RogerRoger77's Reviews

Castaway Diva (2023– )

7/10

Not so extraordinary ... but entertaining enough

27 November 2023

I would be happy to watch pretty much anything starring Park Eun-bin, and whenever she's on screen, she is never less than compelling and highly watchable. And a very decent singer as well!

Plus, the rest of the cast is also very good - especially the girl who plays the younger version of Park Eun-bin's character, she is excellent in the role.

And yet ... the story is simply not as strong as it could be. For example, far too much time is devoted to the secondary plot concerning the identity of her childhood friend, his relationship with his abusive father, and the rest of his family. To be honest, this was all too convoluted, and didn't always make much sense.

Equally, I was disappointed that more time wasn't given to Park's time on the desert island. We get a few tantalising glimpses in flashback scenes, which were always great fun, and I would have been happy to have one or more full episodes of these. Given the series' title, and the way it was promoted, I really would have loved to have been served a full female-led version of Castaway.

As for the main plot about Park's character's attempt to build her own singing career, there were definitely high points - especially in her relationship with her idol - and the singing scenes themselves. But as well as there being too many distractions from the other plot threads, I might have liked more of a sense of her having to work and struggle at becoming a great singer, rather than just being completely amazing from the outset.

So, yes, for fans, this is an enjoyable series - but if anyone else had been the main star, I'm not sure I would have kept on watching.

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Totally Killer (2023)

6/10

Imagine Back to the Future, but woke

22 October 2023

I leave others to comment on this film's qualities as a film - it's a so-so time-travel comedy/thriller that runs out of steam long before its final reveal. Instead, I want to focus on why I found it quite so annoying.

The film clearly owes a huge debt to Back to the Future - but minus the wit and warmth. It's as if someone watched the 1985 classic and decided that what was needed was to replace the jokes and good-natured observations about the differences between past and present with tiresome finger-wagging and virtue signalling about how everyone born before circa 1990 was/is an ignorant bigot.

Yes, this is a film clearly scripted by a Millennial/Gen Zer, who views the past as one long series of hate crimes - and believes that it is the job of the 21st century enlightened to point this out, loudly and constantly.

So, we get endless comments (not jokes) about how people in the past are all guilty of fat-shaming, homophobia etc.

But here's the thing. Most decent people would agree that 'bullying' others for being overweight, drink driving and the like are no longer socially acceptable (if they ever were). Yet the film, despite its intentions, unwittingly reveals why so many people find woke ideology such a turn off: it is just so prudish and joyless.

Even though the 1980s characters are presented here as one-dimensional idiots ... they actually seem to be enjoying life, partying, making out etc. By contrast, the main character simply spends most of the film scowling and saying things like 'you can't say that anymore!', 'that's problematic!' and other such whiny admonitions.

So, if the choice is between young people simply having fun, however 'outdated' their views, and a prissy little member of the thought police, I know which generation of young people I want to side with. Unlike Back to the Future, I think I'd rather stay in the past ...

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Strange Planet (2023– )

2/10

Bland Planet

17 August 2023

I've never seen the webcomic on which this is based, but I read good things about it, so thought I'd give the TV show a go.

However, I only made it through the first episode before giving up.

As far as I can tell, the series is about a race of aliens that live on a planet that is pretty much a replica of Earth - so the use of the word 'strange' in the title is probably some sort of hipster-ish attempt at irony.

What's the point, then, of setting the series on an a different world? The central conceit is that the aliens describe everything literally - a plane is a 'flying machine', alcohol is a 'mild poison' etc.

I had two basic problems with this.

First, this was not just *a* joke, it seemed to be the *only* joke. I was already bored of the characters affected way of speaking after about 10 minutes - it's mildly amusing once or twice, but to base a whole series around this one conceit suggests a very optimistic view of your audience's tolerance for light whimsy. How about, you know, some *actual* jokes?

Second, the conceit seemed to be a substitute for properly fleshed out characters and plots. Sure, I only watched one episode, but having all your identikit characters speak in the same way, and with very little in the way of (interesting) personalities, makes even the short running time of the episodes feel long. As for plot, nothing much happened in the one I saw - maybe this was the point, but I see no reason why I should I waste my time indulging someone else's desire to make tedious observations about the banality of everyday existence.

