Attack of the Hollywood Clichés!

Kinda like a live action version of TV Tropes. However tends to lean heavily into a very "woke" commentary. From denigrating everyone involved in the Hays Code to criticizing white people as being automatically bad.

I was really looking forward to this as being a lover of film I know a cliché or two.

Sadly at a running time of less than an hour it was never going to go full pelt into the rich and varied history of the Holly cliché. I felt that the examples used were far too fleeting, and the whole thing felt rushed. They could've spun it out to at least a three-part series. Nothing is ever really explained ('here is a trope... haha. Now here is another one...'). It would have been interesting if some of these were analysed a bit more than merely glossing over them quickly.

Considering the richness of many industry professionals on display here they were criminally underused simply to provide a cheat and quick gag. Is this really what Netflix's supposed demographic wants? This is nothing more than televisual fast food.

However the most disappointing aspect of this is that it has Charlie Brooker attached to it. Not to say I'm not a fan of his, far from it. Up until this show he was a one-man seal of quality.

This Netflix special has a great sense of purpose, but it's not as focused as it could be if it was. It's a bit like a Spit -Take or Montage mode, and it's full of all the crazy facts that come from a fake scare called the Luton Bus, as well as the story of Willem's screams. It's not as thoughtful as it could be, but since it's only an hour, you can probably still watch it on your free weekends and pass it along to your cinema-loving friends. The problem is that it's not as funny as it should be, and it's not as irreverent as it could be. It's got the same lazy familiarity of the Hollywood movies it's trying to mock.

~ P. X.

There are actually Youtube channels that do better video essays than this hour-long and poorly-patched together Mojo list. The analysis of cliches are rushed and selections of movies are erratic, like a high school essay written from a Google searched of the book summary. Clips and highlights served as a "I told you so" rather than movie analysis.

In important "attacks" related to race, gender, (and the police?), the example scenes are so obviously cherry picked for talking points that fit the current political climate. In this process, they completely ignore how the particular scene fit in the theme of the whole movie and in the dynamics between the characters. Not to mention the vast assumptions they constantly make on how some random film was perceived, as well as the horrible (or great) audience that would celebrate these cliché to try and inject their own politics.

The White Savior trope was discussed as a trope where a white person acts as a savior to black people. This is simply shameless and offensive appropriation, as that trope is strongly associated with native americans and other real or fictional cultures in movies such as Dances with Wolves, Last Samurai, Dune, Pocahontas and Avatar.

They ignore all the premiere examples to focus on a movie like The Green Book, where the trope is so weak that it might not even be worth discussing, but they just had to make it all about black people, of course. Cringe and tone deaf.

Bland and uninspired show, that doesn't even discuss the BWAAARP sound Nolan uses in every trailer.