plasticanimalz

I watched all of the OatsStudio shorts, which, one after the other were some film-school-level short that's a straight rip-off of a popular film from the '70s or '80s, or Adam: part 2 & 3, which are iRobot rip-offs. Literally, every guy in film school in the '90s was referring to themselves as the next Coppola while spewing the exact type stuff Blomkamp is. Except Blomkamp is in his 40s, it's 2021, and he's made at least 3 films at this point. I've seen better shorts made by young, non-industry guys working from their house.

At first I was watching them because I was expecting them to be on the same level as Love, Death, and Robots, but quickly realized they weren't. Then I was watching them because I was amused by the film-school level quality of story telling, directing, and camera work. Then, after watching the few woman who are in it do nothing but listen to long winded diatribes by men, scream, run, or kneel in submission to men while listening to long winded diatribes, my amusement turned to annoyance. Even Dakota Fanning has no purpose other than to silently listen to a no-name actor man-splain to her at GREAT length his story. If she's the only crew member out of 98 to survive, why does she have to listen to this guy explain how to survive? Then he cuts out his eyes, and his finger, for not much reason other than to show how "manly" he is, even though he gives up part way through after running a short distance. It seemed for no reason other than for a plot device for him to sacrifice himself, to, again, show how manly he is. Oh, and by the way, you can't run outside in the arctic circle during a snow storm with no clothes, jacket or warm outerwear. Also, they were worried about running out of water in the arctic. Where there's snow. Snow. Which turns into water.

I would more expect this to be the writing of a 12 to 16-year-old boy, than a grown man. It makes a lot of sense that he co-wrote District 9 with his wife, his only good film. Clearly she was the talent of the two, who, of course, no one knows her name. Elysium was straight-up, hot garbage.

Since Blomkamp looooves to splain his armchair activism in his films, maybe he should actually man-up and do the hard work of giving the money to things he claims to care about rather than blowing millions of dollars on his crap films. No? Gee, no surprise. He's just one more mediocre white guy in Hollywood there is no seeming explanation other than being born into privilege, why he is given outrageous amounts of money. And having views in-line with the uni-bomber doesn't make him any less mediocre.

Blomkamp is officially in my pile with Eli Roth and Rob Zombie of crap film makers whom you can't explain why they're allowed to make this gratuitous, man-child drivel.

My first thoughts were, WTF? The trailer advertised this fun, colorful, '80s romp, along the lines of the 1985 Jamie Lee Curtis and John Travolta film "Perfect," and instead got this weird, '70s, bulimia show where her husband is going to run for political office? The writing is terrible. Most of it is a Rose Byrne narration of her neurotic, obsessive compulsive, angry thoughts that sound very modern and not remotely '80s. Both Rose Byrne and her husband are stuck in the '70s, in their '70s house, clothes, hair, and conversations, where they just insert the words "Ronald Regan" in it 3 times in order to time stamp it, along with glimpses of an aerobics instructor, which was the only thing remotely accurate in the first episode.

Either the writer is a Boomer, fantasizing about the '70s, which she was still stuck in during the '80s, and thought aerobics would be a fun gimmick, or it's written by someone who didn't experience the '80s, never watched an '80s movie, didn't grow up on '80s television. I'm aware the setting starts in 1981, but so did Freaks and Geeks and that at least bothered to be accurate and entertaining. Like, it actually reminds me of movies from the '70s that have this dark tone, that are mostly a spewing of thoughts about average people in their average lives...but, not in a good way, like Ordinary People.

The only plus is the style. It's nice to look at...other than weird moments like Rose Byrne binge eating, and a hippie eating honey out of the jar in a grocery store. This show is best to watch on mute with Mystery Theater 3000 voice-over substitution to overlap the cringey dialogue and narrations. It was painful. Rose Byrne looks great, as always, this just sucks. Not sure if I will make it to episode 2 to see if it gets better as I barely made it through one. Too bad, Apple+ was really on a role with good shows.

Basically, Darren Star writing for the Hallmark Channel. This is no Sex in the City. Emily is annoying, trite, and the French are all caricatures set around Emily, the rude, vapid American who thinks she's always right, but blatantly ignorant, and doesn't bother to learn the French culture, customs, or language. But, neither did Darren Star, so, what do you expect? The way they sell and buy things in France is completely different than America, so, her bulldozing ahead in "her" way is completely at odds with their culture and would never work.

The story reads like, Darren Star took a trip to Paris for a week and thought, "They're so different and funny here, what if I wrote a show about that?" Most likely this is some show Darren wrote in a short time, nobody would pick it up, and it sat in a draw for awhile. Then streaming came around and the VOD studios are tossing money to anyone with a name, which is why a lot of great or good storytellers are suddenly doing a bunch of bad or mediocre shows.

A hard pass. Not the worst I've seen in the past year, but, even the scenery is not enough to make up for the bland writing and the annoying character Lily Collins is forced to play. She and her neighbor are both nice to look at and would be much better suited for a show with a little more...je nais se quois.