A big yawn.

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Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)

6/10

Two angsty teens with daddy issues mope around for 2+ hours

11 June 2023

Ok, my title is deliberately snarky, but ...

Like the first movie, the animation here is spectacular. Plus, there are lots of incidental pleasures, mainly seeing all the different Spidermen and their crazy powers and costumes.

However, I just wasn't that taken with the characters and plot. Maybe I'm too old for these sorts of films, but do we really need scene after scene of whiny teenagers talking about their feelings? Personally, all I really want from a Spiderman movie is some fun web action and a few zingy one liners. And a more interesting villain than the one we got here.

Perhaps I'm old-fashioned, but I always thought the point of superheroes was to be focused on others - saving the world and all that - not endlessly dissecting their own emotions and obsessing about their families and relationships. Guess this just reflects the world we live in: a Spiderman movie for the me, me, me generation.

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Taskmaster: A Yardstick for Failure (2023)

Season 15, Episode 10

6/10

Not a vintage year

3 June 2023

When I reviewed the first episode of this series, I gave it a 6 and said it was 'meh'. Having now seen the finale, I stand by that judgment for the whole series.

There were still some amusing moments, but there were also quite a few tasks that just fell flat. It all felt very patchy and inconsistent.

Same with the contestants. Most of them were fine - the standout for me was Kiell Smith-Bynoe, funny and likeable - but as a group, I doubt this will be remembered as a classic line-up.

And with this final episode, I'm afraid we got probably the most boring winner of any series so far. Honestly, did no one tell them that this is supposed to be a comedy programme? At any rate, this means, unfortunately, that we'll have to put up with them again in a few years' time for the next Champion of Champions.

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Late Night Lycett (2023– )

2/10

Chaotic and unfunny

8 April 2023

Joe Lycett the comedian can sometimes be reasonably funny - though, let's be honest, his act is essentially a watered-down version of Julian Clary's from thirty years ago - but as a 'political' and 'social' commentator he is painfully one-note and predictable. The problem is that his elevation to some kind of figurehead status by Guardian-readers for his oh-so-brave takedowns of the softest of soft targets (like Liz Truss and David Beckham, i.e. People who pretty much no one defends) seems to have gone to his head. Thus, he seems to believe that throwing out any random jibe that sounds a bit contemporary - look at me, I mentioned Twitter! - is enough to make a comment bitingly satirical, when it is usually anything but.

In the case of this programme, he is desperately in need of better writers. The interviews themselves were mediocre enough, but the nadir came with the attempt to parody GB News, an excruciatingly ill-rehearsed and poorly written effort in which Lycett simply couldn't land a successful joke, however much mugging to camera he tried. His cohost in this segment, Alan Carr, at least had the decency to look bewildered and embarrassed by the whole thing.

Satire (and comedy) really has fallen a long way since the golden age of alternative comedy in the 1980s - agree with them or not, but Alexei Sayle, the Comic Strip team, even Ben Elton in his prime, were simply so much funnier.

EDIT: I seem to have upset another reviewer (Lycett's agent?) as you can see in one of the other reviews. Flattered to be acknowledged! Just one point in reply: it's a useful rule of thumb that the more hysterically an audience is laughing in a TV studio, the less funny a show usually is. Those of us at home - not drunk, high, or being whipped up by the show's producers - are generally much better placed to judge.

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Taskmaster: The Curse of Politeness (2023)

Season 15, Episode 1

6/10

A little bit 'meh'

31 March 2023

Ok, it's only the first episode, but I simply wasn't that impressed with this new series opener. Maybe it's heresy to say this, but is the format feeling a little tired? The tasks were fine, but ... none were especially memorable. Same with the contestants - I didn't hate any of them, but none are really grabbing me. Four out of the five I knew of, and like well enough, but I have to be honest, aren't exactly wowing me. The fifth, Mae Martin, I had to look up to identify - is she ('they') a comedian? Nothing she said or did was funny, so I thought she must be an actor or musician, but no, apparently, she is in comedy ... must be saving the jokes for later episodes, I guess. Anyway, hopefully the series will get funnier.

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Hold the Front Page (2023– )

3/10

Don't hold the front page

4 January 2023

I'm neither a big fan nor a big hater of the two presenters, Nish Kumar and Josh Widdecombe - I've seen both in programmes I've liked, but I wouldn't generally seek them out, either.

