liquidcelluloid-1
Joined Jan 2004
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2012 is Roland Emmerich's disaster movie to end all disaster movies. It is a melting pot of every disaster movie idea already imagined including his own. It doesn't promise the fate of the world hanging in the balance through global warming (The Day After Tomorrow, which this movie takes it's ending from) or alien invasion (Independence Day), but the unavoidable end of it. Period. But like all of Emmerich's movies he has taken a potentially thrilling, dramatically dire situation and turned it into a cheesy, popcorn, live-action cartoon where death and destruction stand along side 1D characters and terrible jokes.
Still - and I hate Emmerich for making me say this - 2012 is almost too huge a movie to dismiss. The images in it are at times awesome (buildings collapsing, entire cities falling into the ocean) and - more interesting are the political discussions the movie has about the end of the world. The sacrifices that must be made to save a few at the expense of the many. How governments might be doing the right thing by keeping it under wraps. The premise is a frightening one and not even Emmerich's Crayola touch can diminish it entirely. In short, the movie does effectively convey a vision of the end of the world.
It's also one of the more callous and mean-spirited disaster movies I've ever seen. When another movie would have humanity band together and face the threat, 2012's protagonist is all about me, me, me. It achieves the astonishing task of making John Cusack thoroughly unlikeable, even though the movie gives him kids to protect just so he doesn't look like the world's biggest coward. It's a bitter pill to swallow rooting for him to escape LA in a limo while millions plunge to their death around him (a sequence that would make a great ride at Universal Studios, by the way, it's visually awesome). It's an even more bitter pill to root for him saving his family at the sacrifice of humanity in the finale. Ejiofor as the hopeful Helmsley easily steps into the protagonist role and becomes the heart and head of the movie. Who steps up and really keeps the movie together is Oliver Platt as the White House Chief of Staff who carries out Helmsley's plan to preserve a semblance of government across the world as it ends. The race to keep that plan in place is actually kind of exciting and the debate about how secret to keep it vs humanity's right to fight for their own survival is also intriguing. I can't help but think 2012 could have been restructured for the better to be entirely about the political response to the end of the world and jettison Cusack's cheeseball, half-hearted fatherly redemption story entirely. The movie also makes a smart move in keeping under wraps the exact nature of the world's government's plan until then end, which makes for a fresh turn in the third act.
The movie is worth a look for it's astonishing larger than life special effects set pieces, but it is profoundly stupid and you may hate yourself in the morning. And may I say simply that the ending is ridiculous. It's hard to shake the populast jokes, the tacky visual gags and even the cruel streak of the movie. Emmerich would make a pretty good horror director based on some of deaths he inflicts on the innocent here. There are a few character deaths in the 3rd act that are unnecessary and completely heartless in a way that slaps an ugly stink on the entire movie. Odd choices given that so many of 2012's characters think that the goodness of humanity is what will shine through in a catastrophic crisis. In Emmerich's vision, it's selfishness that shines through. Period. Which maybe a valid point but creates a schizophrenic tone in a movie so otherwise desperate for us to cheer the heroes. If the world does come to an end, I'm sure not following Roland Emmerich to safety.
Still - and I hate Emmerich for making me say this - 2012 is almost too huge a movie to dismiss. The images in it are at times awesome (buildings collapsing, entire cities falling into the ocean) and - more interesting are the political discussions the movie has about the end of the world. The sacrifices that must be made to save a few at the expense of the many. How governments might be doing the right thing by keeping it under wraps. The premise is a frightening one and not even Emmerich's Crayola touch can diminish it entirely. In short, the movie does effectively convey a vision of the end of the world.
