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Reviews
Schmigadoon! (2021)
A Fun Nod to Musical Theatre
The show focuses on two adults, Josh Skinner and Melissa Gimble. They are dating (later married), working in successful careers, living in New York City. On the surface, things look great, but they are stuck and unhappy. One day, while out hiking, they stumble into a fantasy land called Schmigadoon. Think Groundhog Day meets Willy Wonka. In this land, all the citizens are based off of characters from popular musicals, with the purpose to teach Josh and Melissa a profound lesson of some sort. Until they learn this lesson, they cannot leave Schmigadoon.
This is a fun show that does a great job referencing and satirizing popular musicals from the past. Season one focuses heavily on the Rodgers and Hammerstein hits from the 1940s and 1950s such as Oklahoma, Carousel, Sound of Music, as well as other musicals that were popular during this time frame like Music Man and Brigadoon. Season 2 hones the focus on the 60s and 70s, with a heavy emphasis on shows from Sondheim, Fosse, and Andrew Lloyd Weber. Think Chicago, Sweeney Todd, Chorus Line, Pippin, Godspell, Cabaret, Jesus Christ Superstar, Annie, Hair, and many others.
Looking forward to season 3, if there is one. It'll be great to see how they focus on Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, Cats, Rent and the other popular shows from the 80s and 90s.
Mythic Quest: Raven's Banquet (2020)
Better Than Ted Lasso
Ted Lasso is Apple TV's golden child. I like Ted Lasso. I still watch Ted Lasso, despite the noticeable decrease in quality from the terrific first season. Having said that, I find Mythic Quest the better show. It's more interesting, the writing is stronger, the characters more developed and it is 28-30 minutes of solid storytelling per episode with little fat. Compare that to the bloated 45-55 minute run times of recent Ted Lasso episodes, where it's easy to find 15-20 minutes to cut out, and it's proof that bigger isn't always better. Honestly, I'd much rather spend time with Ian Grimm or Poppy Li, who I find much more interesting and unique, over folksy toxic positivity everyman Lasso. Also, I find video games and the creating of them a more interesting topic over soccer, or should I say futbol. All the acting choices are spot on, and you cheer for each character, from hippie progressive lesbian socialist Rachel (Ashley Burch) to right wing conservative Jo (Jessie Ennis). The best part is this show writes the characters in a way that goes beyond stereotypes and you learn so much more about them. The writing is outstanding, with loads of laughs every episode, and plenty of tough topics being dealt with in a way that makes you think, but doesn't preach. Overall, while Ted Lasso is a great show, Mythic Quest is better, and in my opinion, is one of the best shows not just on Apple TV but anywhere.
Tetris (2023)
A Bit Far-Fetched, But Fun
This is based on a true story, but obviously was embellished to a great degree. Tetris is the crazy story of how a computer game from an unknown engineer in Soviet Russia turned into a worldwide phenomenon, and the battle for the rights that takes place between a multitude of major players.
Henk Rogers is a game publisher/designer looking for the next hit to grow his fledgling business. A Dutch-American based in Japan with his wife and children, he wants a piece of the red hot video game market. Unfortunately, most of the games he lands are niche or basic, unappealing to the masses. At CES in 1988, he sees Tetris and wonders who in Japan has the rights to distribute and publish the game. This leads him on a worldwide journey, where he enters Soviet Russia to meet the creator of Tetris himself, Alexey Pajitnov, before jetting to Kyoto to talk of a partnership with gaming giant Nintendo, who then sends him to Seattle to meet two of Nintendo most important executives and get their buy-in.
Yes, a movie about getting the rights to a popular video game could be very dry and boring, and this movie definitely is not those things. It takes the concept and adds in elements of comedy, action, drama, thriller and more. It's a movie about a true story that takes a bunch of significant liberties with the truth, but in the process, creates a compelling tale.
Funny how this came out right around the same time as Air, another movie about a fledgling company looking for the big breakthrough. I think I like Air a little bit more, just because it felt like the story was more tight and the acting was stronger, but this is a great movie, and even if you have no interest in video games, I recommend giving it a shot.
Lucky Hank (2023)
Trying to Be Many Things, Mastering None of Them
Lucky Hank was a show I was looking forward to watching. A fan of both Bob Odenkirk and movies that are adult oriented dark comedies like those by Alexander Payne, I expected something akin to Sideways, but in TV show format. Instead, we have a mess that doesn't know what it is. What's the plot? What's the focus? We have a miserable older man in a mid life crisis, sad that his writing career has resulted in being the English Chairman at a secondary college in suburban Pennsylvania. He's married to a woman who is bored and wants to move to New York City. He has a daughter who married young and dropped out of college. He hates his father. The people in his life are all unlikable and annoying. Is this trying to be a comedy? A satire? What is it? It just comes off like a boring show of annoying people with first world problems.
