Kent's Week in Film is this: each week (or so) I have a spotlight movie which I write a longer thinkier piece about, and then whatever else I watched that week I do a quick little summary of my thoughts... just to speed things along. This entry covers the past two weeks, less my watching of the Scream series which will get its own entry.
This week: Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves - 2023, d. John Francis Daly & Jonathan Goldstein - In Theatre Marcel, the Shell With Shoes On - 2022, d. Dean Fleischer - Crave 28 Weeks Later - 2008, d. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo- Disney+/Star Dressed to Kill - 1980, d. Brian Di Palma - Criterion Channel
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Of all the things I'm nerdy about, D&D is not one of them. I've RPGed a time or three, but I'm by no means invested in the property. Hell, fantasy, in general, is not a genre I particularly even like....something about magic having basically no rules and being able to do anything is ever a barrier. Here, Justice Smith's awkward and sometimes ineffectual mage, Simon, literally has a retort about the fact that there are rules and magic can't just do anything. I appreciated the sentiment, but magic kinda just does what ever it wants in this film, ultimately. Yet, the magic here, like in the game, is just one facet of the world. It's not all about magic. There be monsters, beasts, creatures, dragons, critters...different races and classes, all of which just coexist in this realm without excessive exposition (if any at all).
D&D:Honor Among Thieves starts by introducing us to a pair of partners in crime -- Chris Pine's bard, Edgin, and Michelle Rodriguez's latest badass character, the barbarian Holga -- on the date of their fantasy-realm-equivalent of a parole hearing. Edgin has the gift of gab, regaling the parole board with his backstory and how he and Holga came to be in their prison. Holga is far more stoic (having already proven herself an ace fighter) and chimes in bluntly when she needs to. This does follow, quite precisely, the show-don't-tell rule as it cuts back and forth between enactment and retelling in an amusing manner (almost too amusing, threatening to overpower even the mildest sense of drama, but the writer-directors know quite what they're doing). It's a deft move, repeated multiple times in the movie, characters breaking into story, cutting to the flashback, all evoking the effect of a player character providing other players around the table top background info on either the character or the campaign.
Edgin has a daughter, Kira (Chloe Coleman), to return to but she's ostensibly been raised and brainwashed by his ex-band-of-thieves-mate Forge, who has reached lofty status after helping send Edgin and Holga to prison. He's also collaborating with a red wizard, Sofina (Daisy Head with a bald head) the worst of the worst denizens of the land, and has the fugitives taken away. They escape, enlist the help of their mate Simon, and a tiefling (sp) Doric (Sophia Lillis) before formulating a plan to rob Forge and get Kira back.
It all leads to one adventurous sequence and/or fantastical sequence after the next which then leads them to a remarkably subdued but ridiculously entertaining paladin in the very charming and handsome form of Rege-Jean Page. If there was a doubt as to Page's on-screen charisma, consider it quashed. He literally steals the show for the second act (and he's a lawful good, not a thief!).
Every new adventure and every twist in the journey is a delight. I found myself enjoying the film increasingly more and more as it progressed, and where I may have questioned the tonal balance early on, it's just crackling with energy and parading forward to the end to the point that I could only enjoy the ride, no questions. By the time the credits rolled, I felt good...like...invigorated and satisfied. As much as I can enjoy a Marvel, leaving the viewer at the end with a tease for the future sometimes just leaves the viewer puzzled or tantilized in an unsatisfying way. Here, the film, the journey, the story is a complete one and it feels damn good to have that sense of completeness. Nothing is left dangling. In this age of franchises, to have a done-in-one massive picture is such a rarity (and for it to be so entertaining is a blessing).
I liked the cast, but I loved the characters. Each gets their shining moment and their own arc, and most are pretty satisfying. There's a seeming kismet to this assembly, everyone working so perfectly in their role. Lillis manages to be both slight and imposing, Pine is charismatic and self aware, while Rodriguez negotiates being the tough badass and having a deep sense of love for people that isn't buried and doesn't need to be drawn out, she wears both quite ably at the same time. Smith, as he did so adeptly in Sharper, manages to be appealingly vulnerable, and then grow into his strength in a captivating way. Grant, for his part, is just playing his Paddington 2 role again, just in a different setting, and hey, if it works, why not?
John Francis Daly, once the D&D nerd on Freaks and Geeks, has fulfilled his destiny in creating an unbelievably enjoyable motion picture out of a property where others have tried and failed so miserably. With long time collaborator Jonathan Goldstein, they've topped any of their prior directorial efforts (the strongest next contender being Game Night a distant second) and this screenplay rivals their Spider-Man: Homecoming (one of the MCU's best). Just...awesome. Love a geeks-make-good story.
If say another one of these does get greenlit, as much as I love this group of characters, I hope Daly and Goldstein create a whole new roster of players to send out on a new adventure.
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I first heard about "Marcel, the shell with shoes on". When I started really getting to know Jenny Slate as a comedic performer (I recalled her from her short stint at SNL [where she said "Fuck" live on TV back when people still gave a shit if you said "fuck" live on TV], but she started to pop in her small roles on shows like Parks and Recreation, before really popping in Kroll Show and starring in the indie angel factory romcom Obvious Child). I looked into it briefly, but it didn't strike in any particular way. But it was a viral hit in the fledgling days of YouTube, and people really dug it. Slate made only three videos, each under 4 minutes, with Dean Fleischer-Camp directing and animating, the last one appearing in 2014, but there was obviously enough cache behind the series to get both a kids book and a feature film made.
The feature was critically praised but not a breakout success by any means. Having finally caught up with it, I can see why. It's a quiet, bizarre little movie about a little creature and the guy who films him. The people who own the home in which Marcel lives have split up and vacated the property, turning it into a short-term rental (AirBnB-style), and in the process of leaving accidentally took most of Marcel's family with them, save for his Nana (Isabella Rossellini). Dean (largely an off-screen/behind-the-camera/question-asking persona, having just gone through a break up himself), is renting the place and has discovered Marcel, and begins filming him and posting about him online, leading to a bit of a Marcel craze, that makes both Marcel and Dean quite uncomfortable.
If there's a journey, it's much more about Dean, primarily an off-screen persona, than Marcel. Marcel is an open book, talks about anything, where as Dean is closed off and wants the detachment of the lens to keep a barrier between him and the world. Marcel's sensibility is a trifecta of naivety, deep empathy, and zen-like acceptance for what is, and Marcel's point of view begins to affect Dean's world view but in really, really small ways. Nothing excessively large happens in this film. Marcel learns about the Internet and gets invited to be on 60 Minutes (the Shells' favourite show) and also takes a ride in Dean's car for a first trip into a much larger, mind-blowing world.
It's a sweet, delicate film that feels like it could just fall over and shatter at any moment, but it's also so blazingly different from pretty much any other all-ages entertainment out there, that it's hard not to get charmed by its uniqueness, even if I'm still not stricken with it.
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I'm not a zombie or horror guy, but I was a Danny Boyle for a long time so 28 Days Later was sort of a thing for me. It was an awakening of my mid-20s self to understanding that I could tolerate horror in a way I hadn't before. I liked the film, a lot. I saw 28 Weeks Later in the theatre, and found it to be more action-oriented, but also kind of nerdier in its examination of a kind of post-zombie contagion England.
Where 28 Days Later started in media res, this one manages to both be a sequel and a new beginning, kickstarting a brand new wave of the pandemic, ultimately resulting in a fairly good follow-up. In a COVID-is-our-reality existence, but effectively demonstrates how a highly transmissible virus can spiral out of control, and even the most extreme efforts to contain it appear futile. It's fucking bleak.
The rage virus is still the most intense and scary of the "zombie" plagues, and I'm absolutely shocked that after, like, 10+ years of The Walking Dead, there still hasn't been another "28 X Later" sequel, or prequel. You'd think Fox would just crank these things out. But no. There's still talk from Boyle and Alex Garland about making another one. They really should.
I'm not keen on the handheld style of filmmaking here from Fresnadillo, but it wares on me less the more the film goes on. It's got a phenomenal ahead-of-its time cast with Imogen Poots, Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Idris Elba, Harold Parrineau, and Robert Carlyle. It's just straight up solid. I recall Renner really standing out when watching this in the theatre in 2008, like I remember distinctly thinking "should I know him?" The Hurt Locker was only a year later and then he would be Hawkeye... coulda used him in the zombie apocalypse.... Oh wait, they did.
