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gwpchamberlain
Reviews
Earth (2023)
The Aspirations Of An Amoeba.
We've watched three episodes of Earth, more than enough to conclude that we won't be watching the rest.
The roughly three hours that we watched contain perhaps 30 minutes worth of useful and interesting information.
The other two and a half hours are padded out with the following:
- Increasingly repetitive scenes of fiery explosions and arctic wastelands.
- Increasingly repetitive Hollywood style cgi images of fiery explosions and arctic wastelands.
- Gratuitous slow motion shots of the narrator staring meaningfully into the distance as walks past the camera.
-A hilarious Disneyesque anthropomorphized script describing the trial and tribulations of 'Life' as it tries to establish itself in an endless battle against the evil forces of Earth.
All of this is accompanied, or rather swamped by bombastic, overbearing apocalyptic music that would be better suited to a sci-fi horror film.
It was this music as much as any of the other irritating elements that made us loose the will to watch the entire series.
Back to the script, a few examples from episode 3:
"In the depths of the oceans... ..sheltered inside geothermal vents... ..are something miraculous.
Extremophiles.
An extraordinary form of single-celled life.
The ancestors of every living organism on Earth, including plants.
But they are stuck here.
At this point, their chances of making the leap onto dry land... ..are virtually nil.
CHRIS SIGHS."
Yes, we can clearly visualize these single-celled organisms desperately planning their escape from the bottom of the ocean!
If only, they think, with the brain that they don't possess, we could leave this dismal underwater prison and climb out onto the dry land, that we don't even know exists ..... because we live at the bottom of the ocean ... and don't have brains ... or legs ... or even fins ... Pure Disney!
A few minutes later we learn:
"If plants had any aspirations to leap out onto land, it was going to be very rapidly disappointed, because this land was very short-lived."
Right, so single celled organisms now have 'aspirations' ... got it!
And the part that made us laugh loudest:
"Life stayed in the water for 500 million years... ..until a moment about half a billion years ago, when, for reasons we don't entirely understand, plants' ancestors set off into the unknown.
Making base camp on rocky sediments at the water's edge."
My wife and I later discovered that we'd both had exactly the same image of a party of brave little proto-plants making their way up the beach with the classic sticks over their shoulders at the end of which dangle their little bundles of possessions.
Hilarious anthropomorphic drivel!
Oh, and here's a thought: if you're going to make a documentary about the history of Earth how about making it chronological instead of leaping forwards and backwards millions or even billions of years from one episode to the next.
Candy (2022)
Opening Graphics Say It All
I think that it was at the beginning of the third episode as the stylish open graphics scrolled by that my wife remarked "this is the best bit!"
I had to agree. But not only are those graphics and the accompanying music the 'best bit', they also sum up this mini-series: a two dimensional cutout.
The characters are all tedious, uninteresting and unlikable with their atrocious taste in clothing, home decor, music, and especially ... wigs!
For the first two episodes, Betty was portrayed as an annoying, child hating moron who needed to get taken out by an axe.
Then, strangely, in episode three it's as if the producers realized that they'd gone over the top with their denigration of Betty, and her character suddenly morphed into a lonely but likeable women who was 'more than just a housewife'.
Some reviewers have praised the 'acting', but in our opinion what we saw was over-acting. The main protagonists tried too hard to portray a certain 'type' set in a certain 'period' that it ended up feeling like some kind of puppet show.
We were so bored and nauseated by these two dimensional 80's suburban tropes by the end of episode four that we didn't even bother watching the final episode.
Instead, we looked up the real story on the internet.
The only remarkable element of the real story is that killer Candy was found 'not guilty' on the basis of self defense!!!
41 blows with an axe, a bodged attempt at cleaning up, and leaving the baby alone and crying in its crib ... self defense!!!
Perhaps that's what this series should have focused on, the evidence, the court case, the verdict, and not the tedious tacky lives of these suburban twits with their 'church groups' and 'baby showers'.
So, the four stars are for the opening graphics and the music.
Stranger Things (2016)
STRANGER THINGS - DECIPHERED
S is for silly
T is for trite
R is for rancid
A is for awful
N is for nauseating
G is for groan
E is for excrement
R is for really!?!
T is for teens
H is for horrible
I is for inept acting
N is for nooo, I can't take it anymore!!!
G is for give me back the time I wasted watching two and a half episodes of this utter ...
S is for ____ well, you can use your imagination. ;-)