Air (2023)
A Movie Where You Know How it Ends, but Enjoy the Ride Nonetheless
Air is not a Michael Jordan movie. Yes, Michael Jordan plays a huge role in it, but there's a reason his face is never shown on camera. The movie is about the rise of Nike, from a scrappy running shoe company to the most powerful brand in all of sports.
Set in the Portland suburb of Beaverton, Oregon in 1984, Nike is going through hard times after the highs of their IPO coming out subside. The company in February 1984 had one of their largest layoffs in history and the fledgling basketball division was on the chopping block. The basketball division, a team led by basketball talent scout savant Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), marketing guru Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) and branding extraordinar Howard White (Chris Tucker), need to make a big splash, or face the recommendation of Nike Co-Founder/CEO Phil Knight (Ben Affleck) to eliminate the basketball division. The 1984 NBA draft, one of the deepest in history, holds loads of potential superstars, but Vaccaro is only interest in one: Michael Jordan. Battling the much larger rivals at the time in Converse and Adidas, he knows the long odds are against him, and immediately begins to work Jordan's tough agent David Falk (Chris Messina in an excellent role) and the most important figure of all, Delores Jordan (Viola Davis in one of her best roles ever), a person that Michael himself called his best friend. While the outcome is known, the journey there keeps you on the edge of your seats. The writing, acting and story telling is just suburb.
Air is a story of not just Michael Jordan, but the rise of Nike, the rise of the modern day sports star, the rise of the NBA as the most known global sports brand and the rise of Portland, Oregon as the shoe capital of the world. This one decision made all of that possible.
In a world of movies based off comic books, it's rare to find a truly adult film like Air in the theaters. Bravo to Affleck, Damon, Davis, Messina, Bateman and others in creating this wonderful film.
Ted Lasso (2020)
If It Gets Any More Sweet, It's Going to Cause Diabetes
Ted Lasso is a great program. It's a shot of positivity in a time where the world has never been more divisive, toxic and cynical. It's a throwback to a time when TV programs taught lessons and had larger themes. It's got a lot of heart. It makes you laugh and think at the same time.
So why do I give this show a 7?
Well, this was probably a 9 or even a 10 in season one. The balance of comedy, conflict and drama was perfect. Each episode was 30 minutes, but there was little fat on those 30 minutes.
What happened was, starting in season two, this program turned into the village of the happy people. The conflicts were few and the outcomes predictable. Also, the show started to get longer and longer. 30 minutes became 35 minutes, then 40 minutes, then 45 minutes. Every episode, there is at least 10-15 minutes of filler that could be cut off. This could (and should) still be a 30 minute program that gives you 30 solid meaningful minutes of TV.
Certain characters have devolved over time. Rebecca in particular went from a powerful, independent business woman into a fan girl who no longer stands up for herself. Trent Crimm went from a hard hitting journalist to a Ted Lasso convert, a complete 180 in attitude and personality. The show struggles with the gray areas of character development. Characters are either this or that.
Again, I'm all for sweetness and positivity, but when the stakes are so low, it gets mundane and even boring. Yes, there are the conflicts with Rupert and Ted's dissolving marriage and the heel turn of Nate, but I don't get the sense that any of these issues are major problems. It always seems to me the resolution is so corny speech or joke from Ted or the team winning, and things will be ok.
Also, the increasing parallels between Lasso and the man who created the program, Jason Sudeikis, are starting to become a distraction. Suedikis is going through a messy breakup, like Lasso, and seems unable to come to grips with it, again, like Lasso.
Yes, great program and I still love watching it, but there are cracks in the foundation that have begun to spread since about season 2.
Animal Control (2023)
Tired, Formulaic Copy Cat of Community and Brooklyn Nine-Nine
What do you get when you combine Community and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, reduce the budget considerably and have characters that are nowhere near as compelling? You get Animal Control, a new Fox sitcom that takes the aging formula of Community and Brooklyn Nine-Nine and runs it right into the ground. Joel McHale is trying hard to be a modern day Bob Newhart of "I'm the sane one here, look at all these idiots around me!", but his sarcastic edge is growing old at this point. Maybe I'd find it more charming if he had some decent characters to work off of, but no one here is that interesting. It's all very tired, formulaic, seemed it was made on a cheap budget. Maybe it finds it's footing and becomes the next Parks and Rec, but it seems outside of Abbott Elementary that the network sitcom is dead and I'm unsure if this show is going to do anything to help revive it.
Last Chance U (2016)
How the Sausage is Made
Last Chance U is not an easy series to watch, but I think it's quite eye opening. The premise is pretty simple: small towns in undesirable locations develop powerful Junior College football programs that transform outcasts/misfits/troublemakers into Division 1 stars. There are five seasons of this program. The first two are based in Scooba, MS. Think of all the Southern stereotypes you can think of (God, guns, football, conservative politics) and that is the first two seasons in a nutshell. The coach is Buddy Stephens, who fits every negative stereotype of a coach you can think of. The main star, though, is Brittany Wagner, the academic advisor who works hard to make sure the players show up to class and do their homework. Her famous line is "do you have a pencil?" Of all the people, her job might be the hardest.