Yet here, both comedians are at their weakest.

I get that this is supposed to be a comedy programme, but with neither of the pair seeming to have any ability as journalists, or much real interest in learning the skills necessary for the job, most of the episode I watched (the first) simply left me scratching my head as to what the point of any of it was.

The episode's run time was filled with the pair flailing around to find a story to make the front page of a local newspaper, but none they tried to find made for even remotely interesting viewing. To be honest, I don't even want to read the banal stories that are the bread and butter of local newspapers, never mind watch a pair of non-journalists try to dig them up. It wasn't entertaining and it wasn't funny.

I imagine this programme was commissioned to be something like that Romesh Ranganathan-Rob Beckett series that seems to be on all the time. Yet a positive of that one is that they tackle a different challenge each episode - and they are somewhat funnier, too, in the few I have seen - whereas this series is going to be flogging the same horse every week. Personally, though, I certainly won't be watching any more.

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Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

5/10

Talocan forever!

12 November 2022

Enough has been said by other reviewers about the film's overall weaknesses - it's overlong, meandering and drags in many places. Instead, I want to focus on a question no one else seems to be asking: what is up with these Wakandans?

I was a definite fan of the first movie, but as the sequel progressed, I found myself more and more annoyed (and irritated) by the film's semi-religious Wakandaphilia. Frankly, the constant self-adulation and smug sense of exceptionalism displayed by every Wakandan character really started to grate. After a while, what I'm sure the film-makers see as a message of empowerment starts to sound a lot like fascistic aggrandizement. If this degree of messianic self-love were displayed by characters in any other (real) country, it would be dismissed as overblown nationalism.

Let's not forget, as the film itself points out, Wakanda is a superpower - possibly the most powerful nation on earth, thanks to its stocks of 'vibranium' - so it's difficult to swallow the idea that they are also somehow persecuted victims. Add to this the fact that they jealously try to preserve their monopoly of this most valuable resource, and its associated technology, and its hard not to see Wakanda as just another arrogant and self-interested power.

Indeed, after a while, my sympathies shifted much more to the rival Talocans, who with some justification came to see Wakanda as more of a threat than an ally. Maybe the next movie could be called Talocan Forever, and show their side of the story instead.

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Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities: Lot 36 (2022)

Season 1, Episode 1

6/10

Sub-Lovecraftian series opener

6 November 2022

Warning: Spoilers

It's a bit of a head-scratcher why this was chosen as the first episode of the series, as it simply isn't very strong. On the positive side, there are some ok ideas here - something mysterious in a storage unit, just waiting to be unleashed by an unwary buyer. Some reasonable atmosphere is also built up in the first half. The special effects at the end are also pretty good.

But it's all let down by an undercooked and underdeveloped script. The main character is a racist jerk, but is sketched out in a very one-dimensional way - we first meet him listening to some blowhard racist on the radio, which is the script's very unsubtle way of telling us he is a Bad Man. However, while he is very brusque and rude throughout, he never does anything truly terrible that means he 'deserves' his ultimate fate. His life is on the line because of an unpaid debt to some shady characters, so it's actually understandable that he would be somewhat short and impatient with everyone, as he desperately tries to make enough money to pay it off.

His one truly 'bad' act is not allowing an old Mexican woman access to a storage unit he has bought so that she can find her family possessions. But the reason he was mistakenly sold her storage unit is the fault of the (corrupt) storage place's manager for thinking the woman had abandoned it, not his, so though he may not be very sympathetic, he isn't really the main culprit in her misfortune.

The final act is also very rushed. It degenerates into some nonsense about the search for a missing supernatural book - yet another Necronomicon knock-off - and even more clichéd references to Nazis and the occult. And what on earth was the bizarre hopping ritual of the storage unit's original owner supposed to be about?

The ending was also a bit of a damp squib. As noted, the special effects (of the finale's demon) were actually decent, but it really was nothing more than a brief chase down some dark corridors, culminating in a grisly end for our 'hero'. The Mexican woman makes a final appearance, though why she was still hanging around the storage facility hours later - when we knew she hadn't been allowed to go into the storage unit she wanted to - is anybody's guess.

