bunch of drama but it has to be the right kind. This one will definitely not go down as a solid title. At least the moon looked nice, it always stands out in the sky.

Overall 2/10

Somewhere in Time Review

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It’s time for a film involving time travel and that’s always an interesting concept. This one even went out of the box and came up with a brand new time travel strategy. Unfortunately the movie does have a pretty weak ending and on the whole isn’t the most exciting film. So I’d say that it’s okay and is entertaining enough to be around the middle point of what a film can be.

The movie starts off by introducing us to Richard who is a fairly successful playwright. He is approached by an old lady who cryptically says to come back to her. Richard has no idea what she meant and runs off to his hotel. He sees a photograph of a lady who looks so beautiful that he falls in love with her. Richard’s obsession grows very strong as surface level beauty is enough for him and he does a bunch of research on time travel. Apparently time travel is possible as long as you focus hard enough. So he goes to his room and focuses until he travels back time to when Elise was around his age. Can he get her to fall in love with him?

So yeah that’s an interesting way to time travel. You basically have to will it and then make sure you don’t think of the current day or the time travel spell will fade. It would be a pretty exciting thing in real life but also risky as the ending of the film shows. A single misstep would really have you down for the count. The sci-fi stuff was interesting but then we turn to the romance which is much weaker.

Naturally I am already skeptical of Richard being this much in love with Elise from a single portrait. To me that is just a shallow crush. A crush is when you fall for someone due to one overwhelming attribute, commonly looks. Then true love is when you have really gotten to know the person and still love them as you always have. Richard had already settled his mind before he even met her. If he can keep that energy up forever then it’s not a problem but it’s all so sudden.

As for Elise, it’s really the same issue. She is quick to fall for Richard when he shows up and the guy wasn’t exactly looking all that rational. From the start he is acting like destiny mandates that they be together and is just fortunate that she was big on supernatural stuff too. Otherwise that would have been really dicey from the start.

Her manager William is actually very defensible at first in trying to keep Richard away. Richard just seems crazy after all and this romance could detail Elise’s career in a moment. As the film goes on William becomes more and more unsteady though and even hires some muscle to beat Richard up. At that point there is really no way to defend him so he falls into the realm of being a full antagonist. I suppose based on the events in the present we can say that he was able to recover from this though.

The film can be a bit of a slow burn but I won’t knock that much as it helps the romance a little bit. In theory you need a lot of scenes of the main two together in order to buy the romance. I still didn’t by the end but the film made a decent case for itself. I did think that the scenes in the present were more interesting than the ones in the past though. Researching how to master time travel was fun as well as visiting the professor who founded the idea.

The film has good writing and decent pacing on the whole. The script is solid and so this is a film that is easy to watch. At the same time, there just isn’t much of a hook here. The time travel isn’t used enough to make the film particularly exciting and like I said the ending is weak. It was absolutely the wrong message to show to the audience and makes Richard look pretty bad. The time itself shouldn’t matter at this point so he should live to an old age before getting to the reunion. I do appreciate that neither character was looking for a rebound though.

Somewhere in Time is a film that doesn’t mind being more of a tragic story. I tend to much prefer happy slice of life adventures though. When it comes to romance the doomed ones can be fun but that’s when both characters carry on and make the best of their lives. Elise certainly did but the same can’t be said for Richard. Honestly it just means that Richard gave up too quickly. When time travel is in play, you always have more chances. He just needed to gather his strength and do it all over again. I dare say that’s what most characters would have done.

Richard also has a pretty weak moment near the end of the film where he is jumped by some guys and doesn’t get to fight back at all. His whole journey is at risk here so I would have liked to have seen some more fight out of him. You just can’t go down so easily like that and he honestly should have expected that something was up. The whole sequence just made him come across as really naive.

Overall, Somewhere in Time is an okay movie but doesn’t have enough replay value to get it into the green. This is a film that would have really been better with a solid ending to cap things off. That would have been enough to make the difference. Still, if you like time travel then you should check this film out. No other title has taken the same approach. Alternately if you are a strong believer in love at first sight then this is a movie that takes the idea seriously all the way.

Overall 5/10

Blue Box Review

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Shonen Jump has lost another big title with Blue Box coming to an end. At one point it was thought to be the next king of Jump to replace One Piece. Unfortunately One Piece still has many years left to go so that was not in the cards. Box still had a fairly long runtime though and was a fun enough series. I would say that it did start to lose a lot of steam in the second half but that’s just how these things go sometimes. The series was unable to capture the same high levels of energy of the will they/won’t they once the main two were together.

The series follows a boy named Taiki who is really into Badminton and a girl named Chinatsu who is a star Basketball player. They both attend the same high school although Chinatsu is one grade above Taiki’s. He has always had a big crush on her and they see each other a lot as the first two people in the gym every morning. What he didn’t expect was for Chinatsu to move in with him! Her parents will be away for a while and were friends with his parents so they got permission for her to stay so that she could focus on Basketball. Now Taiki has more opportunities to confess but also feels like this is a bad time to do so. It could make her feel uncomfortable…what should he do?