It's also one of the more callous and mean-spirited disaster movies I've ever seen. When another movie would have humanity band together and face the threat, 2012's protagonist is all about me, me, me. It achieves the astonishing task of making John Cusack thoroughly unlikeable, even though the movie gives him kids to protect just so he doesn't look like the world's biggest coward. It's a bitter pill to swallow rooting for him to escape LA in a limo while millions plunge to their death around him (a sequence that would make a great ride at Universal Studios, by the way, it's visually awesome). It's an even more bitter pill to root for him saving his family at the sacrifice of humanity in the finale. Ejiofor as the hopeful Helmsley easily steps into the protagonist role and becomes the heart and head of the movie. Who steps up and really keeps the movie together is Oliver Platt as the White House Chief of Staff who carries out Helmsley's plan to preserve a semblance of government across the world as it ends. The race to keep that plan in place is actually kind of exciting and the debate about how secret to keep it vs humanity's right to fight for their own survival is also intriguing. I can't help but think 2012 could have been restructured for the better to be entirely about the political response to the end of the world and jettison Cusack's cheeseball, half-hearted fatherly redemption story entirely. The movie also makes a smart move in keeping under wraps the exact nature of the world's government's plan until then end, which makes for a fresh turn in the third act.
The movie is worth a look for it's astonishing larger than life special effects set pieces, but it is profoundly stupid and you may hate yourself in the morning. And may I say simply that the ending is ridiculous. It's hard to shake the populast jokes, the tacky visual gags and even the cruel streak of the movie. Emmerich would make a pretty good horror director based on some of deaths he inflicts on the innocent here. There are a few character deaths in the 3rd act that are unnecessary and completely heartless in a way that slaps an ugly stink on the entire movie. Odd choices given that so many of 2012's characters think that the goodness of humanity is what will shine through in a catastrophic crisis. In Emmerich's vision, it's selfishness that shines through. Period. Which maybe a valid point but creates a schizophrenic tone in a movie so otherwise desperate for us to cheer the heroes. If the world does come to an end, I'm sure not following Roland Emmerich to safety.
Network: CW; Genre: Teen Drama; Content Rating: TV-PG (some language and suggested sex); Perspective: Contemporary (star range: 1 – 4);
Seasons Reviewed: Series (1 season)
Part a star vehicle for the adorable Joanna Garcia ("Reba") and part an adaptation of Zoey Dean's book "How to Teach Filthy Rich Girls", "Privileged" as a bubbly, agreeable even addicting guilty pleasure. The show starts promising and then does all it can to let the air out of all the fun.
Garcia stars as highly-educated and seemingly unemployable college grad Megan who is presented with an opportunity of a lifetime. In exchange for tutoring Ann Archer's spoiled daughters, Sage (Ashley Newbrough) and Rose (Lucy Hale), she gets to live in a gorgeous Malibu mansion, drive a sports car, hang out with her best friend Charlie (Michael Cassidy) and get advice from the mansion's chef Marco (Allan Louis), who serves as the show's all-knowing advice-giver for Megan.
Starting with what I like about "Privileged", the greatness of casting Garcia in the role cannot be underplayed. Her personality and buoyancy floats in and carries the show. Megan is cute and intellectual, but also thick-headed, judgmental and self-absorbed. She is not a good person, but she sure thinks she is. It's a more complex character balance than you'd expect from a show like this. But the rest of the cast doesn't quite stack up. Sage and Rose are the Legally Brunette figures who like their designer labels and boy toys and use those things to craft their own success – and naturally Megan succeeds in making them look a little bit deeper into what they want to be and do with their life. Archer is the usual hardass boss.
If this all sounds familiar to you, it felt that way to me too. "Privileged" can't just be a light guilty pleasure finding humor in girls and their toys in the lap of luxury. It can't just have fun in the sun with Megan, her romance with the neighbor stud Will (Brian Hallisay) who, of course, is in love with her and her BFF Charlie (Michael Cassidy), also in love with her, as I think "Privileged" would have played out best. Instead it settles into the type of relationship angst and familial melodrama you'd find in any old high school series or prime time soap. Megan's's backstabbing sister, her alcoholic father, her absentee mother who returns so Megan can give the "you can't just waltz back into my life and be my mother" speech. Rose and Sage date guys who aren't part of the societal uppercrust. One by one by one these story lines squeeze the fun out of the show, turning it into an empty melodrama where Meg does a lot of wining and crying about how "screwed up" her family is to anyone who will listen – all based on a past we haven't seen and have no point of reference.
