Zach’s Zany…Netflix Game Show Reviews? WTF?: FLOOR IS LAVA!!!!

“This motherfucker is desperate for some clicks right here!” – future quote from one of you. That’s right, I’m going to do a small review on the new binge-able game show from Netflix that is sweeping the nation, FLOOR IS LAVA. It is ten episodes, ranging between 27-37 minutes each, and is a fantastic, fun, easy and cheesy way to kill 5 hours of your time. It was created and hosted by Auto Racing Analyst and co-host of Top Gear, Rutledge Wood, and the game is exactly as it sounds, but to the extreme. It’s basically one giant room filled with bubbly color dyed orange red water, that is transformed into 5 different kinds of settings with many obstacles and challenges to get from one side of the room to the other. There are different paths to take and sometimes you may have to go out of your way for a bit only to backtrack to make your journey easier. You have two to three contestants per group, and 2 to 3 groups compete depending on the episode. Depending on the number of people, you can get up to 3 points, but say only 1 or 2 people get across in one group, and then the same number get across in another group in the same room episode, the tie breaker is the least amount of time one or both people made it to the finish. And if you or none of your group makes it across, you are basically out of the competition, unless nobody from all groups make it but…spoiler alert…that never happened in the ten episodes I saw.

The five different rooms are: The Basement, The Bedroom, The Planetarium, The Kitchen, and The Study. With ten episodes, each room is done twice, but with two different levels, one being made a little more difficult than the other. Some paths have secret buttons or ropes that can be pulled that will either help or hinder your group, and some paths are safer or more dangerous than others. The “lava” is just a bubbling slicker kind of water with heavy food coloring and jets to make it look like it is bubbling out of a volcano. It’s actually pretty neat and visually amazing. There are some teams you will root for, like the smart or physically fit ones, and there are some teams you wish would just shut the fuck up and fall in already because they are loud and whiny or dumb and have the personalities of dead moths. Rutledge Wood narrates the whole thing, and has a grand voice and a witty personality, but he needs better writers for his dumb and cheesy one liners that always fell flat to me. But it’s all in good fun. The prize? $10,000 each episode to the winning group.

I just wished there were more than just 5 rooms. It is big enough to do different types of settings, and maybe get more out of them than just being ordinary house room set ups. Have a jungle room, or an Antarctica room, or a science fiction room, or a movie room. The possibilities and challenges are endless. Maybe they will have more up their sleeves next season. Also, they need to bring back the winners to some of these rooms and challenge other winners in a different set up that neither has played before. That would be interesting to see. This season, anybody that wins or loses doesn’t come back for a second round, which was a little disappointing. Some I would like to see do different rooms for sure. Don’t bring back everybody though, there are some groups of…younger millennials I could go my whole life without ever seeing again.

Floor Is Lava will make you want to create a set up in your home after you’ve watched 10 episodes and, albeit rather carefully, play it with your family. Shit, my two year old loved this show, every time someone didn’t make it or fell into the lava he’d go “he/she fall down!” or “OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH MY GOSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHH!” My wife and I had a lot of fun watching it as a family. A great time killer, even though I wish it were more challenging next time with hopefully more zany and fun obstacles and rooms for people to have to get through. You’ll be cringing and yelling at the screen, giving contestants advice and criticism even though you know they can’t hear you. It’s interactive without being interactive, and this amount of fun is kind of what we need right now, don’t you think?

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: EUROVISION SONG CONTEST – THE STORY OF FIRE SAGA (NETFLIX)

If someone were to put a needle in my arm, filled with COVID-19, and say to me, “you have to review EUROVISION SONG CONTEST: THE STORY OF FIRE SAGA in only one sentence or we are going to expose you to this virus,” well, the current me would say, “go ahead, make my day.” But if I were in a better mood I’d confess, “The movie is only worth watching once because of Rachel McAdams and Dan Stevens alone, Will Ferrell is awful in it, and the second half is better than the first.” I think they’d allow me a run on sentence, don’t you agree? I think that sentence describes the film excellently. If Rachel McAdams weren’t in it and if she just wasn’t just so damn charming as hell, this whole movie would’ve been another Will Ferrell clusterfuck. Because he is annoyingly awful in it. Like you want to choke him to death just so he’ll shut the fuck up kind of awful. This is another one of his long title comedies, and he used to be able to get away with just yelling random shit that made absolutely no sense. That was only acceptable (and sometimes hilariously funny) more than a decade ago. It no longer works. And while the film has a pretty solid 2nd half (we get some good random jokes that are paid off well from the beginning), the first half is so boring, awful, and goes nowhere to the point that I just can’t quite recommend it. That is, unless you are a die hard Rachel McAdams fan, which I certainly am. So do I or don’t I? Depends on my mood.

Per IMDB.com, Eurovision Song Contest is described as: “When aspiring musicians Lars and Sigrit are given the opportunity to represent their country at the world’s biggest song competition, they finally have a chance to prove that any dream worth having is a dream worth fighting for.” Will Ferrell is Lars and Rachel McAdams are Sigrit, and while Ms. McAdams plays the part convincingly, charmingly, and acts like she wants to be there, Will Ferrell is…too much there. If that makes any sense. Compared to McAdams, his Iceland accent is abysmal, and while her facial expressions convey well to the written word of her character, Ferrell seems to put on a new face every couple of seconds, throwing anything at the wall to see what sticks. But nothing does, and this ultimately makes his character a non-character. Just a lame impression you put on at cocktail parties, trying to get a laugh out of a drunken moment between friends, and nothing more. But here, the audience is stone cold sober, and we couldn’t care less. Dan Stevens plays a rival musician from Russia, and he, along with Ms. McAdams, steals every scene that he is in, the movie just needed a better lead. And a better co-writer. Will Ferrell co wrote this with an individual named Andrew Steele. I have a feeling that Ferrell only got a screenplay writing credit because of his improv. Andrew Steele probably wrote the only decent parts of the story. He should’ve given the script to a better comedian instead of Ferrell, you probably just pointed at different parts of the script and said, “I think I’ll just yell and scream something insignificant here.”

The first half is not funny at all, except for a boat explosion, and the movie only gets by because of Rachel McAdams and the believable charming innocence of her character. She literally lifts up the movie on her shoulders. Had she not been in it, I would’ve probably turned it off at minute 20. That’s another complaint, at a little over too hours, the movie is way too long. Could’ve been a much more solid 95 minutes. When you watch it, notice how things that should happen at the start of the 3rd act happen when there is still an hour left of the film, only half way through. The film has very odd pacing issues and it drags in moments that should’ve been entirely cut out of the film. The music & songs, written by Demi Lovato’s (she has a fun little cameo in the movie) song writer, are actually quite good and they keep parts of the movie, that would’ve just dragged everything even further, somewhat afloat. It’s the second half that picks up steam when it actually gets to the heart of the contest, the semi-finals and finals, with cool performances from what I can only guess are real contestants that have actually performed at the real Eurovision Contests in years past and present. Combine those interesting moments with some God damn hilarious elf and ghosts jokes and you’ll probably find yourself chuckling if not laughing out loud a few times toward the end. If only the first half had matched the pacing and wit of the climax.