First off I would say that Taiki is absolutely correct here. He may want to confess and everything but to be honest it would be the wrong call. Her parents are counting on this being a relaxing environment for Chinatsu with no distractions. A confession is absolutely selfish here because it puts her in a bad spot if she says no. A confession can’t have any pressure behind it or else the whole thing just won’t feel right. This naturally does lead to a lot of drama though as Chinatsu also likes Taiki but faces the same struggles. They have a hard time getting on the same page and both have other suitors who appear to be interested.

That is much more of a factor for Taiki though. His childhood best friend, Hina, really likes him. She’s not even very subtle about it but Taiki completely sees her as a friend and is oblivious to every flirtatious moment. Unfortunately his best friend Kyo is a professional gaslighter who makes every situation much harder than it has to be. So there’s a lot going on but in a way that’s what makes the first half really intense. It was just really chaotic with a whole lot of players involved.

So lets go with the weaknesses of the series first. One is that the sport matches star to be more off screen as the series goes on. This was never a sports series first and foremost but we still got some really big battles early on like Taiki vs Haryu. By the end of the series we start skipping major portions of matches and even skip all of Nationals itself. You know, the thing that was Taiki’s goal from the start? That was definitely an annoying moment because it would have been so cool. You could easily have cut some chapters from the side characters to make room for that. Chinatsu’s final competitions at least got some screentime even if I would have liked to have seen more.

The other weakness by the end is that the supporting characters were never as interesting. It is pretty much obligatory that you try to pair up all of the side characters at the end but you don’t have a lot of reason to care about them. Not compared to the main two which is where all of the development had gone to anyway. Most of these characters are basically left with rebound options so it’s not like you could say the romances are particularly strong either. It works well enough you could say but it’s why the first half is much better.

As for the art, it’s not bad. It’s definitely not one of the stronger Shonen Jump titles in that area though. In particular there were two characters who looked way too similar and I would constantly mix them up. Yusa and his brother. Now granted, brothers should look alike but they really appeared to be identical at times. The art is still good enough though so I wouldn’t say that I had any serious issues there.

So lets get into the characters. First up we have Taiki and I was really clowning on him throughout the series. He just couldn’t stop catching Ls as most of the drama was his fault. Pushing Chinatsu away while in public because he got scared of what other people would think was something that happened more than once. To be clear, he was doing this because he thought that is what was best for Chinatsu. It still doesn’t make him look much better.

Then he doesn’t handle the Hina situation very well. He actually started out well by initially rejecting her but then Kyo got in his head and Taiki started to hesitate. Taiki initially knew that he only had eyes for Chinatsu and needed to stick with that. Instead Kyo gave him an analogy about coffee and a lot of other crazy stuff. Ultimately Taiki decides to still be close friends with Hina which allows her to try and make another play. That was probably a moment too far for her and he needed to break things off.

It’s extremely hard to be friends with someone who wants you. Especially when they already know that you like someone else. It comes off as really selfish no matter how you slice it. Taiki just lacks in confidence a whole lot and this carried over right to the end of the series. Even in the last chapters he is still acting like that. It’s partially because he is written as the everyman and there is this idea that guys are always going to be a little passive/nervous around the girl. Perhaps it is realistic to a degree but it doesn’t make him a very strong lead. I needed to see more fire out of him instead of learning the same lessons over and over again.

In comparison Chinatsu is the much better character. She basically has to initiate every interaction between them. She never loses sight of her goals or waves in the slightest no matter who approaches her. I also appreciate how defensive she gets when anyone makes fun of Taiki. She is very quick to fire back and that’s the kind of loyalty you like to see. Chinatsu’s a very well rounded character and continues to excel in Basketball/school even outside of the romance. Taiki may be her goal but he isn’t the only part of her world.

Even as someone who was more on team Hina in terms of character, Chinatsu is one of the best parts of the series. There can be no doubt on that. She even gets her own rival later on in the series which was pretty cool. No, not a rival in love but an actual Basketball rival so I really appreciated that. She’ll likely have to continue leading the relationship with Taiki but is more than willing to always put in the effort there.

As for Hina, well I may have liked her a lot but some of her actions are pretty indefensible. She continues to go after Taiki even once he has a girlfriend which is really not cool. I know that some will say it’s all fair game until marriage but that’s not a very healthy outlook. Do you really want a guy that you can steal away so easily? To be direct, you should give up if the person you are interested in is already taken. Nothing good can come from going down that avenue but there are certainly a lot of bad things that can arise.

Once you have moved on, then it’s possible you will find someone else but it will take time. The series presents at least two more options for Hina after Taiki and both feel like they would have just been emotional rebounds. For that reason I am glad that the series didn’t force anything at the end. The door is left open for this to succeed and it’s certainly implied that she will eventually make a choice but at least it wasn’t instant. Hina was taking her time and that’s important.

Her final character arc of realizing that she actually wasn’t over Taiki was actually a really good one. Aside from the misstep of telling him about it, it makes sense that she couldn’t just snap her fingers and be over him. A lot of times in the movies you will see a character just immediately move on when they are rejected but things don’t tend to move that fast. The feelings will take some time to dissipate.