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I probably shouldn't hold an 80's film up to modern standards of representation of mental health and gender identity, but it's hard not to. As it stands, Dressed to Kill could have been a lot worse, but it also doesn't escape Trans panic. The film's murderous character is never formally described as having a split personality, (which they clearly do), and the identities are then conflated with being transsexual rather than a mental health crisis, which sends a pretty awful message.
It was a recommendation from the Tarantin/Avery podcast "Video Archives", as part of their "American Giallo" profile. As a production, it's a gauzy yet stylish movie, that goes big and hard on the melodrama, sometimes to ludicrous excess, and manages more than a few effectively tense sequences. It does fit a giallo mold.
I'm not certain any of the performances in this film are particularly good...Angie Dickinson seems uncertain of her provocative, outwardly sexual role (looking far more fetching in that white dress than masturbating nude in the shower), while Nancy Allen never quite sells her toughness as the savvy sex worker. Michael Caine seems a little bored (sometimes works, sometimes doesn't), while Keith Gordon's gadget-wiz teen isn't really given time to develop a personality. Dennis Franz was born to play a douchebag cop, but it borders on parody here.
It all comes together to form a compellingly bizarre film that is at once in confident filmmaking hands, in a genre DiPalma seems really tapped into, but also working with subject matter(s) way out of their frame of reference.
Well, this has been a fun...holy shit! 6 months!?! It's been six months we've been locked down and socially isolated to quell the spread of coronavirus disease 2019!?! It feels like both an eternity since this started and also like no time has passed at all. Time has ceased to have any meaning without any real memories to be made (total lie... this 6 month period was marked with such monumental things as both my kids having appendectomies, my grandmother dying, and a whole host of doggie afflictions on top of a roofing job and other larger societal clusterfucks that we shant soon forget...but I digress), and with all of the world's cinema and television productions shut down there's scant new original programming to fill the time. So what does one do when there's not a constant barrage of new content to drive one mad and assail one's audio-optical senses...? REWATCH!
That's right, time to consume beloved content of times past, those things we don't revisit as often as we would like to because there's too much damn new stuff to wade through. How has this become our life? Why are we so distracted? Because the fantasy realities are often so much better, or maybe so much worse, than the reality we experience every day.... or maybe just different enough to take us out of "today".
Upon rewatching a handful of my favourite comedies, I found it hard to let go of "today". There's a lot of bad stuff out there in our world which just constantly eats up space in my head: divisiveness is at an all-time high; race and class structures are getting vigorously contentious; and politics and media both seem to be designed to manipulate (and outrage) the population. We're attempting to make the biggest strides of our generation (X, Millennials) and we're meeting it head on with a (build that) wall of take-it-all-with-them-when-they-go Boomers that their ill-minded supporters that are not only resisting but trying to rescind long-established societal progression, take us back to a "great again" time that, really, was only great for a few and ultimately really harmful to everyone else. The divide just keeps growing, and things just seem to be more radical on either side. Moderates and centrists seem to be an almost imperceptible minority.
So looking at these situationally comedic programmes - Arrested Development, Clone High, Community, Father Ted, Flight of the Conchords, Happy Endings, Letterkenny and Parks and Recreation - almost all of these at some point have dated themselves with comedic set-ups or punchlines that fail to meet today's standards of respect and decency, and let's be clear we're talking mostly on race or LGTBQQIP2sAA standards, but in some cases it's creators or personnel involved, and I'm sure there are others changing aspects of society that mar these otherwise deliriously funny programs.
Let's be clear, I LOVE these shows, but I'm also able to see them critically, and can acknowledge, just as with watching anything from another time, that those times were different. But we must also acknowledge the change in times and standards, and that, in some cases, these things were even wrong for their time.
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Arrested Development (currently watching season 3)(2003-2006, 2013, 2019)
I once considered Arrested Development to be the funniest show ever to have been on TV. The subsequent 4th and 5th seasons on Netflix were good but largely due to scheduling concerns of its large, active cast, it seemed the show faltered a bit and relied upon a lot of editing tricks in order to deliver its delightfully absurd story. The 4th (review) and 5th seasons drag down my overall impression of the series, if only slightly. Diving back in from the beginning for the first time since I guess just before Season 4 came out, as always I revel in the ridiculous amount of setup and forethought that went into the writing and staging of the show. The jokes are often subtle, and they build over time, often layering upon each other. Many gags are solely designed for the rewatch (the amount of set-up for Buster losing his hand in Season 2 is just magnificent, nothing you're ever going to catch the first time around).
The show is about the Bluths, a terrible upper-class family in serious trouble and their terribly dysfunctional dynamic. Lying, cheating, stealing, scamming, greed, envy, wrath... all the bad stuff. By the later Netflix seasons, even naive, innocent George-Michael (Michael Cera) has taken on the family trait of profusely and adeptly lying. What makes the show fun to watch is that very few people people get sucked into their radar and are affected in any monumental way, for the most part the family's bad behavior only reflects badly upon themselves.
Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) is the ostensible protagonist of the show, a seeming odd-man-out in the family, but he too shares much of the dysfunctional mindset the rest of his family does, but he's oblivious to it. Thinking he's better than his family, and knowing that things are wrong is the main thing that makes him stand out... and yet, upon returning to season 1 and knowing what we know about Michael after 5 seasons, almost any time he engages in a relationship with someone I'm yelling at the screen telling the woman to run, like it's a horror movie.
Many of the Bluths are casually racist, sexist, and every other -ist... genuinely awful people but the comedy lies in their utter obliviousness to their awfulness. The sly backhanded comments they make towards each other are so often ignored as if all of them are blind to any real critique of who they are. But there's an infallible logic to how these people turned out the way they did, which is the brilliance of its writing and character creation. The marvel of watching them fail so spectacularly is only fun because we know these people and despite all their faults we kind of like them (ok, we like them from afar, we'd never want to be anywhere near them).
So the show's comedy stands up, much of the time, because its comedy of personality. The only people the show is really trying to punch down on is these characters, not any other specific group of people. That said, there are so many red flags, starting the marginalization of the Latinx characters like Lupe, the maid. She's an integral part to many of the show's funnier bits, but hardly a fleshed out character in the show, and so often the joke is just how put-upon she is by being in service of the family. The sympathetic response sometimes outweighs the comedic setup.
Likewise, Lucille Bluth (the absolutely wicked Jessica Walter) has an adopted Korean son "Annyeong" is a half-note above one-note, but again, not much of a developed character. He's there because Lucille wants to make her sMothered adult son Buster (Tony Hale) jealous. There's a pretty great payoff to his presence, but they could have done better with him in the meantime.
The show's handling of sexual identity is right in the early 2000's zone, where there's gay and straight and no inbetween. Queer comedy largely revolves around the sexual identity of brother-in-law Tobias Funke (David Cross), and I think the joke is more the fact that Tobias is so oblivious or in denial about his sexuality than anyone is trying to shame him for it. But the show never acknowledges that he might be somewhere else in the broad spectrum of sexuality than gay, save for one sharply set-up double entendre where he says he's "buy-curious". Barry Zuckercorn (Henry Winkler) is the family's supremely inept lawyer, also, just barely, in the closet, and the show gets some mileage around his Freudian slips, but those tend to tread on deeper, more stereotypical homosexual cliche's and I'm not certain whether they side on funny or offensive. The show's approach to transexuality results in its second most offensive joke which I still have an involuntary reaction to, where Maybe (Alia Shawkat) tries to tell the boy she likes, Steve Holt(!), that her raspy-voiced mother is actually her father who had a sex change. The joke backfiring as Steve Holt (!) is even more intrigued, she presents her mother with a new "designer tee shirt" emblazened with "shemalé" (pronounced "shuh-mall-eh", but obvious what it's actually spelling). It's a funny gag, except it isn't because it's not just pulling a deserving gag on Lindsay (Portia Di Rossi) but kind of punching down on the trans community in the process.