Had it had the commitment to go for the guilty pleasure brass ring "Privileged" could have filled a television void for light-weight, glassy-eyed guilty pleasure. Instead it's worse - a drama with the empty head of a guilty pleasure (the last thing I want is a show like this lecturing me about gay marriage). It can't think of any other way to fill the time than with anything but the most familiar family drama clichés and self-aggrandizing comedy that isn't at all funny.
* ½ / 4
Seasons Reviewed: Series (1 season)
Part a star vehicle for the adorable Joanna Garcia ("Reba") and part an adaptation of Zoey Dean's book "How to Teach Filthy Rich Girls", "Privileged" as a bubbly, agreeable even addicting guilty pleasure. The show starts promising and then does all it can to let the air out of all the fun.
Garcia stars as highly-educated and seemingly unemployable college grad Megan who is presented with an opportunity of a lifetime. In exchange for tutoring Ann Archer's spoiled daughters, Sage (Ashley Newbrough) and Rose (Lucy Hale), she gets to live in a gorgeous Malibu mansion, drive a sports car, hang out with her best friend Charlie (Michael Cassidy) and get advice from the mansion's chef Marco (Allan Louis), who serves as the show's all-knowing advice-giver for Megan.
Starting with what I like about "Privileged", the greatness of casting Garcia in the role cannot be underplayed. Her personality and buoyancy floats in and carries the show. Megan is cute and intellectual, but also thick-headed, judgmental and self-absorbed. She is not a good person, but she sure thinks she is. It's a more complex character balance than you'd expect from a show like this. But the rest of the cast doesn't quite stack up. Sage and Rose are the Legally Brunette figures who like their designer labels and boy toys and use those things to craft their own success – and naturally Megan succeeds in making them look a little bit deeper into what they want to be and do with their life. Archer is the usual hardass boss.
If this all sounds familiar to you, it felt that way to me too. "Privileged" can't just be a light guilty pleasure finding humor in girls and their toys in the lap of luxury. It can't just have fun in the sun with Megan, her romance with the neighbor stud Will (Brian Hallisay) who, of course, is in love with her and her BFF Charlie (Michael Cassidy), also in love with her, as I think "Privileged" would have played out best. Instead it settles into the type of relationship angst and familial melodrama you'd find in any old high school series or prime time soap. Megan's's backstabbing sister, her alcoholic father, her absentee mother who returns so Megan can give the "you can't just waltz back into my life and be my mother" speech. Rose and Sage date guys who aren't part of the societal uppercrust. One by one by one these story lines squeeze the fun out of the show, turning it into an empty melodrama where Meg does a lot of wining and crying about how "screwed up" her family is to anyone who will listen – all based on a past we haven't seen and have no point of reference.
Had it had the commitment to go for the guilty pleasure brass ring "Privileged" could have filled a television void for light-weight, glassy-eyed guilty pleasure. Instead it's worse - a drama with the empty head of a guilty pleasure (the last thing I want is a show like this lecturing me about gay marriage). It can't think of any other way to fill the time than with anything but the most familiar family drama clichés and self-aggrandizing comedy that isn't at all funny.
* ½ / 4
Network: Direct to DVD movie; Genre: Comedy/Drama; Content Rating: R (profanity, dark comic violence, sexual content); Available: DVD; Perspective: Contemporary (star range: 1 – 4);
For reference I'd recommend any reader of this briefly skip over to my review of the original Showtime series "Dead Like Me", where the show's freshness, originality, creativity and strong voice inspired me to a 5 out of 5 star rating. The direct-to-DVD feature "Dead Like Me: Life After Death" opens with a well-done, but redundant re-cap of the show's premise already captured so well in creator Bryan Fuller's movie-quality Pilot for those unfamiliar with the series. But then again, if you're unfamiliar with the show you wouldn't be interested in this movie.