Then we have Kyo who is a particularly weak supporting character. By the time he starts to get more screentime at the end, it is too little, too late. It felt like he was mainly around to just sabotage Taiki for a while there. I want to be clear that he never did this intentionally but has a bad habit of talking way too much and he always just has the wrong takes. The guy is a bit too quiet otherwise and then in his own romance he ends up being passive. Even in the moments that are supposed to make him likable, they never seemed to land. Ultimately I had to give him a thumbs down.

Taiki’s parents were far better as characters. It’s not like they have a big role but they were consistently solid the whole time. They mostly kept a hands off approach but Taiki’s dad would remind him to always do what’s right. Then the mom would always do her best to help out in the background by prepping for events, supporting Taiki, etc. Chinatsu’s parents are much the same way with her father very reasonably not being a fan of the setup once he found out that Taiki liked her. That’s just responsible parenting after all since that opens the door to a lot of tricky situations. He ultimately allows it but I wouldn’t have faulted him even if he had made Chinatsu move out.

Haryu works well as the first rival. In a way he is the older what if version of Taiki. He got to play at a high level and has a good relationship with his girlfriend. Ultimately he chooses not to pursue Badminton past high school though while Taiki wants to keep going. The parallels are fun and he even starts to get spooked about playing Taiki. He worries that losing to him will forever change their dynamic. That was a bit petty since they’re on the same squad and should still be playing each other a whole lot. Not playing because you’re scared will only hinder your growth in the long run.

His girlfriend Karen is a strong character as well. She was always quick on the uptake and wasn’t as oblivious as most of the other characters. She doesn’t get to appear a lot but makes sure to set strong ground rules for her relationship. With Haryu she explains that this can never be an excuse for either of them to fail. It’s a pretty good rule if you ask me although any real character should never be using something like that as an excuse either way.

Hyodo takes over as a new rival for the end of the series. He’s even more powerful than Haryu and is basically unbeatable. He has done that by making Badminton his life. He has pushed aside all other interests and has no interest in getting a girlfriend. You could say he’s the other extreme as a possible Taiki future. It may be possible to surpass him but is the cost really worth it? It just feels like that is not a good idea. The manga never makes Taiki tempted by this approach though which is a good thing.

Then we have Hyodo’s younger brother Yusa who is also super good at the sport. Initially he also believes that it requires a ton of sacrifice but then learns from Taiki that you can still live your complete life along with it. I’d say he just needed some more screentime. His romance with Hina is pretty weak and came too late to really make anything out of it. He would make for a solid character in a sequel story though. There’s nothing really wrong with him but it just feels like the guy came on too late.

Ayame is another character who was a bit of a late inclusion. Not as late as Chinatsu’s next door neighbor who just exists for potential drama but still pretty late. She basically goes through guys really fast which makes a few of the characters worry. What if she sinks her fangs into Taiki?? The story never goes there though and she’s actually a bit of a romantic as she tries to get Hina and Taiki together. Her own romance plot with Kyo is a bit forced though and doesn’t work so well. I appreciated what she added to the dynamic though.

Finally there is Yumeka who is a solid character. She may not have a ton of screentime but I did think that she made for a solid rival to Chinatsu. Her skills were definitely on point and she really managed to keep up. This also worked as a way to give Chinatsu an extra plot that wasn’t directly tied to Taiki. That was a really strong move all the way and also gave a reason for the show to include more Basketball scenes.

While the story beats are all fairly straightforward from the start, this is not a series that is being built around twists. The whole idea here is that Taiki and Chinatsu will get together and you’re just seeing how that happens. In a way you could say that is true for most romance series. It’s all about the adventure, not really about the ending. So you hope against all odds for the underdog to win but know that it will be futile. I just think sometimes the authors accidentally make the backup love interest more interesting than the main one. Hina was just more fun to have around even if you knew that she was doomed. Such is life and the appeal of the doomed romance.

The series still had a light tone throughout and just makes for an easy read. I’d say that it is a series which can really appeal to anyone. The only way you’d dislike this series is if you really just don’t like romance drama. Drama is basically inevitable for any long running romance series though because that’s how they extend the runtime. Blue Box stays pretty safe throughout though with no character making mistakes that I would deem to be irredeemable. Drama goes too far if a character actually cheats or something like that and fortunately we never even approach that point.


Overall, Blue Box is a good series that I can recommend. The romance is well written and the sports dynamic helps to add in a bit of extra flair as well. The ending isn’t the strongest and on a petty note it was kind of annoying that they couldn’t genuinely end by noticing that the gym was like a blue box. Adding a correction that it was actually orange was wholly unnecessary. I’d say the series will especially work well in a binge format so you should just start reading through the series right away. As long as you enjoy romance and/or sports then you will have a good time here.

Overall 6/10

Big Eyes

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This is one of those films that is based on true events so I’m going to be a bit nicer to the characters than I would be otherwise. I assume the general flow is accurate to real life even if things might be changed here or there. It just doesn’t make anyone look all that good by the end of it but makes for a good story. The artwork isn’t really my kind of style but it must be huge as I definitely see it around a lot in real life.

