GIJoel6

I probably saw "Henry Fool" at some point, but I don't remember it, it did not make an impression on me. "Fay Grim" is enough better that I might remember it for a few years, not because it is very good, but because some of the dialog was witty and the women are all lovely. OTOH, Thomas Jay Ryan as Henry is an ugly, sloppy, chain-smoking, mean-spirited ne'er-do-well and I cannot figure out how he ever got into gorgeous Parker Posey's pants in the original, or why she cared that he is still alive in the sequel. Literally every other man or boy of any age in this film is more attractive than Ryan. That's what makes the whole story so implausible from the start. Then the plot just gets ridiculously convoluted, which is part of the comedic intent, so that's fine. A lot of the dialog is delivered in what sounds more like a narrator's voice than the voice of characters living through the story -- it's a stylization that somehow reminds me of what Wes Anderson used in a group of films he directed starting with "Grand Budapest Hotel." It's only moderately interesting and slightly unsettling, and does not improve anything. Hartley should have rethought that gimmick. I was curious to see where the plot would end up, so I watched the whole thing, but the resolution was as pointless as the start and backstory, and it wrapped up all the threads too easily. It's not terrible, definitely entertaining for significant parts, but overall, I could take or leave it.

I love Mary Elizabeth Winstead, but she looked confused and uncomfortable in this role. Annabella Sciorra was far more convincing in the original. And Maika Monroe has very little of the flaming menace of Rebecca DeMornay in the original. The updated storyline offers nothing that improves on the original either. And Raul Castillo simply is too dull in both looks and personality to be believable as a man sexy enough for a hot woman, successful in business, to want to create three children with; in short, he's no Matt McCoy. The original was simply much better in every respect, to the degree that it did not need to be redone for any reason.

... sounded like a premise with some real potential to me as a lover of both musicals and vamp stories, so I started watching it. Oddly, I never actually got into "Glee" because it was jarring to me to see so many obviously twenty-something actors trying to play high-schoolers. The execution here leaves quite a bit to be desired. The kids are mostly actually kids, and they are all cute and personable. Some of the songs are actually catchy. The set decoration is busy and colorful and screams positivity, and the dance choreography is generally excellent and smoothly performed. The story is okay.

BUT... the dialog is atrocious, mostly the lamest vampire puns ever written; the few adult actors are all terrible, and the child actors range from bad to just barely ordinary -- they do have some chemistry and they are reciting the awful script with enthusiasm, but even that becomes robotic if you watch more than one episode. And what is most jarring to me about this show is how little effort was put into finding kids who could also perform as singers and instrumentalists. Kenzi is lovely and engaging and will undoubtedly be an acting star someday, but when she picked up a guitar, it was conspicuous that she was not playing it, her fingers never moved on the fretboard to produce more than one note, and I believe I saw her lip-syncing to someone else's dubbed singing voice (this suspicion is bolstered by the fact she is not credited on this site with soundtrack performance). The producers clearly hired some of these kids just for their looks and figured an audience of kids would never notice the deficiencies. And then there is the laugh track! There are too many sets to pretend this was taped in front of a live audience, and the laughter voices don't sound like children. What purpose is that serving? Because it is a Disney production aimed at their long-established youth demographic, it will probably survive to another season, but it is not done well enough to deserve being watched that long. It could have been, and there are things they could improve without changing the cast, if they want to, but I would not expect that to happen.