The most flagrantly offensive of Arrested Development's many offenses is so flagrant because even in 2005 when it aired it was really, really wrong, and show creator Mitch Hurwitz should have known better. Hell, at any point any one of dozens upon dozens of people should have called him out on it. The set-up finds Michael drawn to impulsive, eclectic, British Rita (Charlize Theron), and his attempts to court her are seemingly at odds with the family's ongoing legal troubles. The show plays up a British espionage angle with clever diversions and a few James Bond-styled musical stings, but the reality is revealed after a few episodes, that Rita has a neurodevelopmental disorder which the show, painfully, states more than once as "retarded" (the mysterious "Mr. F" turns out to mean "mentally retarded female"). It's not meaning it offensively, but it's still a punchline that even in 2005 was indeed offensive, and they should have known better. That someone who is mentally challenged (I might be saying a bad thing right there, I mean no offense if so) is perceived as being far smarter than they are because they're British is kind of funny but still offensive, and also unable to see it because of their beauty is equally kind of funny/offensive, but add on Michael's deep seeded need to prove the family wrong about his dating prowess is what actually makes it funny. Its his obliviousness that's the joke, but it's the execution that's all over the map. On first watch, where Rita is just the next "manic pixie dream girl" in pop-culture, only to reveal that she's got a disability it was a wild ride and super surprising but, as I said, painful in its reveal. It's the rare instance that seeing the setup on rewatch only makes it more painful, as the show doesn't handle it too tactfully or tastefully. I'm sure there's a way to do that story inoffensively, but they didn't take the time.
And then there's the cast, well, not the cast...but specifically Jeffrey Tambor, who has been outed as problematic on set of his later show Transparent (from which he was ultimately fired) and even a few inappropriate behavioural incidences on this show. I'm not sure what Tambor's status is today, but he certainly doesn't seem as busy as he once was.
And then there's Bob Loblaw, the Bluth's second lawyer, played by Trump-supporting Scott Baio. Bob Loblaw is a funny name for a character and the punny alliterative tonguetwisty playfulness they have with it ("Bob Loblaw's Law Blog", headline reads: "Bob Loblaw Lobs Law Bomb"), and Baio is effectively deadpan, but eerily dead-eyed in the role. I didn't think much of it at the time (replacing Henry Winkler with Scott Baio as the family lawyer made for an immediately funny Happy Days-referencing gag, obviously with voice over from Ron Howard adding an additional layer). But I think even then Baio was showing signs of being a garbage man... a parroting Republican shill. He's just hard to look at in rewatch. But I love those Bob Loblaw jokes. Perhaps they should have gotten Donnie Most instead.
And perhaps it's problematic that the show's most prominent Black character is a GOB's puppet, Franklin. The show knows that the Black affectation the characters put on anytime someone talks to Franklin is very very wrong, and I like the examples of Black people reacting to Franklin (perhaps the best is the guard at the community gate who seems to genuinely enjoy Franklin... Job's music producer, much less so). In GOB's mind, he sees his "relationship" with Franklin as progressive, but GOB's portrayal of a Black person mines pretty much every stereotype out there. It's not good, but then it's not supposed to be. The joke is definitely always on GOB, but does that make it ok? Hard questions.
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Clone High (2002)
A year after an impromptu move to Toronto in 2001, I found myself in semi-isolation, no cable television, not a lot of money and an incredible amount of time on my hands. I took up Blogging, which was a burgeoning thing at the time, before it got corrupted by commercialization, and overridden by social media. Through blogging I met people, virtually, from all over the world, but mostly it became an avenue for a very social club of localites called the GTABloggers. It's through GTAB that Toast and I met and became instant likeminded amigos.
Within the GTAB little cliques formed unintentionally, and a small circle of us really loved our nerdy animation and comics and video games and pop culture ephemera. Amongst our little group Clone High became a big thing. I'll defer to others to clarify the truth but I want to say it was our beloved, now sadly departed friend Jeremy who discovered the show. At the very least when Jeremy and I became roommates, Clone High was regularly on the TV. Living in my head for an eternity is Jeremy's rendition of Mr. Butlertron's catchphrase "Oh, Wesley". Likewise how many times Jeremy would have on his jumper and say "Look at my lovely sweater vest" ala Principle Scudworth. So many in jokes carried along with us that I actually forgot they came from Clone High. It was rewatching this series for the first time in probably 15 years that reminded me.
This rewatch literally brought bittersweet tears to my eyes as memories of Jeremy and his impeccable impersonations of characters from the show came flooding back. I could remember specific moments watching the show with him or remembering specific situations where he pulled out a quote at the perfect time, something he was very, very adept at.
If anything, I'm thankful to Clone High for the many, many memories of Jeremy it returned to me. I miss him so much, and there's never a week that passes that something doesn't bring him to mind. There's so much I wish I could still share with him.
Beyond my obviously very personal, very sentimental attachment to the show, it's created by Bill Lawrence (creator of one of mine and Abed's favourite sitcoms, CougarTown. Also, Scrubs) and Phil Lord and Chris Miller...who are like gods to me. I unironically cite to my kids that Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs is my favourite movie. The Lego Movie is absolute genius. The Jump Street movies are a million times better than they have any right to be and their hands in the pots of things like Last Man on Earth and Into The Spider-Verse just show how unique and amazing their comedic and dramatic touch is. (Oh, Solo, A Star Wars Story, what could have been).
It's Lord and Miller's ability to play with genre conventions that is their truest gift. They seem to have preternatural instincts on how to suck the audience into cliched character and story only to whip them around and surprise them constantly. And they cut their teeth on Clone High which toys with the 90's style high school-based drama, just ramped up to 11, blowing past eyerolling and deep into absurd. The premise, as detailed by the insidiously earwormy theme:
Each of its meager (but welcome) 13 episodes is like an after-school special but warped into getting the message all wrong. An anti-littering episode doesn't even try to stick the message. And the show certainly encourages underage drinking, and drugs, and sex. Because they're fun.
But for all the goof-em-ups and make-em-laughs where the show goes wrong is a very modern consideration. Of the main cast of characters, the characters of colour are mostly not voiced by people of colour. Ghandi is voiced by Michael McDonald (MADTV) and Cleopatra is voiced by Bill Lawrence mainstay (and wife) Christa Miller. I can't imagine anyone else voicing them now (Cleo is such a Christa Miller-type) but the failure in diverse casting to start with is the real problem.
There's also the very public controversy surrounding Ghandi being used as a goofy character which offended a great many in India and partly contributed to the cancellation of the show. I don't know if that's overreaction or not, because it's not really Ghandi, just a hypothetical clone on a nonsensical cartoon. The whole point is that the clones are nothing like their namesakes and, on occasion, they misinterpret the lessons they should be learning from their genetic originals. Okay, i can see now how that might be a little offensive.
There's also Ghengis Khan, a side character whose clone obviously is developmentally challenged. It not necessarily punching down, but the whole comedic intent is just that.
The show perpetuates gay stereotypes with JFK's two dad's, and Joan's dad (voiced by Scrubs' Donald Faison) is playing off the wise old black man cliche (his refrain "I may be blind, but..." then dispensing sage advise) and yet it's doing so very, very knowingly. I'm still wrestling with whether knowingly perpetuating a stereotype for comedic effect isn't still negatively perpetuating the stereotype. I have a hard time with that, as I think satire is one of the more powerful tools to disarm the sterotypes. This will come up again and again as I write about other shows.
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Community (2009-2015)
Community is an all-time top 5 favourite show and pretty much has been from episode one. I remember catching the pilot and thinking I've never seen a pilot so fully realized. From an extremely strong opening that seemed like a mini-movie (credit the Russo Brothers who would go on to some mildly popular stuff) to a few muddled, but still funny follow-ups, the show eventually found its rhythm with the characters and the actors portraying them, not to mention setting up the larger world of Greendale Community College...all the supporting bit players, the running gags, the adversaries, the romantic tensions, the different dynamics between different character pairings, all of it delivered through the filter of Dan Harmon, whose id, ego and superego were laid bare within each of the main characters. Beyond that the show became a vehicle for deconstructing all manner of TV, movie and other storytelling tropes, really making its first big move with the Justin Lin directed, action-heavy paintball episode "Modern Warfare" closing out Season 1. It wasn't just pastiche for pastiche sake, these things mattered in the larger sense and were massively fun.
There's hundreds of hours of podcasts and thousands of blog pages devoted to disseminating the greatness of Community, the magic in a bottle for three seasons, and then documenting just what happens when you take Dan Harmon out of the equation (fired by NBC for reasons) and then what happens when you put him back in again (Season 5) and then shift the program to an anything goes streaming service (Yahoo! Screen) where you constraints are not the same as they ever were. Experimental, I think, would be the right word for what happened upon Harmon's return.
Season 5 contains a few of my top 5 favourite episodes, and rewatching season 6, I see the struggle they had adapting to a liberated, commercial-less structure, but it's a remarkably funny if altogether different season, that would only have been better we're Troy and Shirley even partly around in more than just spirit.