The film starts off by introducing us to Margaret who has just split up from her husband. This film takes place back in the day where this was a much rarer event. Margaret knew that this was necessary but is in a rough place now since it is hard to get a job. She also has to take care of her daughter Jane. For now Margaret is making ends meet by selling street paintings but it is just barely enough to get by. She ends up meeting a guy named Walter who also draws a lot. He claims that she has potential and even seems to have feelings for her. Margaret feels like this is all going a little fast but then her ex husband goes to court for custody of their daughter. The only easy way out of this is to quickly re-marry so she gets together with Walter and keeps Jane. Unfortunately she did not have time to properly get to know Walter and it turns out that he is incredibly money hungry. Will she really be in for a happy life now or is that time already gone?

I’d say the first problem here is how quickly she got together with Walter. Yes, the film gives us a plausible case through the whole custody scenario but that still doesn’t feel like it would be enough for her to enter this institution again. Divorcing once clearly took a whole lot out of Margaret so going back in just seems like bad business. She could have at least talked with her friend about it more. Margaret has one friend in the film who seems to have a good head on her shoulders the whole time. She is constantly letting Margaret know that this isn’t a good idea and pokes holes in all of the gaslighting that Walter does.

The really disappointing thing is that Margaret chooses Walter over her best friend. It was clear that Walter had his own agenda so she shouldn’t have done that. The friend really wasn’t treated very well here and so you don’t blame her for showing up less often as time went on. As a friend there is a hard limit to just how much you can help someone out. After a point, there is just no way to pull that off. Everyone has to solve their own problems at the end of the day. You can give them all of the tools needed to solve it, but if they don’t use those tools, well then you will have really done all that you could by then.

Walter isn’t exactly subtle either as he begins taking credit for Margaret’s paintings right away. He offers the weakest excuses possible and Margaret shouldn’t have stood for it from the beginning. Then once he sees that she lets him get away with this much, he continues to escalate over and over. Before long he doesn’t allow her to leave her room or have any friends. Now this may just be a runtime issue but it all happens so fast that it just makes her look terrible. Margaret even allows Walter to forbid her from talking to Jane and even introducing a bunch of lies. Margaret was far too passive the whole time.

It all may sound like victim blaming right here but it’s why this film is an important example of why you can’t be a doormat. There will always be someone waiting to step on you. Margaret needed to establish strong guardrails/boundaries from the start. That would have made this a very different film altogether. Rushing the marriage was also another bad thing and I say this as someone who does think that the dating cycle can be drawn out too long. You don’t need to date someone for 2 years to decide if they are marriage material but you can’t go to the other extreme and marry someone after a few months. Dating is the interview process to try and see past the other person’s mask where you find out if he/she is a good person or not.

As for Walter, well he is an effective villain. He’s not a likable guy at all but it is still grudgingly impressive how good he is at networking. The guy has a ton of failed scams by this point but is still able to leverage more victims for his future endeavors. It shows just how much you can do when you don’t have a sense of shame. He strolls right into art galleries and lies as much as it takes in order to claim his prize. He even walks into court and lies like a champ. The guy just doesn’t get embarrassed and there is something to be learned from that.

Someone using those traits for good would be a very effective piece without a doubt. I will say that the film should have had a larger portion of the court case though. I feel like that’s one of the most important aspects of this case after all and it’s treated more like an afterthought. It’s more of a comedic plot than an epic climax after all. It was still a lot of fun but should have really played out on screen. The main argument for Walter would be that Margaret would not have been able to sell her paintings without him. He could point to how timid she was and how she didn’t have much success before him.

I would still be on her side in the court case but at least you add some intrigue there. For the most part he was just floundering and doubling down the whole time. The guy is great at working a crowd as seen before so I would think that he would put up more of a fight there. Either way it leads to a happy ending which is important. Margaret really had a rough road throughout the whole film so she earned a bright moment.

Overall, Big Eyes is an interesting film. I may not have been a fan of the art style but clearly it does resonate with a lot of people. It can be a frustrating film to watch though because the whole time you just feel like Margaret is making things worse and worse for her. She just needed to stand up for herself at least a little but instead she surrenders on all points. At the very least, she needed to stay strong for her daughter. By the time she is actively lying to Jane, it feels like Margaret has completely lost the plot. You always have to be careful if you are being pulled away from family members or friends because that is always an incredibly large red flag. Your support network are the ones you can count on to help you see what is going on with a clear head.

The Social Network

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It’s time for a film about the creation of Facebook. This movie really got well known as everyone seemed to be having a good time with it. It’s easy to see why as it has a very fast paced writing style so this doesn’t feel like a stuffy bio film. That said, if the film was trying to make any of the characters likable then it definitely did fail. The characters feel realistic as you could picture all of this going down and the film doesn’t try and hide their personalities either You’ll be entertained throughout though.

The movie starts off with Mark Zuckerberg going on an insane rant to his friend as he shifts topics a lot and gets defensive about everything. Unfortunately he thought he was talking to his girlfriend but she reminds him that she already broke up with him. He decides to write a blog about how awful she is and then turns on all women so he breaks into various websites and leaks their contact photos to a site where you can rank girls against each other. The site becomes a big thing and he realizes that it may be time to launch Facebook. There are just two hurdles; Money and another group already having a similar idea. Mark will have to beat out both groups.

