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kjreiter
Reviews
Mean Girls (2024)
It was mean of these girls to make this musical.
10 minutes in and I wanted Alexa to turn this mess off. This is another pointless and unnecessary remake. But this time is is a musical with boring forgettable songs. To make matters worse, they unleashed the DEI police and made sure all cultures and races are fully represented. Hey! Every race and sex should get equal credit for trashing up this movie/musical. Advice, pull out your 20 year old copy of the original and enjoy a movie that actually was entertaining with great characters, actors and dialogue. This new one is inferior in every possible way. I predict this will be in the bargain bin at Walmart by the 4th of July.
Encanto (2021)
Forgettable.
The colors and animation are beautiful. But other than that you get a middle of the road story and forgettable songs. Many of which are sung so fast you can't understand what they're saying. Mirabel is a likable lead character in a movie with long boring stretches with songs that are overly long and too frequent. This movie is getting a lot of attention most likely because most recent Disney movies have not been very good. Overall, this is a slightly entertaining movie with forgettable songs and forgettable characters. It's not a classic and time will prove that this one does not have the staying power of their much better older movies.
Pinocchio (2022)
Might just be the worst Disney remake yet.
This Iger creative team (if they can be called that) is the absolute worst in decades. Mulan was boring, Dumbo was disturbing and boring too. Lady and the Tramp was stripped of its humor and mischievousness. The Little Mermaid changed for the sake of social change. The list goes on with only Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and the Jungle Book being decent remakes. Then this Pinocchio atrocity is developed and for the sake of people's pocketbooks, went right to Disney+. This movie is terrible and would deservedly flop in the theaters. Every original character from Pinocchio to Monstro are much worse than their cartoon originals. The new one's are completely unnecessary and just muck up the story. The question is how can Walt Disney serve up an amazing characters, a story, songs, and they mess it all up. It's like he gave them a map on a silver platter and they left on the trip without it. It's mind boggling how this mess was allowed to be made. Now they set their sights on Snow White. What a shame.
Wonka (2023)
Yawn... Boring and forgettable.
This is another one of those movies (turned out to be a musical) that I really wanted to like. Unfortunately it is a one and done for me. The songs are forgettable, and the story is boring. What a shame. The 8,9, and 10 reviews are way off, as usual. I wonder what they would give to an actually great movie? Read the 1,2,3, and 4 reviews as they cover it all without me going through it again. The good: the setting is interesting, the acting is good, and the CGI is ok. If Hollywood keeps putting out stinkers like this, nobody is ever going to return to the theaters like they did 5 years ago. For the sake of the theatre industry, please do better than this. Boring movie, I mean musical. Stream it if you must.
Barbie (2023)
Who is this movie for?
When we saw the trailer for this movie I knew that my wife was going to want to see it. I really wanted this to be a fun movie and figured it would poke fun at itself a bit. Ryan Gossling and Morton Robbie did a great job as actors. But they were not given a cohesive script and story line. This movie was all over the place. It was not fun and it never is when you are watching overlong dialog, songs, and dance routines. I'm not sure I can even explain the main storyline of this movie. Is that Barbie wants to be real? Does she want to help the girl, now woman that used to play with her fix the relationship with her daughter. Was it about Ken not wanting to exist as an accessory? Overall, this was not fun, funny and ended up being tedious and actually boring. This is not a movie for little girls and it is not a movie for adults either. This is a really big missed opportunity.
Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)
The superhero movie 2020 deserved.
There is not more I can add. The title of the review should suffice. Good riddance to 2020 and after about 20 to 30 minutes you'll be saying good riddance to Wonder Woman 1984 too.
Greenland (2020)
Dumb kid!
I love these catastrophe movies where families get separated across many many miles yet somehow reunite. Power outages, no cell phones yet they always manage to find each other. This movie is a nice distraction but gosh the kid is written as a complete moron. Diabetic and knows how important his meds are but forgets them in the car. While his mom is being dragged out of a car, he just sits there and cries instead of getting out the other door. And while the world blows apart, he wants his pancakes. His parents should have left him with grandpa! 6 stars for being as suspenseful and watchable as 2012 with a fraction of the budget with more likable adult stars.
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018)
Got worse with each season
As the title states, this series started out good and got worse as it went on. The last season was a mess. Sabrina's character was interesting, strong and reserved, but by the time we get to the end, she's a pompous, self righteous, annoying know it all who does what she wants without regard to anyone. Her mortal friends also go through the same character progression. They start out decent and end up being just annoying. Harvey's character is so whimsy, it makes me wonder why any girl would find him attractive. He comes across as a big wuss, especially in the first season. The set, costumes, and premise were great. The story had so much potential and went completely off the rails with the contest to see who rules Hell. The whole gypsy story line was silly too. I'm also getting tired of the "in your face" politically correct, diversity that seems to be mandated for a lot of Netflix offerings. Now I'm not against alternative and diverse relationships, but when it's piled on to the degree it is in this series, it becomes a bit distracting and just too much. The other thing that gets annoying is that the scenes are all dark. It looks like it's evening or about to rain in every outdoor scene. Do they not have sunshine or normal lights in that town? It's like they put sunglasses over the camera lens. Too dark, too dreary all the time. It made it hard to watch unless the lights are all off.
