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ibshafer
Reviews
XO, Kitty (2023)
Pick a lane. Pick two. Just pick.
The actors & their individual stories are appealing, but I found it hard to root for anyone. Kitty arranges this whole thing-and her parents let her go halfway around the world with zero oversight-only to find out her bf has gf, then discover its fake, then FINALLY get to be together, THEN realize she has feelings for HIS fake gf, THEN find out that her antagonist roommate is in love with her, then... I have nothing against same-sex relationships, but we spend the entire series waiting for the main couple and the secondary couple (Yuri/Juliana) to get together, and then, what? We're supposed to switch lanes? I don't mind twists, but we spend the entire series with Yuri and Juliana trying to find their way to each other. Throwing Kitty having feelings for Yuri into the mix - like girls can't appreciate each other without falling in love with each other? - just muddies the waters. If they wanted to complicate the main pairing - Dae and Kitty - why wasn't Min Ho suddenly realizing he had feelings for Kitty enough of a twist? It just made it harder to know what or who to root for. Why couldn't Kitty and Dae just have been happy?
Abbott Elementary (2021)
Ava need to grow or get fired
I hear that people love Ava, but she is such an annoying character, improbable for the situation. How is she still in this job? She needs to show some growth, that she has gained some understanding of where she is and what she's supposed to be doing, or this show becomes one-note and boring. Ugh, I cannot stand her! How do we have a team of skilled teachers...and a narcissistic wannabe influencer using school resources for her own business, yelling at teachers, staff, and kids. She is just awful. Why does she even want this job anyway? I love this show, but the best episode for me is the one with the least Ava. And this week? All Ava. :(
Love in the Villa (2022)
Painful and annoying, despite the gorgeous locale
I didn't have high expectations for this, but thought it would be worth it to get to spend a couple hours "in" Verona enjoying the local flavor and history, but the awful, cliché ridden writing, the unlikable characters and their unreasonable behavior - I just couldn't do it. I can put up with a lot if I just need a mental break, but this one was just painful and annoying. I've liked these actor in other things and they're not responsible for the script, but even they weren't enough to keep me watching. (And I was thrilled to see Tom Hopper without his Umbrella Academy ape suit.) They had the chance (and clearly the budget) to tell an interesting, involving story - but fell back on clichés and banal characters. Shame on them. Instead of a "Call Me By Your Name" vacation in Italy, we got...this. Just a waste of time.
The River King (2005)
Recreates the book well - too bad that's not a good thing.
I found the book this movie is based on frustrating and annoying and the characters' actions incomprehensible. The switching POVs are distracting and ineptly done. (Dear Alice Hoffman: You are not John Irving. Third Person Ominiscient is hard to do and rarely effective.)
I watched the movie hoping for more fully fleshed out motivations, but instead found the director had fairly closely replicated the novel. We lose... Fine actors give wooden and ponderous performances (Jennifer Ehle is one of my favorite actress and you wasted her...) and the story is as muddy as the creek which figures so prominently in the story. And the characters' actions are *still* incomprehensible, as though the director had been so busy in the editing room making moody little visual sequences, he'd had no time left to actually direct the performers.
I employed the same coping method for the movie that I used for the book; halfway through I started to skim and with the movie, when I couldn't take all the painful staring and plodding performances, I fit the FF button...
It gets two stars because I loved Jennifer Ehle in "Pride and Prejudice" and because the kid's long black coat is cool...