The film is directed by David Dobkin, director of Wedding Crashers, his first comedy since 2011’s The Change Up (a guilty pleasure for me, it’s that Ryan Reynolds/Jason Bateman hard R-Rated body switch movie). While everything seemed to me to be just a point and shoot affair, I liked that there was a lot of location shooting in Iceland and possibly at the place where the real Eurovision Song Contest was held. While there was definitely some green screen effects whenever the characters were on boats, the exterior shots of the gorgeous landscapes of Iceland and showing that the actors were actually there was a nice little touch. If you go into this expecting something akin to classics of Will Ferrell’s past such as Anchorman 1 or Talladega Nights or even something like Wedding Crashers, you will come out very disappointed. The film is rated PG-13 and it isn’t really even a hard PG-13, not to say that a harder rating would’ve automatically made this film much better, but I really would’ve liked to see this movie go to darker, raunchier, and funnier places than it ended up going. And Will Ferrell needs to fucking tone it down a bit. You can tell he’s getting desperate for laughs, but in his desperation he is tripping over his own feet. If he keeps this up any longer, he is going to end up flat on his face, no longer able to get up, and his career will end up being an awful dumpster fire saga.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: DA 5 BLOODS (Netflix)

If there is one certainty that DA 5 BLOODS proves, released today on Netflix, is that Blackkklansman wasn’t just a one hit minor resurgence in writer/director Spike Lee’s career. It is now a confirmed solid resurgence. I’ve seen a majority of Spike Lee movies, and as unfortunate as it is to say this, he is more miss than hit. This movie though, now ranks among his best, which includes Blackkklansman, Malcolm X, 25th Hour, Inside Man, and of course his masterpiece, Do The Right Thing. While the releases of Netflix’s The Last Days of American Crime and the final season of 13 Reasons Why couldn’t be more ill timed because of the police brutality and racism protests, Da 5 Bloods couldn’t be more perfectly timed. It has something to say throughout the whole film while also being an emotional action-heavy drama little adventure thriller. While the film has some heavy handed (but pretty spot on) things to say about Trump and racism in general, and also shows how masterful the Black Lives Matter movement is, it managed to not constantly ask you “do you get it?”. Yes, there may be a little too much real footage of black & war in general history at the beginning and ends of the film (it doubles down on what Blackkklansman had), but ultimately it is necessary set up that compliments and strengthens the character piece at the heart of the story. The movie is also very long, at 2 hrs and 35 minutes, but unlike The Last Days Of American Crime, that length is earned, never felt, and the film never lags, no filler. This film is sure to come back into the minds of audiences come award season, whether that definitely happens this year/early next year remains to be seen, but whenever it does, it will be nominated for a handful of Oscars, all deserved.

Per IMDB.com, Da 5 Bloods is about “four African-American vets who battle the forces of man and nature when they return to Vietnam seeking the remains of their fallen Squad Leader and the gold fortune he helped them hide.” The film has a little of everything in it; action, drama, the horrors of war, a little adventure thrown in there, some blaxploitation cinema that Spike Lee is known for. It’s a solidly made film, and it is a bit surprising that it works so well narrative wise because this film has four screenwriters (usually anymore than 2 is a bit worrisome). I was a little worried when the film started to have the same beats that Triple Frontier had, Netflix’s film released last year about U.S. Delta Force soldiers doing a heist of riches in South America. But my fears were completely wiped out, as it quickly goes in another direction, with some twists I saw coming, but mostly others that caught me a bit by surprise. Spike Lee isn’t known for being an action director, especially when his most action packed film is unfortunately considered the remake of Oldboy, which Spike Lee just copied shot for shot (he even disproved of that final product, opting to have the marketing read A Spike Lee Film other than his usual and creative A Spike Lee Joint). But here, the action is his own, focused, steady, no shaky cam, framing the camera just right so we don’t miss a second of it. Thankfully he doesn’t go all Michael Bay on us and the action is quick, doesn’t over stay its welcome, is realistic, and is quickly contained. But after watching this, if he wanted to ever do just a straight up action film, I would easily put it on my most anticipated list for whatever year it comes out.

The acting is all great here, with Chadwick Boseman, Black Panther, showing up in a very minor role (all in flashback) playing the soldier that was killed in ‘Nam and the other four trying to get his remains. But if there is an MVP in acting, one that will probably get a nomination come Oscar time, it is going to be the great Delroy Lindo. Delroy Lindo has played a bunch of supporting roles, I know him as early as playing the villain in Get Shorty, but here, he is the lead. His character has PTSD, which plays a central role in the narrative, and even though Lindo has been great even in the shittiest of film, here, Lindo fires on all cylinders. He has a couple of fantastic monologues and he steals every scene he is in. Spike Lee is the film’s overall MVP. His work behind the camera here is near perfect, as he uses different aspect ratios at the different points of time in the story to his advantage. He doesn’t even do de-aging (except for one two second photograph) of any of the actors. When flashbacks occur, its the actors at their current age, and it works so much better than if they had digitally altered them. If I had any complaints, is that yes, I was a bit overwhelmed like other critics are, at the length of real black history and other war moments footage in the film. Remember that footage of Charleston a couple of years ago, where a car ran over a bunch of protesters and killed one of them? Spike Lee used that to end Blackkklansman. Well, double down on that kind of footage here to drive the narrative’s multiple messages home. I did say above that ultimately they were necessary set ups to the narrative, but it was a little too much this time. Scale back just a little next time Mr. Lee. Save those for a documentary, you would probably knock it out of the park with one of those. Also, I didn’t like how the 4 men found the treasure and remains of their leader so fast. It felt like someone else could’ve found it wayyyyyyyy before then. That’s just minor nitpicking though. Overall, this is a very good film. Spike Lee deserves all the praise he is getting for it and I liked it as much as Blackkklansman if not a little more so. Here, he has crafted an emotional coming of late age drama with fantastic character pieces, action set pieces, and messages that are especially relevant to these times, heck, this very month.

Zach’s Zany TV Binge Watchin’ Reviews: 13 REASONS WHY SEASON 4 – THE FINAL SEASON (Netflix)

Oh boy, here we go! A lot of you hate that I watch and review this show. 13 REASONS WHY in general, it’s a series that people love to hate. And I get why, but then again, I don’t. Some people say it glorifies suicide and violence, and I really don’t agree with that logic. But then, the people that say they hate the show because it makes them more depressed about life including graphic depictions of rape and bullying, that I can see their logic on. The show is quite depressing at times and the bullying does become a bit too much in some episodes. I considered the whole thing to be a entertaining binge-able cautionary tale…well…maybe until now. At points, during this final batch of episodes I wanted to jump on the hate train right along with ya’ll. SEASON 4, THE FINAL SEASON, is absolutely fucking abysmal at points, and I started this review not knowing if I would ultimately recommend it or not. There is a course correction almost half way through the season that gets it back on track but then when the giant movie length (98 minutes) series finale episode hits, it mildly becomes frustrating again. To pin point that frustration: one of the ending fates of one of the characters makes absolutely no fucking sense. Episode 1, 3, and 4 of the new season are so…so bad, that I’ve been told from certain people that they stopped watching and quit the series…so close to the end. I’ll ditch something mid series with no end in sight (like The Blacklist) if I have to, but if I’m only a handful of episodes away to the very, very end…to quit would seem like a wasted journey. There is no doubt in my mind that Season 1 of 13 Reasons Why will never be beat. It is near perfect in its storytelling and execution. Season 2 stretches out Hannah Baker’s story to the point where it sags all the way to the ground, and Clay seeing and talking to Hannah’s ‘ghost’ was kind of a buzzkill. That ghost bullshit almost almost got me to quit then. But then Season 3 got things back on track with a cool murder mystery and pacing that almost matched the first season. I don’t know where to put Season 4, the final one, as it’s easily a photo finish between this and the second one, but they are both so roller coaster bat shit on and off tone at times that I really can’t decide. Hopefully I can find the reasons why, to put them in a solid and concrete preferred order.

