rewtmoose

With no expectations going in, I was delighted to find this movie being one of those hilariously terrible, so-bad-it's-good movies that you can laugh with and at from beginning to end.

If only there were some more gold nuggets of lines like "Do you know how to have a conversation, dude?" and "My nipples are as hard as rocks!" and "Oh no, it's face, that's a face, that's a face!" and "This is why you never got into film school, you know nothing about cinematography" (ironic!), this would be deserving of yearly rewatches in cult fashion.

Oh, and it's pretty amazing how some people created IMDb accounts just to give this one a 10 star rating and a review with remarkably high praise. So weird, right?!

Upon first viewing I absolutely hated this show. It wasn't the Twin Peaks I had been excited for, having watched the original series many times over, and I saw few, if any, redeming qualities.

After a rewatch nearly five years later, I had a different mindset in place and made sure to take proper note of clues and plotlines. While I could see more interesting aspects of the "return" this time around, I still cannot possibly give it a positive review.

Sure, there's enough subtext and complexity here for a college course, and there is obviously a high level of craftmanship behind the production, as well as a very pronounced vision guiding everything. But--and I concede that this is of course opinion--that vision clouds the entire show, prohibiting any attempt at a compelling narrative and snuffing out a lot of potentially enjoyable dialogue and acting.

There is a lack of control over the tone, with scenes and performances that stick out like a sore thumb here and there in most every episode, including both completely unfunny lines and unmotivated tugs at your heartstrings. There's artwork and effects work that simply looks awful, probably with a most intentional style but that simply doesn't hold up at the viewers' end. And, as many point out, there is a huge problem in terms of pacing and payoff. Those who are somehow drawn in enough by the mystery playing out appear to ignore this, and I wish I could too!

There seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it thing going on with this show. I would have liked to see more nuanced thoughts than just "David Lynch is a genious, 10/10" or "wtf 1/10". In my opinion, this is a flawed production of a misguided vision in terms of both storytelling and style, but there is enough to the mystery to warrant an attempt at watching. If it didn't waste so much time lost in its own head, it could have been significantly improved.

I'm an avid IMBb user, reading reviews, watching trailers, always growing my watchlist, rating everything I see ... but this is the first time I've felt I needed to write at least a short review myself. Not necessarily because of the movie itself, but because of all the talk around it.

Let's be clear: this is not a good movie. It struggles in telling the tiny bit of story there is to tell. It's nonsensical in the way that's only enjoyable while intoxicated, if even then. It's so full of spectacle that it loses its effect, because once something's over we're already jumped by the next bit. There's a pun or a fourth-wall-break-like joke too many to keep any cinematic immersion up. Then, there's a lot of choices in for example how to do the CGI, how actors should act cat-like, etc., that just don't work. It all becomes a silly, all at once overwhelming and underwhelming, shallow, and to a large part boring movie experience.

But is it the worst movie ever made? No. It's just a musical movie that went too far in being a musical for people to accept it as a movie. That's my problem with ALL musical movies; they are rarely good movie experiences, but could be enjoyed as musicals on screen. Personally, I feel that in some ways this one works better than many other musical movies in that it goes so far in being an over-the-top musical, with technology allowing it to be more than a stage production ever could in terms of creative vision, that it actually warrants the kind of unnatural, quirky theatrics that otherwise make me cringe too hard to enjoy musical movies at all.

So, rather than just nodding along with "Wth did I just watch 1/10", a fair way to review this movie would probably be to recognise that it went all-out in being exactly the kind of musical mess it was intended to be all along, and that it made for a poor movie experience. Worst of all time? Not by far. Recommended? Definitely not.