Now I’m going to assume that all of the events in the film are heavily dramatized but that in broad strokes this is fairly accurate. The film’s strongest point is the dialogue like I mentioned before. While Mark isn’t likable at all, I do like his smug way of talking and just how much he is able to cram into every sentence. That’s not an easy feat and it just makes for good banter. Even when he’s wrong, the guy just has to talk really fast so it can sound like he’s right. At first he seems to be overly emotional but tries to look out for his friends while by the end it is clear that he has become super corrupted and will turn on anybody. Power corrups after all and so this would be no exception.

Owning one of the largest companies on the planet before becoming a full adult is a lot of pressure to deal with after all. That also brings with it temptations and those can be hard to fight on your own. He had a best friend in Eduardo but we see how there was a lot of tension early on. Mark seemed to resent Eduardo’s success throughout the movie and so it was only a matter of time before he turned on the guy. The friction between them would only grow worse and worse as the movie went on.

To an extent the newcomer Sean helped to fan these flames but I think it would have happened regardless. They just had very different views on the company and those were never going to be squared away peacefully. The film ultimately still ends on a happy note for most of the characters as they each got a healthy slice of the pie. There was plenty of money to go around after all but that certainly doesn’t help to recover the lost trust. That is something that you can’t simply buy back. It has to be earned and I don’t think any of the characters would risk trying a second time.

Eduardo’s girlfriend is probably the only one of the girls to stay on as a supporting character for a while but I wouldn’t say that she looked very good here either. She was a bit too friendly with Sean which rubbed Eduardo the wrong way the whole time and then she seemed to go completely crazy like when she set a fire in Eduardo’s room. Now she is gone for just long enough where we don’t see what led her to this level but it was definitely not a good look either way.

I may have actually preferred the villain group to the main characters in this case. The two Winklevoss brothers for example were fun antagonists. At least in the film’s portrayal they seemed to be the victims here with how they were manipulated by Mark’s emails until he had Facebook up and running. They also lose in the big Olympics that they were training for which just made things even more tragic. While Eduardo was naive in signing a contract that would come back to bite him, the brothers didn’t really have a chance since they were caught by surprise. You can’t really predict everything.

The film has a habit of jumping back and forth with the court cases and that’s one tactic I wasn’t a big fan of. I would have much preferred to see the early days and then build up to the two court cases at once. Especially because the characters don’t even look any older so with the events being that close you may as well do everything chronologically. The film had a lot to cover which means there is a ton of jumping around as it is. Throwing in flashbacks and flashforwards is just a distraction at that point.

Then the film has the usual kinds of issues that go on with trying to make all of the characters “realistic” and everything. We’ve got a lot of fanservice, super weak romances/one night stands, etc. The characters all seem incredibly shallow and not the type of people you would want to hang out with. I was really glad that the ex girlfriend from the very first scene of the film didn’t walk back to Mark after all of that. A lot of people may have succumbed due to the overwhelming amount of money at play but she stuck to her principles.

Overall, This movie certainly gives you some good insight into the origins of Facebook but does tend to get distracted a little too much by the social drama. That’s what ends up dragging this film down into the red. I suppose that is always going to be easy to translate into movie-mode which is why you include those scenes but I’d have liked to focus on the court stuff more instead. Facebook has no end to the amount of lawsuits that are around and so focusing on those would be much more interesting to me. The other stuff really just tends to be there for shock value or to remind yourself that all of these rich people are totally corrupted. In either event if you are trying to find out about Facebook then this might be a fun way to do that. You just need to get past all of the drama stuff so in that way you may be better off reading the Wikipedia pages.

Father of the Bride Part II Review

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It’s time for Part II of this saga. Unfortunately, it falls into what I call the Airplane II trap. This film decides to just reuse all of the jokes and gags from the first film before calling it a day. You ever know someone who told a great joke once but then they got too much praise for it so after that they began to keep on using the same joke over and over and over again? That’s usually not a good idea because eventually the joke’s not going to work and that’s this film in a nutshell. In general it’ll probably be a bit better if you haven’t seen the first film but I would make the case that the premise is weaker in general.

The film starts off with George explaining that he finally has some free time as Annie has left the roost with Bryan so now he can do all the fun retiree stuff. Unfortunately, this doesn’t last long as his wife gets pregnant and will be having her baby around the same time as their daughter Annie. George must now deal with both of them essentially being out of commission but he’s rather old at this point. Can he look after them and basically go without sleep until the babies arrive? George may have to work with Franck on this.

So right away we have all of the recycled jokes. Annie and Bryan have another 2 minute fight about some nonsense that doesn’t make any sense. George is all upset again even though having a baby is pretty normal by this point in the relationship. Then Franck show up for a baby shower event where he spends all of George’s money again. What did George do to deserve all of this? George is absolutely more out of line in this film but still does step up to take care of his family when it counts. He even got a fun new hairdo and everything but doesn’t really get any support. That’s gotta be rough. He just wanted to prove that he wasn’t so old yet.

The whole expensive baby shower part also doesn’t make any sense. That’s really not a super popular thing compared to weddings. Everyone does a baby shower, but an expensive one with a 5 course meal and all the same trimmings as a Wedding? Cmon that’s just not a thing and doesn’t make any sense here. You’ll just be shaking your head the whole time and for good reason. Franck did not need to return and his scenes tend to be rather painful.