My reviews are usually long for this series, but that’s because I go into full on spoiler territory. For this final season, I’m not going to do that, instead I will just state in broad terms what worked and what didn’t work for me. Let’s get the shit out of the way, as since this will be my final say as the series as a whole, I’d rather end on something good than something where I just seem like an angry butt hurt fan. Season 1 dealt with Hannah Baker and why she ultimately decided to end her life. Season 2 dealt with the trail of Bryce Larkin, who is taken to court by Hannah’s parents as they and her friends had a confession and other evidence that he raped her. Season 3 was, “who killed Bryce Larkin?”. And Season 4 deals with all of our main characters dealing with the after math of Bryce’s murder and a frame job, graduating high school, moving on with life, and there is a mystery introduced in a flash forward at the very beginning of the first episode back, and that is: “who is in the coffin?” The answer to that mystery is emotionally sad, paced & acted to perfection, but logically it didn’t make much sense (especially when you think about the cause of death and modern medicine). But that one fate (the rest had pretty good endings) was not the worst part of this final round, oh no, that would be episodes 1, 3…and possibly the worst episode of the entire series, 4. I forgot to say the main character whose perspective we mainly follow throughout all 4 seasons is Clay Jensen played to top notch perfection by Dylan Minnette. He has been the one true voice of the show (except for sharing it with Hannah Baker in Season 1 and Ani in Season 3) and probably the most decent character out of the main group of friends that include Jessica, Justin, Alex, Zach, Tyler, Tony, and Ani. Now, remember in Season 2 when he was talking to Hannah’s ghost? Where it seemed like he was losing his fucking mind? The first half of the final season doubles down on that. You have Clay talking to both Bryce and Monty’s ghosts (both died last season) and then you even have some of the other characters, like Jessica, seeing shit as well. I get wanting the now dead actors to still come back and receive a paycheck but… it’s very odd and off putting.

It’s like they took the main tone of the series, which is supposed to be depressing teen angst, and tried to give it horror based elements, and it just didn’t work at all. When you think of 13 Reasons Why can you imagine thinking about Clay hallucinating that he’s seeing blood coming out of the school shower heads and being covered head to toe in red? No? Well then prepare yourself, because that is what happens at some point in the first handful of episodes. The sin of the first episode is just dragged out boring set up, the real crime is the entirety of episode 4. Episode 4, titled ‘Senior Camping Trip’, gets my nomination for one of the worst episodes of television…ever. Per Imdb.com, in that episode, “Clay is forced to confront his anxiety on the senior camping trip as a suspicious email threatens to turn the friends against each other.” This doesn’t even begin to describe the zaniness to come. All of the kids get freaked out and start seeing shit that isn’t there, and a couple even claim the woods are ‘haunted.’ I don’t want to spoil too much of it, you just have to witness this bat shit crazy bullshit on your own, but needless to say, the tone of this episode doesn’t match of the rest of the series, and it is glaringly noticeable. I know that the writers were probably trying to think outside the box to not get repetitive in their storytelling…but this was NOT the way to go…at all. So bad that if I ever decide to re check out the series, it’ll be a stain on my brain and I will make sure to skip it on my next go around. Episode 3’s crime deals with the blood coming out of the showers, but the main crime is that it centers on a Valentine’s Day dance…and then we get a Prom episode a little later. That was too repetitive to me. To have two dance episodes in the final season just seemed to point to lazy writing. The Prom needed to be the only one where a dance was involved because a lot of students look at Prom as an ‘end of an era’ like event. I know that some don’t but when you think about what Prom usually represents in movies and television for characters, it is THE rite of passage for young adults to move out of high school and into college and adult hood. Episode 3 should’ve been scrapped entirely and something else should have replaced it. I mean they came up with a college campus visit episode, you are meaning to tell me they couldn’t have thought up of something else other than a 2ND dance? Also, has any other high school in the world gotten in this much shit in such little time?

And even though there is a revelation in one of the final episodes why that fourth episode went down the way it did, the tone was just so off base for the series that the revelation did nothing to make me forgive that episode. Gary Sinese, aka Lieutenant Dan, shows up in this as Clay’s therapist, but with how little he is in it, it seems like he was an afterthought. Like they shot all of Clay’s scenes with an unknown, and at the last minute they got someone recognizable and re filmed all those scenes. Because if you look closely, he really is only in scenes with just Clay or his parents. I know that makes sense considering therapists not being too directly involved in kids lives but, the scenes just felt inserted. Fortunately, Gary Sinese does a good job where the awkward timing of the session are forgivable. I liked that his character had standards and rules and stuck with them and that they didn’t get his character too involved, it would’ve been…too movie-ish. If you know what I mean. Also, for non fans of Ani, who was an entirely new character in season 3, did some stupid shit and people didn’t like that she took over from Clay as narrator, she’s not in this season much. So you know that the creators definitely listened to fan input. She’s in it just enough though to have her and Clay complete their own little relationship arc, but when she’s sent to her mom’s mid way through the season and doesn’t come back till near the end, you know that she was sent away for the toxic fans of the show, and that shouldn’t have happened. Me? I thought Ani was fine, and the actress who played her did a good job in the role. I had no qualms with her and I’m disappointed that the show runners would listen to dumb feedback such as that.

Thankfully though, in episode 5, the series does a giant course correction and gives us two stronger episodes, Episode 6 maybe even being one of their strongest of the whole series. I’ll give you a hint what it is about: it deals with a possible active shooter on campus. It is also the only episode of the series so far where Clay talking to dead people is emotional and makes a bit of sense. And then after that, it stays consistently good, all the way thru the Prom and grand finale, which is basically graduation. And its consistently good, other than the tiny hiccup with the revelation of who ends up being in the coffin. It’s only because the matter of the death. If this character had died some other way, the whole finale, which the run time is a little too long in general, would’ve been 100% solid. If you want to discuss with me why or why not THAT fate bothered you and why it bothered me, message me up, I’m more than happy to describe why I didn’t think it made any sense. But other than that, it had a solid ending, and a solid very last scene. I’ve decided, I am going to barely recommend watching this last season, if only because I think I really enjoyed this series as a whole, especially the 1st. It might’ve been realistic at first and then gone off track with murder mysteries, characters losing their minds and talking to dead people, but it has remained consistently entertaining. Like watching a dumpster fire filled with teen angst. The acting has always been 100% solid too, no bumps in the road. But because of my frustration with some of the episodes, I can say with 100% certainty say that this was the worst season of the show. Should they just have ended it with season three and had wrapped up all the lose ends? Yes, that absolutely would’ve been the better choice, but I see their reasoning of wanting to end it when they all graduated high school. Definitely the perfect storytelling ending fork in the road for a lot of movies and television series. If you were to ask me, I would’ve said that it should’ve just been a one season kind of thing, loose threads be damned. Maybe they should’ve spent a little more time fine tuning this final season? Completely scrap the 1st, 3rd and 4th episodes and do some major rewrites? Doing some research I saw that this was the shortest amount of time of a wait between seasons (less than a year, the others were more). But then again, if they had taken more time they might not have finished filming because of the asshole that is COVID-19. Lose-lose situation I’m afraid. What will I remember most about this series? Probably that it was one of (if not only) high school television series about teen angst with real issues that I actually gave a damn about. Fuck you, Degrassi.