While the first two seasons are normally the ones mostly remembered by fans, I was more interested in seasons 3 and especially 4. The action moves from Scooba, MS to Independence, KS. Like Scooba, this is another small town that loves football, maybe a little less religious since we're now in the Midwest and not the South, but still a lot of conservative values. The coach in these two seasons is Jason Brown, a former criminal from Compton who has turned his life around and now coaches football. Unlike Stephens, he's much more unorthodox. He smokes cigars, drives Cadillacs, has a pit bull and pretty much a SoCal swagger. While the first three seasons show teams that are dominating, season 4 shows a team collapsing. As Brown loses control of the locker room and his coaching staff, and as the town grows tired of his attitude and swearing, the big city urbanite sticks out like a sore thumb, and the swagger turns into more of a nuisance than a benefit.
By Season 5, the schtick became tired, and the whole thing was no longer interesting. But if you are interested in what a big time business college sports are becoming, and how for many of these players this is their last chance to make a better life for themselves, check out this series.
The Video Game Years (2012)
Addictive, But Missing Some Substance
The Video Game Years was a series Pat Contri (Pat the NES Punk) created back in 2012. It's a great time capsule of three key timeframes in video game history: The rise (and fall) of Atari, the Golden Age of Arcade Video Games, and the domination of the Nintendo Entertainment System. Other platforms like Sega, PC gaming, and others also are given mentions. Starting in 1977 and ending in 1989, it gives a snapshot of 12 very important years in the growth of the video game industry.
The show is set up in similar style to VH-1's "I Love the 80s" series. Key games are highlighted, as are accessories, consoles, moments, and more. The show also airs old advertisements, talks about pop culture at the time, brings up more obscure games, and even points out the popular pinball machines of the time.
The series is a bit of a time capsule. This was YouTube in the early years, when retro gaming was at the height of popularity, and seeing many of these gaming YouTubers together is a bit strange. For example, Tommy Tallarico is a part of the series, yet he and Pat the NES Punk had a very prominent falling out, so very odd seeing them together. Other YouTubers in this series have long since left the platform or retro gaming, some have passed away, and of course others, like Pat or James Rolfe, are still going strong. It's a time capsule, not just of the early years of video gaming, but of a different era of YouTube.
Two reasons I give this series a 6. One, there is a little too much reliance on YouTubers instead of industry professionals. Yes, some are here like Intellivision's Keith Robinson, Nintendo's Howard Phillips and Atari's Howard Scott Warshaw, but I wish there was more from them to give the series a little more authenticity. The other thing that annoyed me was when a subject came up that obviously was something that either wasn't known by the show or wasn't of interest, they would do a very basic "uh yeah, it's a game, cool." It felt almost like a check box they felt like they had to so people wouldn't yell at them about "hey, what about this game?" I almost would have rather they just put in a quick mention or something, it comes off a bit lazy.
Overall, it's a fun series, but it's quite apparent in many ways that this was an early YouTube production by some of the production choices and somewhat "on the cheap" feel to it. You will learn a few things, but they will drive you nuts by how they skim over or skip certain subjects.
Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022)
A Fun Romp That Misses The Mark
I'm not sure who this movie is for. Millennials who watched this show in the late 80s-early 90s? Kids who don't have any clue what this show was?
After the excellent revival of DuckTales, I thought Disney found the formula: a modern day take on a popular 80s concept that kids would enjoy, with enough of the same themes and tone from the old original to appeal to adults. Instead, with this... like, what is this?
Is it funny? At times. Is it enjoyable? Sure. But it's one of those movies that after you watch it, you won't really remember it or want to watch it again.
Millennials who liked this show are now in their mid 30s-early 40s. Do they really care anymore about remembering this? Maybe if it came out about 10 years ago, all the meta humor and variety of cartoons from their childhood would be appealing, but I think that ship has sailed.
As for the Rescue Rangers, the other three are shoehorned onto this film. It's the Chip and Dale movie. Make no mistake.
And why did they retcon any mention of the classic shorts the two were in during the 40s and 50s? Honestly, that's still what most people remember these two cartoon chipmunks from, not some syndicated cartoon from the 80s-90s that was on for three seasons targeted specifically at kids.
Again, this movie is fine and it's light and it's fun, but it misses the mark. In an attempt to appeal to aging millennials who are worried more now about paying their mortgages or college tuition for their kids than they are remembering old cartoons, and their kids, who won't understand most of this humor, it doesn't hit with either group, leaving a light movie that will entertain you for 90 minutes before you turn it off, never to watch it again.