I can’t really fault Nina or Annie much this time. Ultimately they are pregnant for a good chunk of the adventure and that does mess with the mind a whole lot. They’re naturally going to be sleepy and having random cravings for most of the adventure. Maybe Nina could have been a little more considerate when George was unable to get a proper place to sleep because of the two guard dogs but that’s about it.

Mainly the film’s problem is that it just isn’t all that funny. I thought the gags were a step down and of course the reused ones won’t hit as hard this way either. It’s the kind of film that’s not really going to have an antagonist so in that case you need a different kind of hook. This time the film was unable to come up with one and that became the problem here. Just a little hook would have gone a long way here like maybe Annie wanted to have a special doll for her baby’s birth. So George has to go on a journey and find it or something like that.

A little goal would have gone a long way. Or perhaps having more arguments with the In Laws about the baby’s name. That doesn’t end up being a big part of the film as George doesn’t care a whole lot. For once Nina would have been on his side otherwise though and it could have made for some fun tension. Maybe both families keep trying to outdo the other one and it becomes a crazy competition? I could see a lot of potential there.

In this film Bryan and the In Laws don’t actually get to do much anyway. The cast is pretty small and we also get a whole subplot where George sell the house and things go crazy from there. The joke being that George loses even more money when he has to reverse the charge and you realize that he can never possibly win. At least that was a different angle though so I’ll give the film that. It made for an interesting, albeit somber plot. I wouldn’t have minded the characters moving to a new house in the end to really show that a new chapter was beginning.

George had a point that the house is rather big for just him and Nina. Of course now that they have a baby that will be a little different but I do think that the overall point stands. They could downsize a bit and still be really comfortable. That may have been a better final goal to really go with. The emotional beats of the film also ring a bit more hollow as George already had his final goodbyes to Annie’s kid self. He had moved on so the extra flashbacks here don’t really do anything. I suppose I can use this film as an example of an empty sequel. It’s not bad by any means but just feels a bit pointless.

Overall, Father of the Bride is the kind of film that didn’t really need a sequel but I can see why you would want to explore what happened after having a kid. So nothing wrong there but the film didn’t really think it through much beyond that. The double baby angle may help to up the drama but there aren’t a whole lot of funny jokes to associate with it. This is a movie that you will watch and be fairly ambivalent about by the end. It happened and it’s not a bad film but nothing really stood out. There are many alternative plots you could think of like the kid being a few years older so George and Nina have to babysit him which means missing out on a fun retiree vacation or something. Well, if you missed the old characters then you should check this one out.

Overall 5/10

Father of the Bride (1991) Review

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It’s time for a remake of a very classic movie. The premise for Father of the Bride is pretty solid right away. Anyone can empathize with a father who wants to make sure that his daughter doesn’t end up marrying the wrong guy. Along the way we have a lot of crazy shenanigans going on but at its core this is an uplifting movie. I do think that the end of the movie becomes a little more mean spirited than it should have been though.

The film starts off by spoiling the ending of the movie which is always a horrible way to kick things off. George talks about how he was initially against his daughter’s wedding and it was a real tough event but he hopes to laugh about it in the future. It’s a rather long monologue that tries a bit too hard to be funny and you’re just really waiting to get to the start of the actual adventure. So from here we get a flashback where George’s daughter Nina shows up and explains that she is engaged. Moreover, she plans to marry this guy named Bryan right away. George’s wife Nina is super excited so it looks like George is the only one left to add some rational thinking to this situation. Can he do this without alienating his whole family?

Right away there is a big problem with this which is that I don’t understand why Nina was immediately on board with this. I get the whole trusting your kids judgment thing but you do need to put that into a bit of context. Annie and Bryan have not known each other for very long so you just have to be practical about this. The film could have still had Nina be supportive without being blind about everything. I’m betting they just wanted a strong contrast to George being 1 billion percent against the wedding but it does end up hurting Nina as a result.

She gets her big victory against George in the end while she forces him to make a long apology after he is arrested. After that George is still punished further by running into a string of bad luck and having to miss every important event. He also loses so much money as a result of this wedding and that’s where you just have to be rooting for him the whole time. The wedding planner is clearly a hack and is overpricing them on everything. George is the only one trying to stop him and it’s portrayed as a bad thing.

George made his share of mistakes to be sure like snooping through the in law’s checkbook, general snooping, and being a little overly mean to Bryan. The guy isn’t without fault but half the time he is saying some reasonable stuff and the film is making him out to be the bad guy. Bryan’s job definitely did sound fake and I would have assumed he was lying too. Bryan tries to say all of the right things but I can also see how it would all sound fake. Bryan didn’t make the best first impression.

At the end of the day it’s George’s job to look after Annie and I’d say that he did a good job. I also don’t see why he should have to waste so much money on such a fancy wedding. It doesn’t make sense and anyone can recognize that he was being used here. They were wrecking his house and making a true spectacle of things. Nobody was thinking about George at all during this and that’s what felt bad. He was cut out of the celebration in the end and so the film felt rather sad there.

Now while I have all this to say about how the film treats George unfairly, the film does succeed in being an entertaining experience. The dialogue tends to be really strong and I enjoyed the humor. George’s various internal monologues are handled really well. I thought they were definitely funny the whole time and the film’s absurdist style makes for a lot of funny moments throughout the wedding. The pacing is good as well and the writing is solid.