My Final Ranking Of The 13 Reasons Why Series:

Season 1
Season 3
Season 2
Season 4

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: THE LAST DAYS OF AMERICAN CRIME (Netflix)

THE LAST DAYS OF AMERICAN CRIME is probably the most ill timed movie of 2020 so far. Maybe even the past decade, I’d have to do some research. I’m surprised Netflix didn’t pull or postpone its release to be honest. We’ll get to why in a moment. It is also way too long, convoluted, the rules of the plot device don’t make any sense and contradicts itself constantly, it takes too long to get to the heist climax, the dialogue and narration is Screenplay 101 levels of awful, not enough action, etc. etc. etc. There are only two things about it that are redeemable. Michael Pitt’s Nicolas Cage-like wacko of a performance, and director Olivier Megaton’s camera work and editing has grown much more steady and less choppy, but that’s about it. This is another one of those films that had smarter minds had a crack at adapting the graphic noves this was based upon, we might’ve had truly something special and epic. This film is 2 and a half hours long, and it acts like it is supposed to be an epic crime film, but it tries so hard and ends up failing so fast to the point where it loses its ‘epic-ness’ before even a half hour has gone by. Something to compare it to? It’s a poor man’s Heat rip off with a minor sci-fi twist that ends up tangling itself in multiple knots.

Rotten Tomatoes describes this film the best: “As a final response to terrorism and crime, the U.S. government plans to broadcast a signal making it impossible for anyone to knowingly commit unlawful acts. Graham Bricke (Edgar Ramírez) teams up with famous gangster progeny Kevin Cash (Michael C. Pitt) and a black market hacker Shelby Dupree (Anna Brewster), to commit the heist of the century and the last crime in American history and escape to Canada (who isn’t participating) before the signal goes off.” The biggest problem of the whole film? The ‘rules’ of the signal. They are messy, convoluted, don’t make a whole lot of sense, and constantly contradicts its own rules. For example, there is this one scene where a woman is fighting with a cop and she can’t kill him because the signal is turned on, but then once that situation has been resolved, THE SIGNAL STILL ON MIND YOU, she is able to blow of a government computer system. Uhhhh…that is knowingly committing a crime right? How is she not able to kill the cop one minute but blow up government property the next? Doesn’t. Make. Any. Fucking. Sense. The reason for me saying that this movie is ill timed is in part because of one of the rules of the signal and the apocalyptic protests present within the film. It all gave me an uneasy feeling, and not in the way it was probably supposed to. Another one of the plot points of this signal is that law enforcement gets implants in their necks near their spinal cord so that when the frequency is activated, it has no affect. So basically the cops out there that don’t have the best intentions at heart, can conceivably get away with crimes/murder themselves. Who ends up watching over them? None of this premise or story was really fleshed out with a lot of thought to be sure. With what happened last and this week and all the protests going on, in the words of Chandler on Friends, “could it BE any more ill timed?”

How to have fixed this movie? First off, it should’ve been a trimmed down to a little under 2 hours. Secondly, probably shouldn’t have been released this week. The rest is an entire overhaul of the premise, the dialogue, the rules of the signal, and better character development. Especially a re do of when the story takes place. I understand that the movie had to take place while the signal was in the final stages of testing and only at the very end to have it activated, because the other elements wouldn’t have worked. But wouldn’t it have been more interesting to concoct a story where the signal has already been activated for some time? A story of outsiders far away from the United States, looking in for one huge score? Now that would’ve been interesting. It also would’ve been a great way to think things through and have air tight rules about how the signal can make or break you, and ways around it. If you held a gun to my head and told me right now to list all the rules of the signal with this particular movie that makes sense and that actually follows the precedents set before it, you might as well pull the trigger. Other than Michael Pitt’s bat shit crazy performance, the acting is okay, and the actors do a good enough job of not looking like they are cringing saying the flat dialogue. Edgar Ramirez barely speaks anyway, unfortunately he is always going to be cast as the silent brute force with not much to say. Anna Brewster is just there to look hot and get naked in yet another obligatory un-needed sex scene. The one person who is absolutely wasted here is Sharlto Copley, who was amazing in District 9 and other small supporting roles. Here, his role seems like it might be important, but then just ends up being an after thought. You’ll see.

The direction isn’t to blame at all here. In fact, it’s probably Olivier Megaton best looking film to date. If you don’t know who he is, he is the one that directed Transporter 3 and Taken 2 & 3. The worst films of those franchises. In those films the action has too much shaky cam and is edited piss poorly just to hide how much non action there is. Here though, mostly everything is steady cam. With what little action there is, at least it is shot professionally, and the scenes have time to breathe, the audience being able to tell this time which bullet is flying where. The cinematography is decent as well. It’s a sleek looking film, only it isn’t sleek because the entire rest of it is very, very rough. That’s the screenplays fault, and it might even be the graphic novel it is based upon’s fault. I would need to do research on the latter and I don’t have the time or interest to. It shouldn’t take 2 hrs and 10 minutes to get to a not complicated yet convoluted heist, where there isn’t that many steps in getting away with billions of dollars apparently. Since I’ve only seen the movie, I’m going to have to blame screenwriter Karl Gujdusek, which is disappointing considering he wrote the half way decent Tom Cruise vehicle Oblivion, and an episode or two of Stranger Things. Yet then again he wrote The November Man… So if you decide to watch this 2 and a half hour epic non epic low-key mild science fiction heist action sort of apocalyptic thriller, and was bored and disappointed as much as me… that’s not my fault. I gave you all the signals.

Zach’s Zany TV Binge Watchin’ Reviews: SPACE FORCE SEASON 1 (Netflix)

Man…did SPACE FORCE pick the wrong weekend to debut or what, am I right? Not it’s fault though, but suffice to say that when viewing numbers for this weekend come out, I wouldn’t be surprised if Netflix, Greg Daniels, Steve Carrell and co. are disappointed with the ultimate results. Hope you all are staying safe out there and if you are protesting that you are doing it peacefully. Speaking of peacefully, I thought the show was going to have a lot more digs toward the government or those in charge of power, but everything was surprisingly tame and not controversial whatsoever. Which to be honest, was a little disappointing. Most if not all of the humor was tamer than some of the now tone deaf laughs that The Office gave us way back then. That being said, I still enjoyed Space Force for what it was and have to disagree with a lot of the critics that hated it. It is a different work place comedy from the creators of the ultimate work place comedy that people (including me) still binge watch constantly over and over again on Netflix (until it leaves that platform later this year, that’s when I’ll bring out the DVD’s!). While the show didn’t provide nearly as much laughs as I would’ve liked, the whole story was entertaining to me, and at least the first season was much, much better than the first season of The Office or Parks and Recreation. Remember how horrible those were but then those shows found their footing? Well if this show is already 10 times better than the 1st season of those shows, and it manages to find their footing in the next season or two, we could be in for something truly special. It remains to be seen, but I’m willing to give it a couple of more season chance. Right now it is passable okay bordering on good. And that ain’t bad.