The wife and I looping Community, it's part of our Christmas tradition to rewatch the season 1,2&3 Christmas episodes on Christmas Eve, and we usually watch a few random episodes following. This was he first time we've done a real rewatch of full seasons since the show ended. But we didn't start from the beginning, we started with Season 5, then 6 then went back to 1,2 and 3. And we watched the (Oscar winner) Jim Rash-penned episode of Season 4, the gas-leak year, as it's the only episode of that imposter season that even feels legitimately comparable to a Dan Harmon produced episode.
The show and its characters are beloved. In my household we quote it all the time. The "Troy and Abed In The Morning" mug is sometimes a hotly contested item. And so while we can critique the hell out of it when it doesn't work like season 4, and when it's a little off in early season 1 or parts of season 6, it was genuinely painful when we heard that "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" was being conceded as problematic and removed from Netflix's streaming.
In that episode, Chang (Ken Jeong), who has already been established as a crazy person, shows up to their D&D game in makeup as a "Dark Elf", his face,ears, neck and hands all covered in the blackest of black makeup with the brightest white wig on. The intention is three-fold: one, getting truly in the character of playing D&D, the Dark Elf race being a long-standing archetype in the game, and Chang's depiction pretty accurate, two, again exacerbating Chang's rather unhinged nature, and three, the alarming nature of such dark makeup being applied is absolutely a little shocking and the show calls this out with Shirley stating "and we're just going to ignore this hate crime right here?" It's a good joke but also one that's a deeply offensive trigger. They show admits they're trying to get away with something. I don't want to deny anyone their offense, but as comedy it's really only punching down on Chang, a consummate comedy whipping boy on the show that is never about his ethnicity (except the one joke where he forgets what his ancestral nationality is). I struggle mostly because "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" has been such a crucial gateway into Community for our nerd friends who never got past thinking that (ugh) Big Bang Theory was the preeminent nerd culture TV show of the decade. Yes I'm punching down on Big Bang Theory because I found it offensive in its use of stereotypes to portray nerds for a whole fucking decade.
I hope there's a way they can resolve the made up Chang to be less offensive, like if they can tint him a dark blue or something. The episode deals more heavily with fat shaming, referencing a prior episode when Jeff (Joel McHale) made a reference to "Fat Neil". Well, it wound up becoming a moniker for Neil that stuck and sent his self confidence in a spiral, to the point that Jeff noticed his depression and arranged for a D&D game with the study group to help lift his spirits. There's a double-edged sword, as the episode is commenting on harm of body shaming while also being very guilty of it (*cough*tiny nipples*cough*)... and the "Fat Neil" moniker wound up sticking to the character in the fan culture, rather than, say "D&D Neil" or "RPG Neil" or just "Neil". There's a particularly incisive exchange in the episode:
Jeff is the bad guy, but he's trying to make amends, whereas Pierce (Chevy Chase) hits the height of his villainy this episode, Dan Harmon's frustration with working with Chase clearly coming out in the character's portrayal.
The show does explore issues with race, religion, weight, sexuality, age and more and does so craftily and creatively. It damns the Baby Boomer generation through Pierce through his inability to develop his PCness ("It sounds like 'penis'"). He says the most inappropriate things, often obliviously, but just as often pointedly. But his japes about Britta or Jeff's sexuality, or Annie's religion, or Troy, Abed and Shirley's race only serve to paint him as out of touch and make him out to be in the wrong. I think the tolerance the show continued to show Pierce (and even Chang with his very troubling actions as a result of possible mental illness) show the gentleness and thoughtfulness of the show. As much as these guys piss off the rest of them, they're still willing to try with them to make them more enlightened, to find common ground, to keep them as part of the family.
Chang's reiteration of the word "gay" as an insult, much like Pierce and his off-colour colloquialisms, is unappealing in its frequent usage. But very quickly in the show we're taken to dismiss anything Pierce or Chang have to say (or the actions they do) because the show, its characters and its audience know they're in the wrong.
For a long time I found the most offensive part of the show was that Shirley, despite being part of the core cast, often seemed to be given the shortest shrift in the show. Upon rewatch, looking explicitly for the amount of screentime Yvette Nicole Brown is given and in what capacity she is used, I noticed that she does get the spotlight more than I recalled, but also the stories she given are not as much fun... she's the most real and grounded character on the show, sporting the most pain and baggage that she can't seem to crawl out from under (divorcee, mother, Christian, recovering alcoholic, aspirations to run a business). But despite the fact that she's not the most prominent figure comedically, she's absolutely the beating heart of the show, which is why season 6 often feels so wounded. Even more than Troy's absense (which is brought up often), Shirley's absence is what's really felt. Pierce's absence is barely noticed.
The show worked in very binary terms for a while, trying to pigeonhole gay or straight, but through Dean Pelton (Rash) it managed to expose the spectrum of sexuality. By the time it got to season six, and it was questioning the sexuality of new cast member Frankie (Pagette Brewster, "the humble outsider who came in an nailed it"), it didn't matter. It didn't give answers despite the gang's curiosity, as if to say, "stop worrying so much about it". Some people want labels, and some people want to keep it private. Everyone has that right to choose how to identify themselves, or whether to identify themselves at all.
It's also important to note that Harmon himself was problematic behind the scenes, something he owns and apologizes for. He's aware he's a difficult personality and he's actively trying to be better. Whether he's been successful or not is another issue. Off set, Harmon keeps getting raked over the coals by alt-right trolls for his Channel 101 videos. Like James Gunn or Sarah Silverman before him, Harmon's sense of "provocative humour" especially at a younger age led to a lot of unsavory attempts at comedy that, viewed in the wrong lens seems to be condoning or promoting some pretty heinous things. The thing I acknowledge is the sense of ownership and their evolution
Side note: I was for a long time having issues with Alison Brie playing Jewish in the show, but turns out she is on her mother's side, so egg on my face for not looking that up sooner.
I love this show. Except season 4. It's mostly dog barf. And hooray for COVID to give us this reunion table read fundraiser (ok, not really "Hooray for COVID, but make the best of the worst situation, right?)
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Father Ted (1995-1998)
Polls about all-time best shows in Ireland routinely put Father Ted right at the top. It's a monumental program in their culture, to the point that their post office is issuing Father Ted stamps this year. The seasons 2&3 bridging special episode, "A Christmassy Ted" is another staple view in our household tradition on Christmas Eve. I've seen that episode more times than I've seen all the rest of the episodes combined at this point. A rewatch was highly in order.
And jesus if it still isn't one of the funniest shows ever made. It's curious to me that the very Catholic country of Ireland so embraced a show that was both making fun of the Catholic Church and also being very subtly critical of it. But it's also done in such a way that seems to scream "Irish!" that it's playfully japing at the homeland of its creators and stars. Who knew that Catholics had such a sense of humour about themselves, but their embracing of the show is a sure sign they do. Maybe it's just an Irish t'ing.
The show builds almost an alternate reality around the Catholic Church in Ireland, one full of very, very peculiar characters. Likewise, Ireland here is represented by "Craggy Island" a small, isolated place with denizens as peculiar as the Church that serves them. The Craggy Island Parochial House is the show's home base, where our main characters live.
Father Ted (Dermot Morgan), obviously is the star of the show. He's is the head of the home, and is a complicated man. He's driven by ego and seeking fame more than spreading the word of the lord and servicing the people. His lust for women and money seem at odds with who he should be, and the obvious reason why he remains a priest is because people pay attention to him and listen to him, it doesn't really seem to fulfil him otherwise. He's often forgetful or dismissive of the Church's teachings, beliefs and practices until he remembers his place. He was sent to Craggy Island as a demotion after some impropriety around charitable funds ("that money was just resting in my account"). He's well-intentioned, mostly, but often his self-serving nature get in the way of good intentions.
Father Dugall McGuire (Ardal O'Hanlon) is the sitcom trope of the idiot character ratcheted up where he's completely oblivious to pretty much everything all the time. "What's happening, Ted?" frequently pops out of his mouth. He's naive, and youthful, like an 8-year-old child in a man's body. He's a priest likely because his family didn't know what else to do with him. He doesn't understand the Church's teachings and any attempt to sermonize or perform Fatherly duties always end in spectacular disaster (a graveside tending resulted in the coffin on fire somehow).
Along with Dugall, Father Jack Hackett (Frank Kelly) is Father Ted's other burden. A perpetually soused, abusive, foul-mouthed, lecherous old crank, he's less of a character and more a part of the set, occasionally piping up like a cuckoo clock "Drink! Feck! Arse! Girls!" But storylines about Jack are less character spotlight than sitcom premise.