The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020)
Should be the Doldrums at Bly Manor
I wanted to like it. I really did. I was really looking forward to this. What a let down. This series started out slow, stayed slow and toward the end jumped around and still felt slow. The story was convoluted and hard to follow, even with a narrator popping in to explain the events. I wonder if they added the narrator as an after thought realizing that when a viewer is on the verge of falling asleep every 15 minutes, they would benefit from the extra narration. The dialogue seemed to drone on and on at times and added nothing to move the story forward. The child actors were decent, not obnoxious as so often is the case, so that was a small plus. Another thing I'm seeing with a lot of Netflix series is the obvious attempt at being overly political correct and diverse. Lost in Space, Sabrina, and this one are fine examples of just overdoing it. In summary this is not a scary, chilling, spooky, thought provoking, well written, series. In other words, it's no Haunting of Hill House. Not even close.
Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
Great Fun and Great Damage Control
To me, Star Wars was always about fun, science fiction, and storytelling. It did not take itself too seriously with the story and logic, but it had great character development, cool settings, and each movie brought us things we never saw before. The was true especially for the original 3. In a New Hope, we saw a light saber for the first time and different looking robots, in Empire we saw Imperial Walkers and floating cloud cities, in Return of the Jedi, we saw force lightning, a party sand barge, and speeders zipping through the moon forest of Endor. The new and fun things is what Star Wars is and was. The prequels brought even more new things to us, but fell a bit flat with strained dialogue and the goofy Jar Jar Binks. But they also introduced us to great new characters like Palpatine, Count Dooku, and Qui Gon Jinn. They also expanded our appreciation for some original characters like Obi Wan and Yoda. And then the last 5 movies came out with Disney as the new owner. Even though there were glaring similarities between and A New Hope and Force Awakens, it was still a great movie, with interesting and exciting new characters. The Force Awakens got me excited about Star Wars again and made me want movies that expanded on Darth Vader and some other favorites. Rogue One was a great story and showed us that Star Wars is a huge galaxy and not just about 6 or 7 main characters. Then The Last Jedi came out and wrecked it all. I wrote a review on that mess of a movie so I'll save the space and simply state the fact that most everyone was disappointed by what Rian Johnson did. They were so disappointed that I think it turned the Han Solo movie into a failure compared to other Star Wars movies. I even think that Galaxy's Edge attendance suffered from the blowback of the Last Jedi. JJ Abrams was brought in to salvage this third trilogy and had a huge hole to crawl out of. Disney and the producers may publicly deny that this was NOT the case, but they all know that the Last Jedi did some major damage to the brand. The fans hated the Last Jedi.
I waited to hear what others thought of The Rise of Skywalker before going. I was in fact always going to go, but I was not going to give them the satisfaction of participating in a record opening. I was going to wait. I ended up seeing the movie right after Christmas and I have to say that Abrams did a good job. This movie is fun, fast paced, was not burdened with too much cheesy dialogue, and paid respect to our beloved original stars. It made me want more and made me wish I could have seen some other favorites in ghost form, such as Aniken, Qui Gonn, Yoda, and Obi Wan. I can also say that this movie nearly eliminates the need to watch The Last Jedi (thank goodness). I'd like to see more adventures with Rey Skywalker and hope that they give us a movie focused on Darth Vader, Palpatine, Yoda and Obi Wan in the years shortly after the Emperor took control of the galaxy with Vader. Just keep Rian Johnson and Tim Burton also, away from directing and writing any Star Wars or other Disney movies for that matter. These two directors seem to mess up movies that have great potential and fan interest. I Think Abrams did the best he could do. I suggest watching The Force Awakens, and go directly to The rise of Skywalker. Both really fun movies.
Dumbo (2019)
Another world I'm glad not to live in
I was excited to hear that Disney was doing a live action version of the beloved classic, Dumbo. But my expectations dropped when I heard Tim Burton was directing. Don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed many of his movies and I find his quirky settings to be artful and unique. He makes visually interesting sets unlike any other. But he goes too far. Especially for Disney films. It seems lately that he is more interested in creating an eerie, whimsical, haunting setting, than making a great story. The setting and color of this film is dreary, spooky, and sad. Typical Tim Burton. He did the same to Wonderland, Wonka's Chocolate Factory, Gotham City, Sleepy Hollow, and more. The places he creates are just strange and disturbing. For some stories it's entirely appropriate, but not for a Disney movie. That's why this movie and the Alice in Wonderland movies fail before they even begin. The mood is wrong. I'm glad i don't live in a Tim Burton world. Now that I beat the daylight out of the weird setting and drab color of the film, the story and characters were not good either. The whole movie feels mean and sad. It's one mean act or horrible scene after another. This movie lacks any joy whatsoever. When it was done, it made me hate all circuses and maybe that was actually Burton's goal. He's a sly genius if that was the plan, but I doubt it. Disney, please stop hiring Tim Burton or at least rein him in. His vision and and artistic direction is not as good as he thinks it is. Not everything needs to be weird. It's about the story. Song and scenery need to support and add to the story, not dominate it.
Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017)
It gets worse with time.
I watched this movie last night again after watching all of the others in preparation for the new one coming out at Christmas. Some say that time heals, but not in the case of this pile of a movie, it actually got even harder to watch. I have to hand it to Rian Johnson, but he managed to do the impossible. Star Wars has a huge volume of novels, storylines, history, and legends to draw off of. It has a HUGE fan base ranging from young kids who loved the prequels and the well written Clone Wars series to 50+ year olds who grew up amazed with the original 3 movies. The series itself is one of the highest grossing movie series in the world. Rian Johnson had the momentum of a highly regarded, and super successful blockbuster, The Force Awakens to lead the way. And he had over a quarter of a billion dollars to spend along with the vast talents and technology of LucasFilm and Disney. Yet he managed to make an unbearable, boring, silly, slap-in-the-face mess. It starts bad, gets a bit worse, then even more worse, until it ends. If you read a few reviews, you can get up to speed on all of the really stupid, frustrating, parts of the movie. Trying to come up with my own worse part is near impossible because there are so many awful moments. From the opening prank phone call bit, to Luke milking the cow creature, the running out of fuel space chase, Finn and Rose falling madly in love in a few hours, to the end when the fleet is destroyed, and the half dozen that survived are happy and filled with hope as they zoom away in the Millennium Falcon from the corpses of thousands of friends that were just killed. It's really hard to choose a worst moment. Everyone dies except Rey, Poe, Leia, Finn, Rose, Chewbacca, and of course, the 3 droids. High fives everyone, at least our stars survived. If there is anyway they can rebrand this terrible movies as a Bobby Ewing type dream sequence (google Dallas dream season young people), they should. Put number 9 on hold and completely re-do number 8 without Rian Johnson and after firing Kathleen Kennedy. What a shame. I will wait for some reviews from people I trust to see how well Abrams cleans up the mess Johnson made and if he somehow salvages the series before I buy a ticket. Rian Johnson managed to really mess up a great opportunity. Gosh, how do you do that with all the money and resources he had?
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
Great Action, Terrible Character Managment
This fourth Harry Potter movie did a decent job of condensing such a large book. As mentioned in many of the previous reviews, several plot lines and characters were left out. Most notably, no house elves, Dursleys, Veela, Rita Skeeter the Beetle, Hagrid's blast ended skrewts, and the Barty Crouch story. The movie crushes the first 150 pages of the book into about 10 minutes and after a very short International Quidditch match finds itself at Hogwarts in which students from other wizarding schools are also arriving for an extended stay and a chance to compete in the Tri-Wizarding Cup.
This movie focused mainly on the Tournament and its challenges. I thought these parts were all handled very well. They were exciting and kept the viewers attention. I also enjoyed the Yule Ball, and Professor Mad Eye Moody's lesson on the unforgivable curses. A special treat was Harry's bathtub scene with ghost, Moaning Myrtle. I didn't care for Moaning Myrtle's portrayal in the 2nd movie but this one makes me hope we see her again.
My biggest gripe with this movie is how the writers and director messed up some of the most important characters. To start, there was not nearly enough Snape. He is one of the most engaging characters to watch. The parts we did see of him did not convey that he is one of Harry's biggest antagonist. No late night encounters in the hallways. No potions class. And no discussions between Karkroff and Snape. I think we saw him for about 5 minutes at best.
Fleur's character was also handled poorly. In the book she is described as a beautiful girl who is part Veela. Her hair is long, blond and pretty. She speaks with a French accent that adds to her sexiness. In the movie, we hear very little from her as she has few lines. For the entire movie, her hair is tide up in an unbecoming ponytail. I'm at a complete loss as to why they treated her character the way they did and can only conclude that they either did not read the book or did not want to show up Hermoine. Moaning Myrtal was more engaging than this portrayal of Fleur.
Of all of the character flaws, my biggest gripe is Gamdon's portrayal of Albus Dumbledore. I understand he may have a different acting style than the late Richard Harris but he is wrecking the character. Dumbledore is thoughtful, powerful, wise, and in total control of Hogwarts. He is the most powerful wizard of his time and is the only one Voldemort ever feared. This Dumbledore is no more ready to take on Voldemort or the Ministry of Magic than he is two students cheating on an exam. The Dumbledore I saw was confused and frightened. It's time for the screen writers and directors to pay attention to the books and the first two movies to obtain a better example of who Dumbledore is and how he behaves.
This movie was overall, enjoyable to watch, however, I considered the book to be one of the most important. It would have been far better to have made this large, complex and enjoyable book into 2 two hour movies as opposed to 1 three hour movie. The movies treatment of the tournament and Voldemort's return was good, however, it felt like it was a filler for something better and more important to happen in the future. So much was left out that it makes me wonder how they will deal will things in the 5th movie. Good Saturday afternoon viewing.