Per Wikipedia, “Space Force is a workplace comedy series that centers on a group of people tasked with establishing the sixth branch of the United States Armed Forces. Carell’s character, Mark Naird, is the general in charge of the effort and the series follows his collaboration to get “boots on the moon” per the orders of the President.” To add to that description, needless to say, almost all the people in this special sixth branch (excluding only a few) are a few thousand gallons of fuel short of a successful launch. Thankfully, Steve Carell is definitely not just playing Michael Scott with a rough military scowl, but an entirely new buffoon altogether, one that you could definitely say has more smarts than Michael Scott with the same amount of heart. Really none of the acting is a problem here, everybody plays a colorful and interesting character, but if I had to pick an MVP of the series, it unfortunately would not be Mr. Carrell, it would easily be John Malkovich. I haven’t enjoyed John Malkovich this much since his days playing an over the top character in movies like Rounders or Con Air. Here, he plays it straight, but he plays it so straight that its absolutely fucking hilarious. He is one of the few exceptions to all the dummies he’s surrounded by in the new special military branch (the African American pilot played by Newsome is a close second in terms of smarts and laughs). And when he disagrees with anybody’s thoughts on the next step to a problem they are having to solve, his facial expressions, demeanor and dialogue are pure comedy gold. If there is any reason to give this entire season a watch it is for him and him alone. Fortunately, he isn’t an ‘AND’ character and is second billed in the series, so he almost has as much screen time as Carrell. If the series ever didn’t bring back Malkovich, I would probably stop watching immediately.

The series is entertaining on a story level, especially the B plot that turns into the A plot at the end of the American Space Force vs. The Chinese Space Force. It is just that all the laughs are more chuckle worthy than laugh out loud antics (all the laugh out loud stuff is mainly just Malkovich). I’d say the jokes are hit and miss, about a perfect 50-50 ratio. If I had to pick my favorite episode out of the ten it would easily be the 2nd episode, which deals with a monkey and dog in space. That is the one episode that had me shaking the whole house with my laugh and didn’t just elicit light chuckles that wouldn’t shake anything but my tongue. The problem with the humor and jokes is that they didn’t take it as far as they needed to. They needed more controversial umph. Maybe they were afraid of retaliation of our current president that they didn’t want the attention? If so, that is disappointing, there was plenty of opportunity to make fun of the politics of it all and also make people laugh their asses off with some smart jokes. Instead, everything is played a little too safe. Maybe the showrunners will receive that feedback and not pull their punches in future seasons. If so, and they land those with brass knuckles right on the political satire cheek, this series will go places. Right now, it was good and not pretty good. I think the critics were a little too hard on it to be sure, but they do have a point. When you are the creator of two shows (Greg Daniels) whose first seasons were downright terrible but somehow overcame cancellation and ended up winning a bunch of Emmy’s with smart future seasons, wouldn’t you think the third time workplace comedy would be the charm? Apparently not. But this season was better than the first season of Parks and Rec and The Office, the last two seasons of The Office and the last season of Parks and Rec. And to me, that’s something to go a little over the moon about.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: THE LOVEBIRDS (Netflix)

THE LOVEBIRDS, which was supposed to come out in theaters April 3rd, instead dropped on Netflix today because of…well, you know, I’ve said it a thousand times. Here’s the thing: everybody thinks all these movie studios that are releasing these films for people to enjoy at home during these troubling times are doing a great public service. Well they aren’t. Here’s why: First everyone got access to Trolls World Tour, which a lot of people I’ve talked to didn’t really like (at least their kids did though). But what did Universal really expect with a sequel to a movie based on real toys whose popularity peak ended in 1994? A lot of people didn’t like Bloodshot (I thought it was decently entertaining), but that was in theaters just a week before the pandemic and then you were able to buy it at home once everything shut down. And then Scoob! and Capone came out last week and while a lot of people rented or bought those, their Rotten Tomatoes scores showed that audiences didn’t care for those either. If you’ve read my Scoob! review, you already knew I was in that camp, and with Capone…well…my review on that odd train wreck is coming later this weekend! So are the studios really being nice by releasing these for people bored out of their mind at home…or did they not have much faith in these films anyway? They thought they’d charge up the wazoo for rentals and purchases to see if we were that stupid and would do anything just to see new content with these hefty stay at home orders didn’t they? With none of these movies being even close to good or even decent…I think the joke is on us. And that brings us to The Lovebirds, which Paramount ultimately sold it to Netflix so they could dump it on their platform. This is not solely because of COVID-19, but because they realized that with so much that is going to be crammed together in the theaters whenever things start to go back to normal that it might not make much money, combined with the fact that they didn’t really have much faith in the movie, they just ended up sayig “fuck it,” and cut their losses. If you calculate it, the math adds up. Seriously, R rated comedies, hell most comedies in general no matter the rating, don’t make blockbuster like numbers any more. They just don’t. If The Lovebirds ended up being released in theaters, if there was no COVID-19, how much do you think it would’ve made at the end of its run? I think less than about $40 million total, especially with blockbusters just about to be released around the corner combined with competing against A Quiet Place Part 2’s second released weekend, after the first would’ve made ungodly amounts of money for John Krasinsky. I changed my ind, it probably would’ve made less than $30 million in the end (with a less than $10 million opening weekend). If you’ve read the articles, you would know that Paramount ended up selling The Lovebirds to Netflix for $60 to $70 million. Jot all this down, do the math. Did you come up with what I came up with? Yes…They. cut. their. losses. Paramount easily won, because the movie isn’t even that good. It’s an okay, one time watch, silly, over the top, situational rom com, where the two leads have undeniable chemistry but the bland story is filled with plot holes. The plot holes evolve into an improv argumentative comedy just keeps going on and on and grows tiresome fast. So much so where you are almost shutting your eyes and plugging your ears only 15 minutes into the movie because you feel like it’s been going on already for several hours.