The three priests are served by their housekeeper, Mrs. Doyle (Pauline McLynne) a widower who lives exclusively to keep the Parochial House well fed and clean (except Father Jack's vile corner of the room, which seems to spread like a fungus up the walls). We see Mrs. Doyle engage with other Parochial housekeepers and they're all of the same sort, all wearing the same homely attire, with their hair up in a nest, and smirky, unbemused faces, taking religion far more seriously than the Fathers.
Most episodes find the Parochial House being visited by other priests, and they're a mad lot of strange characters, like Father Stone, the most boring man alive. There's Father Finton Stack who insults everyone he comes across and plays jungle music at 3AM. Father "Todd Unctious", a grifter priest out to steal Ted's "Golden Cleric Award" (which he received for helping a band of Priests escape the women's lingerie section of a mainland department store without inciting further controversy for the church). And there's Sister Assumpta from the "Matty Hislop cult" (I don't get that reference), who is asked to come to the Parochial House to whip the priests into shape, but they instantly regret the choice once the Nurse Ratched-style abuse starts happening.
And then of course, there's Bishop Brennan, Ted's boss. He puts the fear of God in Ted, and every visit is a waking nightmare. When Ted loses the "All-Priests Five-A-Side Over-75s Indoor Football
Challenge Match" against his chief rival, Father Dick Byrne (he runs a
mirror parochial house with a dullard, a drunkard and a Mrs. Doyle-esque
housekeeper as well) his losing condition is that he has to kick Bishop
Brennan up the arse, a brilliant setup that is executed even better. Bishop Brennan is said to have a secret family in California, a fact Ted should never have told Dougal, who asks the Bishop outright about it. The show constantly displays how hypocritical the patriarchs of the church are.
As much of a non-issue as making fun of the Catholic Church was for the show, there's a few other aspects of the show that could pose as problematic. The first is when Father Dick Byrne and his lackey priests dress up as Diana Ross and the Supremes for the "All Priests Stars in Their Eyes Lookalike Competition", complete in brown face makeup. It's rough, and it's hard to tell if the show is knowingly saying that this is a rough look for three priests to be doing, or if the show even really cares. It's not pointed out, and nobody certainly says anything about it.
There's a whole episode though devoted to exploring racism on Craggy Island. Upon returning in shame from an all-too-brief stint in London, Father Ted is caught doing a "Chinaman" impersonation by new Irish-Chinese residents, even typically oblivious Dugall watches Ted's performance with a dubious eye. Ted spends the rest of the episode fending off accusations of being racist and trying to make inroads with the Chinatown residents. The offending impersonation is, seriously, awful, but it leads to an earnest and hilarious examination of what being racist actually means and how even well-meaning white people can be so oblivious to their racist tendencies. Plus, the local asking Ted: "I hear your a racist now, Father? Should we all be racist now? What's
the Church's position? I'm so busy down on the farm I won't have much
time for the ol' racism." Hilarious. But, as mentioned before, rehashing racist stereotypes also serves to reinforce racist stereotypes. It's tricky. But the question is should things like "Are You Right There Father Ted" or "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" be pulled from broadcast altogether, or is it just censorship? Should they limited to use in stimulating discussion? Should they have warnings in advance? And what would that warning be? "Warning: this episode contains a scene or scenes that feature racist stereotype or imagery used for satirical purposes which some may find offensive. Viewer discretion is advised?"
To me the worst part about revisiting Father Ted these days is knowing that show co-creator and co-writer Graham Linehan has become fervently anti-trans. He has taken up a reprehensible position online as a vocally outspoken against trans rights, frequently baiting trans activists all under a "please think of the children" refrain that masks a serious misunderstanding of the issues. He's a TERF, trans-exclusive radical feminist, and believes that the gains women have made are threatened by including trans women and their plight into the cause. He thinks the online harrassment TERF-boosters receive is somehow comparable or worse than what trans people experience online and in person just trying to live their life. I'm not saying harassing someone or threatening them for their ideology is right (two wrongs still don't make right) but neither is baiting people into having to defend themselves and persisting to be publicly injurious to a whole community of people. He can have his opinion and shut up about it, but he chooses to be very, very public about it, apparently speaking for the other TERF women who get shouted down when they try to speak up about their views (at least according to him).
(cringe alert on the next video)
The IT Crowd is another favourite show of mine that Linehan created, and in the third season of that show there's an episode where the misogynistic, bullying Douglas Renholm starts dating a reporter who is trans. She is upfront about it, but he mishears her and persists with the relationship and falls in love. But when he finally finds out, he dumps her and is heartbroken. She really was the perfect woman for him, and my read of that was always that it was Douglas' issue that his narrow-mindedness couldn't see past, not that the show was criticizing trans people. I still think it can be read that way, but Linehan's status the past few years taints that appraisal. There's nothing transphobic in Father Ted to my recollection, but trans issues weren't very public at that time. Father Ted is generally a very sweet show, but man Linehan's steadfast stance heavily threatens to sour his work.
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Flight of the Conchords (2009-2010)
I'm trying to think of an example of a musical sitcom that worked before Flight of the Conchords, and likewise trying to think of one that worked after. I know Garfunkle & Oates copied the Conchords formulae for their IFC show, which worked to some degree, but besides that I haven't seen another show like Flight of the Conchords.
FotC is the musical novelty act of Brett McKenzie (The Muppets) and Jemaine Clement (Legion) which emerged from New Zealand into a smash hit at Edinborough Fringe Festival, followed by a successful BBC radio play and a best comedy album Grammy, leading into this HBO series. It finds "Brett" and "Jemaine" two starving artists in New York City trying to make a go as a two-man novelty band. Their "manager" is Murray (Rhys Darby), the head of the New Zealand consulate who is just as naive about how to truly exist in the mean streets of NYC as they are. He may even be more naive than Brett and Jemaine about how to properly manage and book a band, nevertheless he persists.
The band has one fan, the obsessive Mel (the deliriously funny Kristen Schall) who lusts after both Brett and Jemaine (not reciprocated) while her cuckolded husband Doug is often within earshot or arm's reach.
There's no over-arching story to FotC, the band never really takes off, and every episode finds them in a nearly similar status as the last. Of the 22 episodes, the majority of them deal with one or both of the boys courting or dating women, awkwardly.
The story fstructure acts as a set-up for typically 2-3 interlude songs per episode, which may or may not have direct relation to the story (but are often interpreted more as daydreaming). It's the music which really shines, as it's notoriously difficult to make comedy music that is not only funny, but legitimately good songs on their own. Brett and Jemaine are chameleonic in their ability to mimic styles, jumping genres frequently, cribbing from the likes of Bowie and Depeche Mode, emulating dancehall reggae and knowingly incompetent (but semi-competent) hip hop. There are epic ballads and seriously danceable jams, and they're consistently catchy, conceptually entertaining and frequently hilarious.
The show is largely inoffensive, as Brett and Jemaine's quiet New Zealand demeanour informs the pace of the show. They can be a little oblivious and selfish as boyfriends (the song "Carol Brown" - a trip through all the women that have dumped Jemaine - highlights that point.), but it speaks more to their immaturity than any true sexist or misogynistic leanings (the start of the song "Boom" Brett addresses, in secret, the girl he's crushing on: "I wanna tell her how hot she is but she'll think I'm sexist. She's so hot she's making me sexist...bitch...", but that's more playful than earnestly offensive). The song "Ladies of the World" perhaps is the closest they come to dated conceptual ideas, as they list out different types of "lay-days", they croon "hermaphrodite... ladyman layday/aw you sexy ladyman laydays, with your sexy lady bits and your sexy man bits too/even you must be into you-ho-hoo"... again I don't think it's meant to be offensive, but it seems perhaps a bit reductive.
There might be other examples of bad behaviour on the show, like their attempt at confronting "racism" when fruit vendor Aziz Ansari refuses to sell them fruit because they're from New Zealand (only for it to later turn out he's *actually* "racist" against Australians and it's all okay between them), or their squeamishness at being in a threesome, but together with one woman, not individually with two ladies. Or their mistreatment of Murray's best friend Jim who is just trying to be friendly...but that's just them being kind of insular jerks.
If anything, my problem with the show is the way Brett and Jemaine alternate between being super-sweet dudes and real goddamned pricks (but still kind of sweet-like). It's an internal consistency flaw that drives me a bit nuts when bingeing the show. But I still love it, and even more I love the tunes. I always wind up putting the Conchords albums on non-stop for weeks after watching the show.