So, while not terrible, a pretty mediocre episode to launch a new series.

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Malignant (I) (2021)

2/10

Intentionally bad?

27 August 2022

This is a James Wan film, so going in I didn't have high expectations - he's pretty much the king of hack mainstream horror movies. But most of his movies at least have a certain level of professionalism, which meant that I was genuinely unprepared for just how inept this film was. Right from the silly, campy pre-credits sequence, the script was truly atrocious, matched by some sincerely awful acting throughout. Let's not even get started on the ropey special effects.

Of course, rubbish horror films aren't exactly thin on the ground (see pretty much any random Netflix horror film). But what I found puzzling about this one is that it's very hard to tell how far the bad dialogue and performances might be deliberate. Is this meant as a parody or satire of cheesy horror? Did Wan set out to make an intentionally stupid movie? If so, then maybe he is cleverer than I give him credit for - maybe this film is some sort of elaborate, postmodern joke.

Or, perhaps, it is just terrible.

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American Dad!: Comb Over: A Hair Piece (2021)

Season 16, Episode 15

2/10

Worst American Dad episode ever?

31 May 2022

American Dad is sometimes very funny - but it's also very uneven, often alternating between good and bad episodes all the way through a season. However, this is the first time I've been so bored by an episode that I felt moved to write a review.

The pre-credits sequence is actually pretty funny, with Stan 'telling it how it is' to the whole family. But when the main plot kicks in - some utter nonsense about Stan getting a hair transplant and a Rod Stewart haircut - it goes downhill fast.

Roger's personas, like the show in general, can be very funny - but then again, sometimes they are just annoying and tedious. In this case, Roger's 1970s hairdresser character is most definitely the latter; there simply isn't anything funny about him. And what's with focusing a whole episode around satirising Rod Stewart? Much of the audience probably don't even know he is, and even if you do, he hasn't been part of the cultural zeitgeist for at least 30 years.

The plot doesn't really go anywhere, and the jokes mostly fall flat. A very poor episode.

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Antlers (2021)

5/10

An X-Files episode, but twice as long

6 May 2022

My title pretty much says it all. I won't spoil anything, but this film is basically a monster-of-the week X-Files - or maybe Supernatural - story, dragged out to double its natural length. There's nothing egregiously bad here - decent actors (especially the main kid), it looks good enough, and there's some ok 'social commentary', about a rundown rural community fallen into decay because of drugs and economic decline. But as a horror film, it's in no sense scary, and the story takes an awful long time to get going. To return to my initial comment, this might well have been more effective as a 45-minute TV episode.

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Complaints Welcome (2021)

1/10

Cheap, loud, annoying

18 November 2021

I don't mind Tom Allen in (some) other shows, but neither he nor the other two presenters here can save this from being utterly, cringingly awful. It feels like something thrown together in about five minutes, with no wit, thought or really any purpose at all. None of the episode I watched was even slightly funny and the baying audience must have been heavily inebriated to have been laughing as much as they were. If you want to see what clever, and funny, satire of TV's inanities looks like watch Harry Hill or Charlie Brooker - not this mindless drivel. Overall, I found this programme so bad, I had to check the channel to make sure I wasn't accidentally watching Dave.

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Till Death (I) (2021)

4/10

A whole lot of nothing

11 October 2021

It's amazing how a film that is only ninety minutes long can feel like it is dragging on for ever, but there were many times while watching this that I felt like screaming at the screen, just get on with it already! There is about enough plot here for an hour or so of screen time, but this is stretched out very thinly indeed.

The main reason anyone would watch this, I would guess, is the presence of Megan Fox in the lead role. She is also one of the film's main problems. There are plenty of mediocre actors in the world, so I don't want to slam her especially for her lack of acting ability, but my goodness, she gives such a bland, flat performance in this film! This may not matter very much in, say, a Transformers movie, but this is supposed to be a thriller, and Fox's lack of emotional range really undercuts any potential thrills. I mean, you wake up handcuffed to your husband, who promptly blows his own brains out, and you react as if he has done nothing worse than broken wind in bed?

So, a better actor might have elevated this somewhat. However, the film's weaknesses are not all down to Fox. None of the characters are very interesting, the script is instantly forgettable, and the action scenes uninspired. A big Meh!