The official movie synopsis is as follows: “A couple (Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani) experiences a defining moment in their relationship when they are unintentionally embroiled in a murder mystery.” Here’s the problem: the murder mystery isn’t so much of a mystery and when all is revealed it feels very generic and underwhelming. Also, it is filled with plot holes. There are a lot of forced, convenient cause and effect moments that happen just to get the characters from point A to point B. And they feel so forced that while the movie was still playing, I was thinking of a dozen other ways the couple could’ve gotten out of the whole situation by taking less than a second more to just stop and think. If any audience member to your movie ends up doing that, it is what we like to call bad screenplay writing. For example: if you’ve seen the trailers, you know the film starts off by a guy claiming that he is a police officer, taking over the couples car, and chases a guy on a bike. Off topic, but to emphasize the nature of the forced improve argumentative comedy, Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani annoyingly scream directions and random other shit at the guy just to be the center of attention on the screen and to get the audience to force laugh. That is the moment I knew the whole movie would do this every chance that it got and that I’d eventually want to plug my ears. Back on track: the ‘police officer’ eventually catches up to the guy on the bike, runs him over, and then backs up, runs him over again, then three-peats, clearly showing the characters and the audience that he is not who he says he is. Once he is done, he runs off before the police get there yet the couple takes the phone off the cyclist at the crime scene. And then two white hipsters show up and think the couple murdered the cyclist, so Rae and Nanjiani argumentative improv with the hipsters for several minutes too long to try to explain the situation, get nowhere with them, and then run off with the phone and just leave their car there. Here’s the thing, if the couple didn’t take the phone, there would be no movie, because there is literally nothing else tying them together with the murderer to advance the plot. It’s was a little too convenient for me. Also…why the fuck didn’t they just wait for the police to show up and give them the phone to maybe help prove their innocence? You want to know why? So the movie could make a cheap stab at a police racial profiling joke that so many other movies have done, and have done better. There’s more of that forced plot convenience, but for those of you still wanting to watch the movie, I dare not spoil anymore, but here is one more little example. It reveals Kumail Nanjiani has his phone the entire length of the film and a detective keeps calling him…you are telling me that the police couldn’t have just tracked their phone to try to intercept and capture them? After you watch the entire thing and go back and think on several of the scenes , a lot doesn’t add up.

With this being a situational comedy, every little scenario that the couple runs into needs to be amped-up to the extreme by the end of that particular scene. If you’ve seen the trailers, the scene with the bacon grease and the horse is the only scene in the movie that accomplishes what the movie wants to set out and do. Every other scene never quite gets there. In fact, there is this scene near the end that involves, to not spoil anything, a cult, and the cult does something extreme during one of their meetings. Usually at that point in a script, the main characters would be accidentally involved to join this extreme act and not just be witnessing bystanders. But in this movie, they don’t have the characters go to that extreme and they just end up being witnessing bystanders. During all this playing out, I turned to my wife and asked her, “wouldn’t it have been funnier if they were directly involved in this?” And she agreed. It was quite odd. Then the scene kind of just ends and then a small eye rolling twist is revealed making the entire movie basically pointless anyway. It’s exhausting. Not as exhausting as trying to force a smile during a scene where the couple shows up late at an engagement party and makes up an over the top lie to explain where they were. And they just keep explaining, almost unnecessarily yelling to get their point across to the hosts for several minutes too long. Director Michael Showalter, mainly known for directing the wonderful ‘The Big Sick’, which also starred Mr. Nanjiani, is hardly at fault for this movie. In fact, he might be one of the only saving graces as he, with ‘The Big Sick’ and now this, shows he’s clearly an actor’s director, as Nanjiani and Rae’s chemistry is the only thing keeping this barely floating boat watchable. It’s an easy point and shoot film, the only thing he does wrong is let some of the improv scenes go on too long.

The real problem is the script. The movie was written by two guys that have written episodes of The Blindspot and The Blacklist on television. No comedies whatsoever. And that’s the only things they have written. I stopped watching both shows in their early seasons because of the contrived forced plot writing, and unfortunately they brought their half-assed skills to this movie and almost completely ruined it. I have a feeling the script was half a movie long and there were big blank pages that just said, “IMPROV, LET THE ACTORS ARGUE AND YELL RANDOM SHIT AT EACH OTHER TO FORCE AUDIENCE TO LAUGH”, secretly hoping that would tie everything together. It doesn’t. It’s amazing that Nanjiani and Rae kept their chemistry while trying to figure out what to yell at each other randomly next. There is only one scene where this works, it’s the first ten minutes of the film, and it is at the beginning right after the title card, 4 YEARS LATER, that comes up right after we see the characters do a ‘morning after, after having sex for the first time, falling in love bit.’ They cut to them arguing about every day life. And it is funny only because it is relatable arguments that all couples go through when they’ve been together for awhile. This movie could’ve been about them having those conversations for an hour and a half, retitled ‘The Real Break Up’, and that would’ve been a better movie than what we got. Once that realistic conversation scene is out of the way, it is just improv ridiculous over-the-top yelling random shit for the rest of the film because studios and storytellers thinks that what dumb audience members come to see and laugh at (unfortunately this kind of fuckery actually does sometimes work with dumb ass audiences). But for me, it just didn’t work here. At least the movie was short, but at 1 hr and 27 minutes, it still felt about half an hour too long. This film feels right at home at Netflix, its nest resting comfortably on a mediocre branch the streaming platform is known for growing. It didn’t feel theatrical at all and it is hard to believe that audiences would fly to the theaters just to experience this mediocrity.

Zach’s Zany TV Binge Watchin’ Reviews: #BLACKAF (Netflix)

#BLACKAF is basically just a combination of Modern Family’s format combined with Curb Your Enthusiasm’s premise of a middle aged man complaining about almost everything anyone does…but focusing on a black family instead of white, and unfortunately nowhere near as funny as the other two, and also nowhere near as smartly executed as the other two shows. Not to say that’s its bad or terrible, I just don’t think the execution of it lived up to its concept. Instead it feels like it is kind of cheaply ripping off the other two shows at times and just putting a spin on story lines that have been done plenty of times beforehand. It all feels just a little stale. But again, it isn’t awful, but as I’m trying to keep television only having between 10 to 15 shows I watch that are still new on the air total, I don’t think #blackAFd is going to make the cut, and I’m just going to say this is the end of my journey, no season 2 for me. But instead of this being the only paragraph on my review of this, instead of me kindly saying, “I get it, but no thank you, not for me,” I do want to say I appreciate what writer/creator Kenya Barris is trying to do. I haven’t watched any of it, but I heard Black-ish is excellent and that I might want to give that a try if I didn’t care for this show too much. But looking at the man’s career, it is pretty impressive, even though there are a couple of speed bumps along the way, including that new Shaft movie disaster that came out last year (didn’t see it) and yeah, this show was kind of another speed bump. The man is unarguably a very unique talent with a lot of things to say. #blackAF is a noble way to try and say these things, but since the show’s formula copies too much of other shows’ past, and with only a handful of really good one liners but conversations that go on wayyy too long, this was just not the best medium for those messages.

IMDB.com and Wikipedia describes #blackAF as: “A father takes an irreverent and honest approach to parenting and relationships” and “the series stars Barris as a fictionalized version of himself and uncovers the messy, unfiltered, and often hilarious world of what it means to be a ‘new money’ black family trying to ‘get it right’ in a modern world where ‘right’ is no longer a fixed concept.” To add to these descriptions, this whole situational comedy is presented in documentary form, created by her daughter, who is trying to make this documentary of her family to get into college. It’s a noble format to be sure, it just feels too much like Modern Family, and Barris’ constant complaining and just not getting it feels too much like Larry David’s complaints. Listen, I’m a white guy, I know it, and anyone reading this should just write this off as me not being the target audience for this show. But I think I know a little bit about the ways jokes, stories and screenplays are written, so I feel like I have something to say in that area. There is one fantastic, excellent, excellent episode in this series, and it is episode 5, and the episode has Barris and his family going to a sneak preview movie screening of a movie, and everyone in the audience is eating it up except for Barris and his documentary filmmaking daughter. But they are afraid to let anyone know that they didn’t care for the movie, because the filmmaker was black and they wanted didn’t want to disrespect the cause. Fantastic episode, and it happened to be the longest of the eight. But listen closely to the conversations and jokes in that episode, they are ridiculously paid off well while also getting the point across without any filler whatsoever. I just wished the rest of the episode were as well developed, because the rest just float, have too much filler, and to me didn’t have a general purpose.