Stunned at the unexpected loss of former team leader Rube (Mandy Patinkin contractually unable to be in the film), workman-like grim reapers Georgia Lass (Ellen Muth), Roxy (Jasmin Guy), Mason (Calum Blue) and Daisy Adair (Sarah Wynter replacing "24" sister Laura Harris who was hopefully off making the far better horror/comedy "Severance") are whisked off to a new life managed by unsavory new boss Cameron (Henry Ian Cusik, "Lost"). All seems great at first, limos take them to an upscale restaurant replacing Der Waffle house and Cameron quickly replaces their trademark post-it notes with blackberries, but Cameron plays fast and loose with the reaper code of conduct and the new "do-what-you-feel" attitude starts to have dire results. The first of which causes George to miss a reap which traps a teenage boy in a coma and brings George face to face with the boy's secret girlfriend: her sister, Reggie (Britt McKillip all grown up now).
Series episodes were structured like a wheel, centered around a theme with every character branching off as a sprocket to illustrate a different element of that theme (a la Sex and the City). "Life" is all over the place. One minute it's about George's reluctance to take reaping into the 21st century and her distrust of Cameron, then it launches off into a story that is essentially a rehash of the season one episode "Reapercussions" (which in 45 minutes covered this ground with more imagination). It throws in a random subplot involving Delores (Christine Welles, not her usual shiny self) giving her cat Murray a swan song only because the two are fan favorites.
"Life after Death" is a shallow, cynical cash grab from MGM with a hastily assembled cast and a script, by showrunner John Masius and co-writer Stephen Godchiux, that could have used several trips back to the writer's room. "Dead" heads will be disappointed all around by this venture. For starters all of the characters have been hollowed out and turned into one-note bits dispensing cringe-inducing one-liners, particularly Mason who is now just a goof. Georgia is no longer the antisocial, sardonic voice of a generation, but a protagonist, functioning in society, doing what's right as any protagonist does.
Surprisingly enough, much of "Life" belongs to McKillip. Suddenly thrust into the lead, the young actress does a fine job with it, it's that – even in the series – the entire Joy/Reggie storyline was an unnecessary, and poorly conceived trapdoor escape from the fantasy of the grim reaping story that seemed to move the show backwards. In the series it gave the show one tiny toe grounded in domestic drama, by expanding it in the movie, it very often swallows the production entirely in melodrama. I can see teenage girls crying and screaming at each other anywhere, but I can't see a bizarre Rube Goldberg series of events set in motion by a Graveling that leads to someone's death anywhere but "Dead Like Me".
Speaking of the Gravelings, a certain surprise revelation regarding George and the Gravelings at the end of the 2nd season is disappointingly not addressed at all in "Life". From Mandy Patinkin's rock solid performance to Stewart Copeland's whimsical music to Laura Harris portraying a ditz like Daisy Adair with a perfect (and rare) steely-eyed determination that everything she says is right – there are more things that I can count, big and small, from the show that are missing from this production.
Maybe the most dispiriting thing about "Life" is how unnecessary it feels. Given the chance to bring a loved TV series back from the dead for a last hurrah is a golden opportunity and should inspire the showrunners to swing for the fences. "Life" looks like a tired afterthought that forgot what it used to do so well in the first place. It makes no effort to close the series out with a bang or to extend the stories into exciting new territories. Although, it is kind of fun to see the show's informal theme song, "Boom Boom Ba", making another appearance. "Dead Like Me" fans deserve a whole lot better than "Life After Death".