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Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)

4/10

Too late to the party

2 October 2021

If this had been released a few years back, it might have scored more points, at least for originality. However, the female-action-hero-who-can-kick-ass-just-like-a-man genre is now so oversaturated that a film really needs to be doing something much more original than this even tries to do to make its mark. We've had Hanna, Atomic Blonde, Anna, Salt, Kate, Black Widow etc all ploughing very similar furrows (not to mention TV shows like Buffy, Alias and so on). At this point, it would be more original to have a female lead who doesn't know martial arts, or one end of a gun from another.

Ok, but how does this stand up in its own terms? Frankly, not very well. I like Karen Gillan a lot in many of her other projects (right back to Dr. Who!), but the script here does her absolutely no favours: if I hadn't seen her before, I would probably think that she simply isn't a very good actress. Her character is not much more than a cypher, and I simply didn't care at all about her or her (tedious) mommy issues.

One of the more annoying features of the film is that the makers opt for the tired trick of trying to humanise someone who is, in reality, nothing more than a murderer by giving her an annoying kid to look after, to make her more sympathetic. Ok, this worked for Leon (and, to some extent, Kate), but here the manipulative nature of the plot device was just too transparent.

Perhaps the biggest failing - somewhat fatally for an action movie - is that the action scenes are tired, clichéd and insipid. Living in a post-Bourne, Taken and Wick world, we've all seen much better.

I'll be honest and confess that I gave up at around the 70 minute mark, but unless it suddenly became a whole other film, I can't imagine I missed very much.

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The Queen's Gambit (2020)

8/10

Very good, yes ... but lacking any true depth

14 December 2020

For the first few episodes, I enjoyed this very much. A novel concept, great acting - especially from Anya Taylor-Joy - and very solid writing and directing. However, after a while, I started to realise why it reminded me so much of Mad Men: not simply that it is set during (roughly) the same time period, but because, at its heart, it is fundamentally hollow. The surface, yes, is very attractive (the period detail, decor, clothes etc. are great), but as the episodes progress, it becomes clear that there isn't anything more to the story than what we can predict right at the start. That is, this is a fairly standard story of a plucky outsider taking on the stuffy establishment we have seen in a million other dramas of this type. I also came to like the central character less and less. This is one of those dramas that treats its protagonist's talent basically as a superpower (think the BBC version of Sherlock), which means that everything comes to her far too easily, with no sense of the blood, sweat and tears that talented people in the real world have to expend to develop their skills. Having your main character occasionally leaf through a book while draped decoratively over a chair does not count! I also found it dragging in the second half of its run - it could easily have lost one or even two episodes from its running time. So ... definitely a worthwhile watch, but not the masterpiece some have suggested.

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Channel Hopping with Jon Richardson (2020–2021)

2/10

Shockingly bad

19 November 2020

I'm a fan of Jon Richardson in many of his other programmes, but this is truly dire. Clive James did the laughing-at-funny-foreigners shtick years ago, and at least when he did it it was a somewhat fresh idea - and in those pre-internet days, we didn't have many other chances to see non-English television. Regardless, the script for this show is painfully unfunny, the repartee between the guests is tedious and pointless (why even have guests for what is basically just a clip show?), and at an hour long, it feels like it drags on for ever. Not the absolute worst show I've ever seen, but still, bottom-of-the-barrel stuff.

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Hubie Halloween (2020)

1/10

Truly awful!

23 October 2020

A silly voice is one thing, but the one Adam Sandler adopts in this film makes any dialogue he speaks virtually incomprehensible. Ordinarily, this would be a bad thing, but given how terrible the dialogue spoken by every other character is, this may actually be a blessing. In truth, I didn't get further than about thirty minutes before I had to turn this off. Mean-spirited, tedious, unfunny - just some of the words I would use here. I just couldn't get my head around what Sandler was doing with the main character - is he supposed to have learning difficulties? Is this meant to be funny? Indeed, it was very hard to tell if this *was* a comedy. One example of a 'joke' early on: Sandler's character breaks wind. That's it. No reason, no context, he just does. What??? As for the plot and other characters ... I didn't care, because evidently the film didn't either. What on earth the actress from Modern Family was doing in this - other than money, of course - I just don't know.

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