I wanted to watch this series mainly for one reason from the get go: Rashida Jones. Just like I think she’s an excellent actress in whatever she does, here is no different, in fact, I say she even gets to cut loose a little bit because it seems like, again using Curb Your Enthusiasm’s format, there is a lot of improve. I’ve always liked Rashida Jones, from her early days on Chappelle’s Show, to The Office, to especially Parks and Rec, to the dozen or so movies she’s done, I’ve always enjoyed watching her work. If I were to check out a possible season 2, it would only be to watch her work some more. Everybody here is actually quite decent, with Barris himself eventually coming into his own by the 8th episode, but then again, it’s all forgivable since Larry David took several seasons to not act like he was in a television show. But Rashida Jones is the true star here, and even though I didn’t laugh much at the jokes or cared for the story (family squabbles) I’ve seen a billion times before, she kept my eyes glued to the screen when she was on. Take her character Joya here, and put her in any other, better written show, and she would easily have her Emmy that she deserves. Basically, to sum everything up, I just didn’t care for the show, because to me, it brought nothing new. I’ve seen all the family squabble bits before, I’ve seen all their resolutions, there really are no more ways for shows to put a twist on the same thing, without copycatting and putting together different formats from other shows. This show just wasn’t for me, pure and simple. It might be for you, so don’t take my word #seriousAF.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: THE WRONG MISSY (Netflix…also a Happy Madison production, so you can already see where I’m going with this)

Let’s do a Happy Madison Production check list shall we? If you don’t know what Happy Madison Productions are…you must’ve been quarantining yourself long before COVID-19. As a refresher, Happy Madison is Adam fucking Sandler’s production company that he started after his first several crude and crass comedies did huge business. He took the ‘Happy’ from what is probably his most beloved film, Happy Gilmore, and then took Madison from Billy Madison, his first foray into feature films that abundantly featured man childishness, and boom!, there you have it, his production company. Really, arguably, the only good Happy Madison movies are the early ones: 50 First Dates, Mr. Deeds and Funny People…and I’ll throw a couple of guilty pleasures in there like The Hot Chick, Little Nicky, Click and The Longest Yard remake (Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison, The Wedding Singer, The Waterboy, Tommy Boy, Black Sheep, A Night At The Roxbury, Wayne’s World 1 & 2, Dirty Work & Big Daddy are not included in these because the production company wasn’t formed until Deuce Bigelow: Male Gigolo in 1999, and those were mostly produced by Lorne Michaels and are kind of considered Saturday Night Live films). That’s it, that’s all that is good. Out of Happy Madison pictures you only get 7 to 10 half way decent films (you could put Grandma’s Boy in to get to the latter, but I didn’t really care for that film, I see the appeal though). Out of 50, yes I counted. OUT OF 50. That’s 20%, MAX. And out of those 50, only one is a genuine rom com masterpiece, ironically being 50 First Dates. That is not a good track record. If you go on Wikipedia, and start counting how many Happy Madison production films you like out of those 50, and you get to anywhere above 15…you are a dumb shit. Sorry, but you are. You don’t know good cinema, and you should stop watching shit now. Anyway, sorry for berating you, let’s get to that checklist that makes a Happy Madison film a Happy Madison film, and not in a good way:

the whole excuse to have this movie is Adam Sandler and co. can go on an all expenses paid vacation while shooting another unfunny disaster
if Sandler is no where to be seen, you can bet that his wife has a small role and that 5 to 6 of his dumb ass hack no talent friends, such as Nick Swardson, Rob Schnieder, Vanilla Ice, etc. show up in dumb cameos/small roles (the vacation is for them too you know)
poorly written crude and crass humor that stopped working in 1999.
unfunny over the top unbelievable situations that would never happen in real life
a psychotic character that somehow normalizes in the span of two minutes and has absolutely no character development whatsoever
if David Spade is in it, and if he isn’t playing Joe Dirt, he looks bored out of his mind
since Chris Farley is dead, one of his unfunny brothers show up
lazy direction
you can blame the entirety of the awful experience if you watch one of these on Adam Sandler and Adam Sandler alone.

THE WRONG MISSY checks off ALL OF THESE BOXES. This movie is an unmitigated disaster and easily one of the worst films of 2020 if not THE worst. I would rather watch The Main Event again than this absolutely unfunny garbage of a movie. I can only give this movie one little shred of credit, and that goes to who plays the woman named Missy herself: Lauren Lapkus. She plays the psychotic character in the checklist I just mentioned, she is basically co-lead along with David Spade, and she gives it her all. I completely believed she was a nightmare person that I would never, ever, ever, ever want to hang around with let along meet in real life. Like you don’t want to watch the movie, but you can’t take your eyes off her performance as you are wondering…did they give her actual drugs before each take to get her THAT crazy? The only way I would recommend watching this movie is to just fast forward to the parts with her in it and just see how bat shit crazy her performance gets. It’s a wonder to behold, I have never seen an actor/actress go to that level. It was an experience…I just wish it were in a better film. The Wrong Missy has a stupid premise and quickly gets all the characters to a exotic resort so that all the directors, producers, actors and their families can just go on vacation when Tyler Spindel yelled cut: A man accidentally invites a crazy blind date from his past who shares the same name as the woman of his dreams to his work retreat.

David Spade plays the straight man again, and I usually love when he does so (see guilty pleasure: Lost & Found, NOT a Happy Madison production!), but in this, he couldn’t look more like he wanted to kill himself if he tried. I bet it was all frowns on camera, and then once it was vacation time, his mood probably brightened up a bit. The second Adam Sandler’s friend, Nick Swardson, shows up in this, I rolled my eyes and knew it would be another awful Happy Madison film (and he shows up early in this film with a continual unfunny running joke of he basically knows all of Spade’s characters media passwords and spies on him because he has nothing better to do). There’s every kind of crude and crass joke that has been over done in this: loads of dumb dick & fart jokes, old tone deaf rape jokes, throw up jokes, threesome sex physical Three Stooges comedy jokes, constant disgusting lazy sex jokes, constant disgusting lazy sex jokes, and constant disgusting lazy sex jokes. And it goes on and on and on and on, not one character sympathetic and absolutely no one you can relate to, except if you’ve been on multiple awful dates with a person and just want to get to ghosting them so they leave you alone, and maybe hope to give them a hint to change their behavior, but they won’t, and they will never, ever learn.

Oh, and predictability. Don’t forget that. This movie is the most predictable movie since…I don’t know what. You know that the correct Missy, played by an underused gorgeous Molly Sims, is going to show up at one point, and Spade will realize that he wants to be with the lunatic he’s spent countless minutes trying to get rid of because of a forced 2 second character development where the wrong Missy shows that she can be normal for two seconds…so after those two seconds…I guess Spade decides to fall in love with her character? OH GOD, somebody fucking kill me please. This thing was one long, annoying, unfunny, obnoxious, stupid, lazy, uninspired, unmotivated 90 minute piece of shit. Awful. If you know your Happy Madison production movies, I can only say that it is maybe a step above disasterpieces such as Sandy Wexler or the boring The Week Of. And that is only because of Lauren Lapkus’ bat shit crazy performance as Missy. Watching a couple of those scenes should be your only foray into watching any of this. If you end up watching the whole thing, and think it is actually a decent fucking movie, something is wrong with you and you need to just stop and quarantine yourself even more than you already are. Anybody who likes this movie is stupid. STOO-PID. The Wrong Missy is the wrong movie to be on your Netflix cue. You should really rethink your life if Netflix recommends this title to you. Either that or you need to make sure to hit the thumbs down after you watch the movie to make sure bullshit like this never shows up on the Netflix main screen ever again. Fuck you Adam Sandler…FUCK. YOU. You better be glad that Uncut Gems was that good and not a part of your production company.