Also while some characters can annoy me, they are ultimately all still likable except for the wedding planner. Annie may seem a little overly emotional and defensive throughout the film but deep down she also knows that the whole situation is crazy and a little absurd so that makes sense. The scene where she and Bryan decide to break up was super rushed and completely unnecessary though. That made both of them look bad but mostly Annie for being the one to rush out. I get the feeling Bryan was no being aggressive or doubling down at all.

As for Bryan, well he seems nice enough. The guy is moving rather quickly which is usually a red flag but if you think that you’ve found the right person then it makes sense not to hesitate. No reason to go slowly at all from his perspective. So while it looks harsh to everyone else, it doesn’t make him a bad guy. Likewise I think Nina’s being naive here but I get that she wants to support Annie. So even the worst characters have motivations and actions that make sense from their point of view.

Overall, Father of the Bride is a pretty good film. It can be a little frustrating at times because there are several scenes and moments that could have been a whole lot better with just a little tweaking. At the very least you have to remove the opening scene because spoiling the entire movie is never a good idea. How can you feel any drama for when the wedding gets called off when you already know that it’s going to happen? This is really filmmaking 101. I would also have at least given George a small win at the end to show how he finally learned to let go and is rewarded by seeing the wedding up close. The writers had other ideas this time but either way I would recommend checking this one out. I’d give the older adaption the slight edge but this one is impressively close.

Overall 7/10

Baby Boom Review

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It’s time for one of those films that tries to explain why you don’t want to be team corporate. Unfortunately, it does not make a strong argument and the film doesn’t live up to its full potential. The ending comes across as more tragic than wholesome and you will have a hard time rooting for the characters by the end. That’s just how it goes sometimes I suppose but you do feel like the movie could have really gone for a bolder ending that would have landed a better message for the film.

The film follows JC who has had a very solid career so far. She works for one of the biggest companies in the market and is getting close to being promoted as a partner within the firm. Her personal life is going well too and so JC feels like she has conquered life. Unfortunately a distant relative dies and now JC is inheriting a baby girl. Her boyfriend says that JC should give the baby away to an orphanage but she can’t bring herself to do this. Unfortunately this baby is quickly destroying her career and everything JC has spent her life building is being knocked to the ground. Her boyfriend runs off as well and so JC realizes that she may have to restart her life in a small town. Fortunately there’s a rebound guy here but can JC really be happy away from the rat race?

Unfortunately I am going to have to start this review by defending corporate here. Her boss actually seemed like a decent guy but of course he had to cut her off from the big projects. JC completely stopped being reliable after the baby entered the picture. JC would end up being late to meetings, forgetting deadlines, etc. At first the incidents weren’t major but they kept getting worse and worse so the boss had to give JC’s junior the position instead. Now it’s clear that this junior had been waiting for the day to get all the jobs over JC but at least he wasn’t cheating or anything.

He evidently still did the work and did it correctly. So JC just needed a better balance here. It makes sense that it would be tough to deal with a kid when she has absolutely no experience but that wasn’t the company’s fault. I won’t fault JC for wanting to take care of the kid so in this case there wasn’t really a villain. Things just went the way that they were bound to in a situation like this.

The small town plot tends to fall a bit flat though and in general the second half of the film is a bit weak. So JC heads into this town but unfortunately the house that she bought was a complete dump. Nothing works and so she has to spend an enormous amount of money to fix it. Then the local vet falls for her and they hook up rather quickly. I guess the relationship with the old boyfriend wasn’t all that strong eh? JC just goes a bit too quickly here and same for the vet.

He basically says that nobody else in the town is within his age range which is probably meant to make JC feel better but it sounds to me like he’s just desperate. JC is somehow able to make her own business in this town to start getting money again and that was good. It showed that she was still a creative genius who could continue to succeed in any environment.

Now where the next issue of the film comes in is when corporate calls her over and makes an incredible offer. JC basically turns it down to prove that she doesn’t need anyone’s help and this feels like a really bad decision. Striking out on her own like this just doesn’t make any sense. In the film it is portrayed like she made the right move and that would have only worked if the offer was more narrow. The problem here is that the company went above and beyond in making an incredible offer so it just makes her look bad for rejecting it.

JC just makes it a bit hard to root for her. She’s too quick to act like a victim in all of this when she gave corporate no choice but to sack her. The romance is really weak in general but only makes her look worse when she protests a whole lot only to quickly come over to Jeff’s side. (The vet) If that’s how it was always going to be, then maybe she shouldn’t have been so antagonistic the whole time.

Then while she may have made the right move in looking after the kid, the kid was not very likable here. She was constantly getting JC into trouble like with all of the crying and throwing the toys around. JC gets more of the blame for not being able to control a toddler but there is enough blame to go around here. It was just one of those very unfortunate things. The baby may not be the main character as that would be even worse but she gets enough screentime to be annoying. The film was at its best during all of the work scenes.