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Happy Endings (2011-2013)
As much as I enjoy Happy Endings (original review), another on the slate of the Russo Brothers directed and produced comedies (see also Arrested Development and Community) it's sometimes some "roof stooff" to watch without feeling squeamish. This latest rewatch of its three seasons, I lost count of how many times I said "that is so wrong".
The cast reunited during the pandemic for a brand new, original episode (in support of charities) that was really well done...with as much production value as you can put into basically a Zoom chat, but the editing was really good. It was just loaded with in-jokes, meta jokes, pandemic jokes, call-backs, and just utter silliness, yet still moving the "story" of the show forward. The writing staff reunited and churned out one of the best-ever scripts of the show, and it seemed both audience and cast would be very welcome for a return (the video is only 120K views, though, it's probably unlikely to happen)
As pointed out in the Q&A afterward perhaps the show's biggest problem is Adam Pally playing a gay character. Host Damian Holbrook asked Adam Pally what it's like to be a gay icon in the role of Max and, Pally, obviously very aware of the temperature today, seemed apprehensive about answering for fear of saying something terribly wrong. 10 years ago it was *probably* not a good idea to hire a straight guy in a gay role. Today it's *really* not a good idea to hire a straight guy for a gay role. It goes back to representation and bringing one's truth to a character. Unlike animation where you can, in theory, update the cast swapping out the voice actor, it's harder to just upend a character that a specific performer's mannerisms, look and personality have put into it by changing the players. Max was pretty defining for his time, a schlubby mess of a gay dude, who fell into no gay stereotypes except that he loved sexing up other dudes. There were many love interests, most played by gay actors, and Pally committed to same sex makeouts wholeheartedly...they're some very passionate (and in one instance very romantic) kissing scenes (the best of the show actually). So it's not the performance, and it's not a reductive stereotype, but awareness that Pally isn't gay means the character lacks an essential truth.
The other thing about Max, and likely something Pally brought to the role, is his frequent descent into a Black affectation, often quoting a song or a movie, but still adopting a vocal fry that calls another race. It's something Max just keeps slipping into, sometimes with Brad (Damon Wayans Jr.) joining in (does that make it alright?), sometimes with Brad urging caution. I honestly don't know if this quoting of Black pop culture is actually acceptable like imitating Borat or Larry David, but the amount at which Max does it seems inappropriate at best, offensive at worst. The show seems to think that Brad's presence makes it more excusable.... the "I have a friend who is X, so I can say that awful thing" excuse.
The whole "gay" of Happy Endings had me thinking that, just maybe, its creator David Caspewas gay and therefore if he cast and wrote/oversaw the gay characters, then Max would be more acceptable. Likewise the current Showtime show, Black Monday created by Caspe has a couple gay characters, one of which is portrayed by Paul Scheer who I know isn't gay, so if Caspe being gay made that choice then I think you have to accept that. Except, Caspe isn't gay. He's, in fact, married to Casey Wilson who stars as Penny in Happy Endings and Blair (Andrew Rannels)'s wife/beard in Black Monday. Part of the deal with Black Monday is it's set in the 80's and all the gay characters are closeted so was it part of the subterfuge hiring a straight actor only to reveal late in the first season that he's gay? And is that acceptable, especially when he's out and flamboyant in the second season, teetering on stereotype? (I love Scheer, but I'm not sure this was a great idea. At least Rannels is an out performer).
There's a part in Happy Endings where Penny is mad that Max is the worst gay BFF because Max doesn't want to do all the stereotypical gay BFF stuff with her, and so Max introduces her to Derek (Stephen Guarino ), a very outlandish and flamboyant character who will fulfill all those offensively stereotypical gay tropes for her. Derek becomes an occasional player in the show, his sing-songy "Draaaa-maaaaa!" one of the catchiest of catch phrases, and he gets some pretty good character development for an ancillary player who could have remained knowingly (and painfully) one note.
And then there's Dave (Zachary Knighton) who in thesecond season does a DNA ancestry test and finds out he's 1/16 Navajo, which he from then on leans into very, very hard for the remainder of the show. He tries to recapture some sense of that heritage, but it all seems to be stereotype and surface-level, not very well researched, and probably quite offensive if it wasn't so obvious that the joke is at Dave's expense. It plays with the idea of white people appropriating a culture that isn't truly theirs (see Max again) but doesn't every really get down to business with it. It just keeps playing it for laughs. The other thing, though, is it's totally in Dave's stupid-sweet nature to attempt to connect with that ancestral path and fail so spectacularly, and yet keep trying. I don't know if that excuses any offense...we're operating in a really weird time, and I don't know a lot of the time whether I should be laughing at something or not. There's a sort of adage that comedy is anything that's funny, but funny is subjective, holds true, and subjectively speaking I'm kind of confused
The one thing that's obvious is the cast loves each other, and they have a ball playing in this sandpit. That's part of what makes the show so endearing is the obvious fun and affection that the players have for each other and their characters. You can't make a "pile on" of insults (Penny's such a stupid clumsy bitch) so endearing unless you love one another a great deal.
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Letterkenny
The most recent of programs on this list, Letterkenny was the little foul-mouthed, chore-doin', hockey-watchin', whiskey swiggin', bar-brawlin' engine that could. Starting very, very small as a web series, and evolving into a cross-border hit on Hulu, Letterkenny now has the potential for regional franchises internationally, exploring rural small-town life everywhere on the planet.
Although the show now sports 8 seasons worth of content, a "season" here tend to be a 6 episode spurt, twice annually, sometimes with a holiday special inbetween. At this stage the show is just over 50 episodes but it's still very consumable.
I've already writtten about Season 1, and Seasons 2 through and I think I've covered a lot of the more concerning aspects of the series in those write-ups. But to quickly recap: the main problem of the show is it's lingering lens and objectification of women. It stocks its show with a bevvy of attractive women, often shuffles them around in crop tops or lingerie and then tries to earn its femenist bona fides with Squirrelly Dan (K. Trevor Wilson)'s talk of "Professor Trisha", his women's studies teacher.
To be fair (ahem)... the show's women, beyond the ogling lens, are a right force of nature in the show. Kid sister Katie (Michelle Mylett) is the Elaine of this group of guys hanging out. She's extremely comfortable with her sexuality, often to the discomfort of big brother Wayne (Jared Keeso) who doesn't like that she runs around in next to no clothes half the time but knows enough to not push the issue. Wayne's not totally uptight, just guarded, and overprotective. When sexual subjects are the topic of the day, Wayne may not be the most eager to contribute, but his intellectual curiousity usually finds him wading deep into the conversation.
The fictional town of Letterkenny abuts Native reservation land, where there is initially contention between the townies and the res, a truce is called and there's frequent crossover. There's not a lot of observation of life on the res, but the characters (well, Tanis, played by Tiio Horn, at least) are more than just cliches and the show largely avoids stereotypes (the fact that they're introduced selling cigarettes in town, though, and also approached to try and offload the marijuana plants found on Waynes property is kind of an early low bar that it thankfully rises above).
Gail, owner of Modeens bar, is one of few Black characters on the show, but she's a hilarious presence, rarely is a sentence uttered without some form of innuendo underneath, often directed at Wayne. Gail is hyper-sexual and has no preferences (well, she's got a fetish for Octogenarians), but it's Lisa Codrington's physicality in the role that kills me. She often talks while gyrating or thrusting her hips, or in broader outdoor scenes, her oversized boots, barely laced, her legs seemingly floating out of them give her this sort of rubber-ankle appearance as she moves about anxiously. She will often break into Jamaican patois to accentuate a point which seems to always fly over the townies' heads.
Wayne's girlfriends are great and I like the way the show navigates the relationships, often subtly and quietly, with more intimate moments happening between scenes. Rosie (Clark Backo) is Gail's cousin who meets Wayne when he's seeking a stud for his aggressive bitch (he's breeding dogs). Rosie and Wayne work because she lets him have his space and he gives her hers. But she takes a job in BC and departs. Wayne has a fling with Tanis and they're like oil and fire. They can mix but the results are dangerous. Wayne meets Marie-Fred (Magalie Lépine-Blondeau) in Quebec and she's a natural fit. The conversations he has with Dary, Squirrelly Dan and Katie, he has with Marie-Fred when they're alone. If there's any outright prejudice in the show it's more against the Francophones in Ontario (it's not a good look on you Bonnie McMurry) and the Anglais in Quebec, but they do address it.