Zach’s Zany Movie? Reviews: UNBREAKABLE KIMMY SCHMIDT – KIMMY VS. THE REVEREND (A NETFLIX INTERACTIVE SPECIAL, THE “YOU WIN” CANON ENDING)

Nope, the title of this review is not a mistake, it is that long and I meant to put a question mark after the word movie. Because is this really a movie review? Or a television show review? A little bit of both, so that would make it a TV movie review, which I don’t normally do, (El Camino is shot like a movie, doesn’t count) right? Whatever it is, if UNBREAKABLE KIMMY SCHMIDT: KIMMY VS. THE REVEREND had played it straight and not been a new Netflix Interactive Special, then this whole thing would’ve been DOA. It would’ve been a cheaply made, production money completely going to all the celebrity cameos, awful television movie, like the ones we used to get in the 80s and 90s that were basically just longer episodes of famous hour longs. But due to the fact that this is an interactive special, where you, the viewer, get to choose the path of where the characters and plot go, it’s a couple of slight steps above above the awful comparison I just made. And just because I’m about to say that it probably is the most interesting thing about the entire series of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt since Season 1, doesn’t mean that it’s that great. It’s tolerable and produced a couple of chuckles out of me, and it shockingly recaptured some of the quirky magic the first season had, but by no means does that mean I’m going to re visit it or the series anytime soon…if ever.

For those in the know, this is not Netflix’s first “Choose Your Path” Interactive Special. That goes to the awful, awful Black Mirror movie Bandersnatch. The main problem with Bandersnatch’s choose your own adventure storyline is that a lot of the choices the special had you make were completely inconsequential to either what happened directly afterward or later. And all the endings sucked, were too confusing, didn’t make any sense, etc. etc., and the choices weren’t all that seamless editing wise either when put into the overall narrative. The whole thing was a giant, unplanned mess. This Kimmy Schmidt special is a GIANT step in the RIGHT direction. There are several big choices at the beginning of the special that have VERY SIGNIFICANT different paths for how the narrative will unfold later, several big choices at the end as well. In the middle you are a bit more lax, as a wrong choice will trigger pretty amusing little abrupt endings that make it clear to the viewer that your choice is not meant to be taken seriously (or as canon) and will rewind you back to make a different choice. If you don’t give a shit about the endings and don’t care about canon regarding this quirky cast of characters or story line, have fun, there are a shitload of different choices you can make, going through the entire thing is said to get you about an hour and 20 minutes of footage altogether. If you make the correct choice every time, and get to the “You Win” ending straight away, it is basically a hour in television without commercials (42 to 44 minutes) and is a cute and harmless epilogue to the series finale.

Basically this special is only for A. hardcore fans of the series or B. people that actually watched all of the series (like me) even though you might not have cared for most of it. Season 1 is really the only great season of Kimmy Schmidt. They all get progressively worse from there, Season 2 hitting a giant sophomore slump, and it only gets worse and never recovers (unless you could this special as sort of recovering). As each season just chugs along it tries harder and harder to be quirky and funny and it all eventually feels forced, especially season 3 and 4, where you get to the point of eye rolling your eye balls out of your sockets. But if you aren’t a grouch like me and have enjoyed this series from top to bottom, you’ll love this special, I guarantee it. All of the characters you know and love are back and Ellie Kemper still can act her cute little butt off. Jon Hamm still feels like he wants to be there, Carol Kane still has a shit ton of energy, Titus Burgess is still…well Titus, there are a bunch of other small celebrity cameos of which some put a smile to my face, and if anybody gets short changed scene time wise its Jane Krakowski as Jacqueline, but I hated her character anyway so that’s definitely a check mark on the “PRO” side to this special. The best edition though to this universe is easily Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Frederick, Kimmy’s fiance. He is in a lot of this special and thankfully he isn’t wasted. The guy has charm up to the wazoo and I’ve been trying to watch everything he has done post Potter as I think he has always had more potential other than that one role. With this and everything else he’s done recently, I stand here with a smile on face, proud that I was right.

Anyway, with this being the last paragraph of my review, after it if you skip my ranking of all the Kimmy Schmidt Content to date, you’ll see how to get the “You Won” ending if you aren’t in it for the goofy, fake, nonsense paths and want to see the story how it is meant to be, canonically wise. Don’t worry, I only partially ruin the absolute 4 choices you MUST make, but I don’t reveal what happens in the story fully, it’s just a little nudge in the right direction. But if you are a true fan of the series, yet you are one of those people that only want the correct path, once you are done I suggest restarting it and having a bit of fun to see all the different ways things play out with all the different choices. Some of them even got more than a chuckle out of me. But if you haven’t ever been a fan of this series, or you were out ever since you realized Season 2 was a giant bummer, this will not change your mind. It’s the best thing to come out of this world since Season 1…but is that really saying anything? Like I mentioned earlier, if this had just been a TV movie epilogue to the series, with no choices and only one path to the straight and narrow, this would’ve been a giant dud. You can tell that not much thought was put into the linear parts of the story, but more input was made into the fake, abrupt, yet funny, non-canon endings. To give it credit, everything is nice and seamless here, the editing and comedic timing working well while choosing a path, going back after a wrong choice, or to get to the next scene. I do hope that this is the final final ending to the series, we don’t need anything else. Next time, I would love for Netflix to make one big giant original interactive choice movie that doesn’t have any ties to anything previously released on the streaming platform or anywhere else. Time to get the audience that doesn’t want to devote their time to having to watch a whole bunch of something else, just to get to the newly released content. Time to break that habit.

My Ranking of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Content:

Season 1
Interactive Special
Season 2
Season 3
Season 4

******SPOILER CORRECT PATH WARNING, ALTHOUGH NOTHING IS REALLY REVEALED*****************

To Get The “You Won” Ending:

This is the only ending that rewards the viewer with the coveted “You Won!” bumper at the end of the show. To get it, you must make Kimmy select the Fun Dress in the very first choice of the game. This is not a Bandersnatch situation, the first question really matters here.

The second crucial choice is to Read The Book when Kimmy gets home from her dress fitting. There’s something in the book Kimmy needs to know for later, and failing to do so early in the game sets up a chain reaction towards crappy, non-canon endings.

Many of the choices in between reading the book and the third act lead to temporary fail states that are easily reversible, so you can pretty much do what you want in the middle a bit (which I suggest you do, it is quite fun) without screwing up the ending, but the game’s final two choices are super important:

Titus must Follow Kimmy when she chases the Reverend through the woods. Ignore the Garden Banquet.

Finally, Kimmy must Spare the Reverend. Once these four choices are complete, the winning ending is automatically unlocked.