* ½ / 4
For reference I'd recommend any reader of this briefly skip over to my review of the original Showtime series "Dead Like Me", where the show's freshness, originality, creativity and strong voice inspired me to a 5 out of 5 star rating. The direct-to-DVD feature "Dead Like Me: Life After Death" opens with a well-done, but redundant re-cap of the show's premise already captured so well in creator Bryan Fuller's movie-quality Pilot for those unfamiliar with the series. But then again, if you're unfamiliar with the show you wouldn't be interested in this movie.
Stunned at the unexpected loss of former team leader Rube (Mandy Patinkin contractually unable to be in the film), workman-like grim reapers Georgia Lass (Ellen Muth), Roxy (Jasmin Guy), Mason (Calum Blue) and Daisy Adair (Sarah Wynter replacing "24" sister Laura Harris who was hopefully off making the far better horror/comedy "Severance") are whisked off to a new life managed by unsavory new boss Cameron (Henry Ian Cusik, "Lost"). All seems great at first, limos take them to an upscale restaurant replacing Der Waffle house and Cameron quickly replaces their trademark post-it notes with blackberries, but Cameron plays fast and loose with the reaper code of conduct and the new "do-what-you-feel" attitude starts to have dire results. The first of which causes George to miss a reap which traps a teenage boy in a coma and brings George face to face with the boy's secret girlfriend: her sister, Reggie (Britt McKillip all grown up now).
Series episodes were structured like a wheel, centered around a theme with every character branching off as a sprocket to illustrate a different element of that theme (a la Sex and the City). "Life" is all over the place. One minute it's about George's reluctance to take reaping into the 21st century and her distrust of Cameron, then it launches off into a story that is essentially a rehash of the season one episode "Reapercussions" (which in 45 minutes covered this ground with more imagination). It throws in a random subplot involving Delores (Christine Welles, not her usual shiny self) giving her cat Murray a swan song only because the two are fan favorites.
"Life after Death" is a shallow, cynical cash grab from MGM with a hastily assembled cast and a script, by showrunner John Masius and co-writer Stephen Godchiux, that could have used several trips back to the writer's room. "Dead" heads will be disappointed all around by this venture. For starters all of the characters have been hollowed out and turned into one-note bits dispensing cringe-inducing one-liners, particularly Mason who is now just a goof. Georgia is no longer the antisocial, sardonic voice of a generation, but a protagonist, functioning in society, doing what's right as any protagonist does.
Surprisingly enough, much of "Life" belongs to McKillip. Suddenly thrust into the lead, the young actress does a fine job with it, it's that – even in the series – the entire Joy/Reggie storyline was an unnecessary, and poorly conceived trapdoor escape from the fantasy of the grim reaping story that seemed to move the show backwards. In the series it gave the show one tiny toe grounded in domestic drama, by expanding it in the movie, it very often swallows the production entirely in melodrama. I can see teenage girls crying and screaming at each other anywhere, but I can't see a bizarre Rube Goldberg series of events set in motion by a Graveling that leads to someone's death anywhere but "Dead Like Me".
Speaking of the Gravelings, a certain surprise revelation regarding George and the Gravelings at the end of the 2nd season is disappointingly not addressed at all in "Life". From Mandy Patinkin's rock solid performance to Stewart Copeland's whimsical music to Laura Harris portraying a ditz like Daisy Adair with a perfect (and rare) steely-eyed determination that everything she says is right – there are more things that I can count, big and small, from the show that are missing from this production.
Maybe the most dispiriting thing about "Life" is how unnecessary it feels. Given the chance to bring a loved TV series back from the dead for a last hurrah is a golden opportunity and should inspire the showrunners to swing for the fences. "Life" looks like a tired afterthought that forgot what it used to do so well in the first place. It makes no effort to close the series out with a bang or to extend the stories into exciting new territories. Although, it is kind of fun to see the show's informal theme song, "Boom Boom Ba", making another appearance. "Dead Like Me" fans deserve a whole lot better than "Life After Death".
* ½ / 4