The show only really punches down on the meth heads and the upcountry degenerates... and city folk... and actual racists (like when Jay Baruchelturns up as Hard Right Jay trying to stir up alt-right bullshit in town) ... and maybe even the menonites who are completely oblivious (the Dycke family, Noah and Anita, plus their daughters Charity and Chastity, and then Squirrelly Dan's love interest Lovinia). Ok, it kind of punches down on a lot of "types" but it's never gender or race based, it's always just who's pissing them off, which for Wayne seems to be most everyone. So there's punching down of the townies too (the season 7 arc about the boys' agricultural call-in show on cable access shows this, and how "bad gas travels fast in a small town"). And yet, in a small town, you help out your neighbour and that's that.
There's an insular nature to the Letterkenny residents, not that they're afraid to venture out (over to Quebec, or "the City", or to the rippers across the border) but sitting in front of the fruit stand or at the bar seems to be enough for them. A beer, some conversation, playful wordplay, and maybe a tussle at the bar, kind of simple and, maybe not perfect, but nice. At the same time, the denizens are sexually adventurous and containing none of the rural prudeness one typically associates with small-town life. It's like a defining calling card as to what the youth of rurual communities should be striving for, tolerance and acceptance.
KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. The "birthday week" now comes to a close, ending with my most anticipated movie of the year, but also accompanied by so much apprehension. I came here to review movies and eat cake, and I'm all out of cake.
This Week: Masters of the Universe (2026, d. Travis Knight - in theatre) Backrooms (2026, d. Kane Parsons - in theatre)
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Masters of the Universe, the toy line, debuted in 1982. I was 6 years old. My introduction to He-Man and company was probably the TV commercials, but my obsession most likely started with issue 47 of DC Comics Presents in which Superman and He-Man teamed up against Skeletor on Eternia, the homeworld of the Masters of the Universe. I was immediately obsessed. I was as obsessed with "MOTU" (as it's known in the fan community) as I was with Star Wars and DC superheroes.
The toy line would receive more comics series from both DC and Marvel in the next few years, there would also be a fan magazine, and yes, billions of dollars in toy sales of ridiculously over-muscled broad-and-squat characters with ridiculous names like Stinkor (he stinks of patchouli), Extendar (his limbs extend), and Buzz-off (he's a wasp-man). There was an immensely popular cartoon that had two seasons with over 60 episodes each, as well as a holiday special and a spin-off series with He-Man's sister, She-Ra.
In 1987, infamous schlock purveyors Cannon Films produced a Masters of the Universe live action movie, which, it's absolutely fair to say, was a disappointment to everyone at the time. Cannon sunk over $20 million into the film -- a sizable budget for them, but not nearly big enough to do the property justice -- and so most of the film takes place on Earth with a paltry few characters form MOTU's vast lore appearing, and the majority of the film focusing on Courtney Cox's teenage orphan and her boyfriend. It was a huge slap in every child's face that we had a He-Man movie that did not center on He-Man and felt nothing like what we knew about the property. As well, the cartoon had ceased making new episodes almost two years prior, and public attention to the property was flagging something fierce. Toys were not selling like they used to. By 1988 the line was basically dead.
MOTU has been rebooted a bunch of times since, and the fan community is immensely supportive of the property, it's just not a huge community. Likely in the tens of thousands, rather than millions like, say, Transformers or Star Wars. Even the 1987 film has since become kind of a camp classic, and I personally enjoy it far more as an adult than I ever did as a kid. Still, I've always wished for a proper He-Man movie, and for the past 20 years (at least) there have been teases, over and over again, with false starts at nearly every major studio. It felt like it was never going to happen...and now it has... and... for the most part, it seemed to be what I had been waiting for, a big-budget ($200 million dollar) production that understands both how ridiculous the property is while also understanding why it's so beloved to the die hards.
Director Travis Knight came from the world of animation (as head of Laika and director of Kubo and the Two-Strings) and directed the best Transformers movie of the lot in Bumblebee, an impeccable 1980's-styled adventure in an Amblin pastiche. I had the utmost confidence that he could make a good He-Man movie. The ideal was that it would be as good as Bumblebee, or share the tone of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, and that it would be a good introduction to MOTU to a whole new generation, and not just a movie for 50 year olds who can't let go of their childhood.
It genuinely pains me to say that Masters of the Universe is a highly flawed movie. It delivers on being a live-action He-Man movie in ways my inner man-child cannot deny... I had warm fuzzies in my belly often, and squealed in glee more than a few times throughout, but it's still not he MOTU movie of my dreams, and that makes me sad.
The film opens with operatic voices in harmony, "AH-AH"-ing to pulsating synths that made me think a vintage ABBA song was about to play... and the guitars kick in, and I got goosebumps. Composer Daniel Pemberton mixes in his score these elements of 70's Euro-disco with 80's guitar-rock and enlisted Queen's Brian May to provide the guitar riffs. It is most suitably epic and triumphant. If you reach back to the epic rock soundtracks of the 1980s - Queen's Highlander, Toto's Dune, Tangerine Dream's Legend - this is reaching, achieving, and in some cases surpassing those grandiose scores, while also paying homage to them (it borrows at least one track from Highlander - "Princes of the Universe"). It has a few needledrops, which are kind of on the nose in-the-moment, and yet also tone-perfect for the type of film this is, and The Darkness provides the title song "Masters of the Universe". I was not expecting this acoustic assault, but it was so incredibly welcome, and helped elevate the film where it otherwise would fall a little further down.
The film has an extended prologue, where we meet Adam, Prince of Eternia, as a child. He's forced by his father to partake in battle training, but he's not much of a fighter. The other children in training pick on him, and Duncan (Idris Elba, Luther), the king's Man-At-Arms, is a heavy-handed trainer, though he does find ways to encourage and inspire the hapless young prince. The King, however, wants toughness, strength and determination out of his son, and is willing to traumatically embarrass him to do so. It's a tough prologue when so much of it talks about "being a man" and what that entails, and all of it has to do with strength and being a fighter. This had me perplexed as to what the messaging of the film was to be...(Pemberton plays a piano riff of "Boys Don't Cry" over one scene). It almost seemed to be promoting toxic masculinity.
The palace is attacked by the forces of Skeletor (Jared Leto, The Little Things) and Adam is sent through a portal off to Earth, his mother's homeworld, alone, with only the fabled "Sword of Power" (there's an even earlier prologue attempting to explain just what power this sword has) to accompany him, which he promptly loses. We smash cut to 15 years later and Adam (Nicholas Galatzine, The Sheep Detectives) is an awkward, soft-spoken dork who works in HR, and has been obsessed with his past life on Eternia. He knows the Sword is his way back, and has been searching for it for a long time. When he finally finds it, it alerts his home world and a literal Beast-Man comes after him, but so too does his old friend Teela (Camila Mendes, Riverdale)
These two stretches of film account for about 40 minutes at the top of the film, and while both are called back to and play a part later in the film, they are each waaay too long. The stretch on Earth feels particularly tedious, especially as there's a nonsensical gym sequence where Adam has a nonsensical conversation with another guy working out who just happens to be Dolph Lundgren, the portrayer of He-Man in 1987. I'm not against fan-service. I'm a fan, I like to be serviced, but subtly. This scene stops the movie dead in its tracks for about 2 minutes, as Lundgren gives the young man advice, which ONLY makes sense in a Meta context, and then what little weight was had in the delivery is undercut by a dumb joke.
And that's a major flaw of this film, it's incessant need to undercut itself with dumb jokes. It's the "Marvel-model" of filmmaking that had played itself out by the time the pandemic hit, so there's no excuse as to why the script is resurrecting it here. Cut out half of these moments where the script undercuts itself with humour and you have a much better, tighter film.
This is, of course, the product of multiple screenwriters contributing to many, many drafts over the years. Four screenwriters are credited here, and it's hard not to blame all the film's weaknesses on the script. Because, Knight's direction is pretty rock solid. The action sequences all play out quite well, with the super-powers of these characters, or the fighting skills of others all being utilized in really fun ways and not feeling super generic, or, in that sometimes Marvel way of it just being CGI characters blasting each other with laser beams.
The film really starts moving when Beast-Man and Teela show up. The energy just starts to crackle and these characters are really well translated from toy/animation/comics-to-screen. Mendes' reveal on screen is particularly captivating, as she exudes strength, confidence and charm that I never would have expected from her CW background. She looks and feels like a movie star, and I hadn't expected that from her or this film.