Ironically I would also just say that the movie makes small towns look bad. Sure, it worked out to get together with the vet but before that we see how the whole town is super unhelpful. Nobody is too bothered by the fact that JC bought a scam house where nothing works. They all just leave her alone to her own devices and barely even offer any sympathy. I would have ditched that town so fast because it just seems like an absolute nightmare. The whole point of a small town is the strong community and I didn’t see any of that here.

Overall, Baby Boom is not really my kind of film. It is going for the classic Hallmark feel to an extent but with a bit less of an upbeat attitude. It is going for more of the “realism” angle which can work sometimes but not in this case. I also have to admit that the baby brings things down at times too. She’s just too messy and causes too many problems for JC. If the baby had just been a bit older then maybe that could have been different but as it stands she just ends up being an obstacle the whole time. Check this one out if you want to convince yourself that working for corporate is a super terrible thing. Otherwise you can do better with any of the Hallmark Christmas movies.

Overall 4/10

Annie Hall Review

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Woody Allen films are consistently about a whole lot of rambling and characters talking in a way that just doesn’t make sense. They fill the air but none of the lines have any real substance behind them. They’re just creating more and more problems where no character ends up being likable by the end. There’s not a whole lot of plot going on here either so the story is forced to throw in a bunch of flashbacks and third wall breaks. You’re definitely in for an adventure of some kind here.

The movie starts with Alvy reflecting on when he used to have a strong relationship with Annie before things fell apart. He has already been married twice but in both of these relationships things did not go well. Annie was someone who actually understood him and they had some fun but it seemed to be very surface level. After some time had passed, they would grow further and further apart. Wait…so we already know the ending? Yes, this is one of those films that spoils the ending immediately so the movie is about the events that take you there. I never liked that cinematic plot device but what are you going to do right?

From the start you can see why it would be hard to stay with Alvy though. He is constantly depressed and complains about everything. He tends to be a complete doomer and you can barely even tell when he is having fun because he is still finding time to complain. That’s not the kind of attitude that is really going to get him far. Alvy’s a comedian but one who lacks in confidence so he gets stage fright and panics about every little thing.

For some movies there may be a bit of a mystery on why the big romance falls apart but it’s obvious from the start here. They are just way too different. Annie is more sociable and wants to hang out while Alvy’s idea of a good time is staying cooped up indoors. While some modern couples think it makes their relationship stronger to be able to still flirt around with other people to make the partner jealous, it’s just a terrible strategy in reality. They were both friends with people who were definitely the type to mess around and that increases the chances of it happening to them as well. You become the kinds of people that you hang around after all.

Towards the end they can’t even be intimate without Annie having to get high the whole time. They just have to casually use drugs and there doesn’t seem to be anything romantic about the relationship. They satisfy their physical desires and that’s it. You’re never going to have a meaningful relationship that way. None of the side romances are any better in this film.

As for Annie, well I can’t really give her any props either. The way she and Woody meet just makes her look a bit desperate. She clearly has ambition and drive in her life so staying with someone like Woody who has already given up on his future is not a smart play. Annie also tends to be a little too scattered like how she starts seeing a psychiatrist because Woody recommended one and then takes all of the advice in without thinking about it. She starts attending school classes because Woody suggested them and that leads to meeting with the teacher and starting more drama. She kept on starting new tasks because Woody would recommend them without really thinking about it.

Needless to say, it’s hard to picture either character being a reliable friend here. They would both just be annoying you to bits the whole time. You could also rest assured that they would be talking about you behind your back right away. That’s just how they operate and again that’s not the healthiest kind of personality to be associated with. I’m sure there are people like this but these are the kinds of social circles that you want to avoid. Everyone is two faced and fake with no real sincerity anywhere.

Now that isn’t to say that the film is devoid of humor. I actually think that Woody’s fast way of talking has some appeal to it. It certainly tends to miss a lot more than it hits but there will be some fun moments in the dialogue. A few jokes that will hit or a wisecrack that feels good. I tend to like fast, snappy kind of dialogue for humor and that is what this film is going for. With a stronger writer then this could have been a good recipe for success. To be really funny you should be hitting on around half of your jokes though, not 10%.

Also the film really needed more of a plot. To me this feels like an Abbott and Costello setup. Woody Allen films I mean. They all have him being really nervous and panicking the whole time but so far without much of a plot to back it up. Abbot and Costello would be about two guys joking around with some light plot in the background but it works because they are really funny. Additionally they would also tie the plot into something throughout the movie even if it was slight. I’ve got a mystery review coming up which addresses this to an extent at least.

So if you had some cool hook like the main two were stuck on a boat or travelling to space then you would have something there. You could keep the same tone but at least there is a real story to sink your teeth into. It’s not like this would have totally saved the film or anything like that but it would absolutely be a whole lot more watchable. As it stands, the film just doesn’t have any reason to make you watch it and you are desperately waiting for the characters to get more likable but it never happens.

Overall, Annie Hall is not a film that I would recommend. It’s a bit of a dreary watch with no real end point in mind. There can be a kind of humor in the way the dialogue goes but for every laugh you will have a number of groan worthy moments. This kind of film desperately needs direction and an end point. Without that or a good romance, there is no reason to get really invested in the film. I would definitely advise staying away from this one, it’s just too mindless the whole time with a lot writing standard. I’m still waiting for Woody to deliver on making a really good film.

Overall 2/10