Teela brings Adam back to Eternia, but not one he remembers. It's been under Skeletor's thrall for 15 years and things have not gone well. Adam's return with the Sword has exposed the Eternian resistance and Skeletor's forces attack, but in the process, Adam turns into He-Man and a new hope for the people of the land raises... except that even with all that power, Adam is still Adam, and his first avenue is hope and optimism and looking for the best in people... but the lesson he needs is that sometimes fighting is necessary to protect the people you care for. Diplomacy is always Adam's first choice (he was always pretty good at human resources) but now he has the power (and, honestly, "the power" basically represents confidence here) to stand up and fight, and to get back up when knocked down.
Knight's path to becoming an accomplished director was not a hard one. His dad is Phil Knight, the billionaire founder of Nike. The animation studio Travis heads was bought for him by his father. But to his credit, Knight worked at his craft, and clearly has both an aptitude and a talent for directing and storytelling. One can look at him as being perfect for telling the story of Adam, of a young man (of privilege) who doesn't necessarily live up to his father's (or anyone's) expectations, and feels lost, only to find his true calling and, while not without its hurdles, excel at it. It's not fully the story we need, but Knight found a way to make this story personal to him, and it does elevate it slightly.
It keeps coming back to the script, though. It fumbles its exploration of masculinity pretty badly. It takes a shot at it, but it doesn't just miss the target, it doesn't even know where the target is. With all the writers involved, it's like nobody thought to consult an expert, to get it right.
But what it does get right... and it's so weird to say this... is Skeletor. Jared Leto, buried under a blue-skinned body suit, and a CGI skull with beady-red lazer-pointer eyes, is mercifully unrecognizable, and nails the assignment. Leto as a performer is sometimes insufferable, and allegations made about his off-screen behaviour makes one like him even less, but this... he got this. Skeletor is an evil, cackling villain of no redeeming virtue, and unapologetic about it. He's also freaking funny, as funny as he is intimidating, which serves to simultaneously make him more and less intimidating if that makes any sense. It's a camp performance, but one that works perfectly for both the character and the film. Alison Brie (Freelance), who plays Evil-Lyn, Skeletor's mistress and aide, and shares the most screentime with him, is a gifted comedic actress, but even she has a difficult time keeping up with Leto. It's clear she's attempting to match his tone, but only is able to get there half the time.
There are many characters from the toys and cartoons and lore that pop up in this film, and it's a bevvy of delights. It tickles me to see Fisto, Ram-Man, Mekanek, Spikor, Tri-Clops, Trap-Jaw. Roboto, Battle Cat, and so many more, alongside vehicles like the Sky-Sled, Roton, Talon Fighter and more in this picture, not to mention playsets like Castle Greyskull and Snake Mountain. What a damn treat. I was giddy in seeing it all and only wanted more.
As there were delights, there were also let-downs, but Nicholas Galatzine was not one of them. His squeaky-voiced Adam, with posture seemingly learned from studying Christopher Reeve's Clark Kent, does exactly the job it needs to do, and when he transforms into He-Man, he still effectively conveys being Adam inside a muscle-bound barbarian's body, but also shows the character levelling up emotionally. Really, really solid job.
I could go on about the ups and downs of this movie and the wild roller-coaster of emotions I went on watching it. In the end, it's fine, but sadly, fine isn't what the property needed if it were going to be resuscitated for a new generation. That was my greatest hope for it, that this would a super strong movie enjoyable by kids and adults alike and so exciting and entertaining and undeniable that there would be millions of children clamouring for action figures instead of phone screens. I guess we'll have to wait for Toy Story 5 to do that.
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Kane Parsons' 9-minute Backrooms (sometimes The Backrooms) short film from 2022 currently sits with an astonishing 83 million views on Youtube. Backrooms is not just a single short, but a series of shorts made in the past few years , but none of the follow-up twenty or so videos come close to hitting that number of views (most of them have between 3 and 18 million views, which is still quite impressive). What's not so astonishing is that a studio was willing to gamble on a modestly-budgeted feature derived from the Backrooms series given the impressive numbers it's pulled...no, the astonishing thing is that the studio, in this case A24, was willing to take a chance on the feature with Parsons at the helm.
The video series itself was not the original invention of Parsons, but a product of message board groupthink in the creepypasta horror subgenre, and the idea of "backrooms" itself became its own sub-subgenre.
I wasn't familiar with any of this until very recently. But, to watch Parsons' original short, which is somewhat recreated in the prologue to the film, it owes as much to first-person shooter video games as it does to whatever developed out of message board forum. It's visceralness comes from being in an unfamiliar, relatively barren indoor space that is just an expanse of seemingly limitless corridors. There are objects in the corridors that could best be described as "random", while the hallways themselves lack any sense of logic, as the attaching corridors might be through a crevice or a hole in the floor, or a tunnel in the wall accessible only by ladder, or a doorway in the ceiling. And the lighting is spotty, with most corridors being difficult to see fully... you never know what awaits you as you pass through a doorway, or turn a corner, or step into the shadows. (The fantastic TV series Severance was partially inspired by the conceit of "backrooms", and the spinoff sub-subgenre of "liminal spaces" inspired the video game and subsequent film Exit 8 which I reviewed last week.)
The Blair Witch style shaky cam intro to the film is as effective as it is discombobulating. I never have a good physiological reaction to this kind of footage, so mercifully it was an in-universe video cassette of camcorder footage being watched by someone, and didn't last past the first 10 minutes.
Following this sequence we meet Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Serentity). He is a failed architect who now runs a failing furniture store and is seeing a therapist, Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve, The Worst Person in the World) following his separation from his wife. What is clear from their sessions is that Clark is full of entitlement and rage, and isn't very interested in truly exploring the source of his emotional discontent.
Clark has been living in his sparsely-stocked furniture store since the separation and experiencing eerie and strange issues with the electricity in the store. The lights will flicker and blink, turning off or on all on their own, while the television will shut off or randomly show video from inside the backrooms that we saw in the opening sequence. When checking the breaker panel one night, Clark discovers a soft spot in fabric of reality... he touches the wall and his hand passes through. He steps into the wall and comes out in a dingy yellow carpeted and wallpapered environment that seemingly doesn't end. He later describes to Mary this reality as being like a drawing of a dog, but as if someone who had never seen a dog were told what a dog looks like, and then drew their conceptualization of a dog. Everything is off.
Clark spends days exploring the space, even though there seem to be dangers present. Perhaps because he's a (failed) architect, or perhaps because there are things familiar to him in this space, he is quite obsessed with this topsy turvy alt-reality that defies any logic. He recruits his young assistant manager (Lukita Maxwell, Shrinking) and her videographer boyfriend (Finn Bennett, True Detective: Night Country) to help him with research, and, naturally things go awry.
Outside of it all, Clark has triggered a video camera within the space, and it's being monitored by Phil (Mark Duplass, Safety Not Guaranteed) who wonders who the hell this guy is. Clark's description of this space triggers memories, traumas and nightmares in Mary of her childhood. Are they connected?
Backrooms is a horror movie, but it's also a science fiction and pscyhological thriller. It's not always scary, but it is tonally pretty intense. What is most effective about the film, and baked into the "backrooms" and "liminal spaces" sub-subgenre, is the surreal perversion of reality. Things that look almost familiar, almost like something we should recognize, but aren't quite accurate. Exploring a space like this is like venturing through a nightmare, there's nothing grounding this experience and it could take you literally anywhere one's mind can conceive.
Eventually the film reaches a point where it starts offering some answers, and the worst thing you can do in horror is demystify the threat, to explain it all away. It's frustrating not having answers, but it's less scary when you do. Backrooms' answers, well, they aren't truly answers. There's more going one than what we know at first, but as one veil is pulled back, there are only more questions.
The audience is left to find their own answers in the information provided to them, and the information is as much there to confound as it is to illuminate. My take is that this endless reality is subconscious memory made manifest, but not of any individual. The more time you spend within, the more the realm taps into your subconscious memory, particularly the darkness you trap away, your fears, anxieties, regrets and repressed impulses. It's a theory, anyway.
I liked this movie a whole damn lot, and it's part of this year's horror explosion of fresh talent that is redefining the box office and what audiences want, what excites them, what they're looking to escape to. Twisted reflections of reality, apparently. Parsons, a teenager when he created Backrooms, is now 20 and has directed one of the biggest movies of the year, and capably so. He'd been refining this idea for four years, so it's no wonder he was so capable and assured in shooting this, but time will tell if he has the capacity for telling any stories beyond Backrooms. I'm keen to find out.
