Reviews

I went into this thinking it was an animated "Lost in Space" from the one trailer I saw. It is not, they do not go to space.

This film is in a long list of "fantasy that your parents apologize to you for generational harm" like Turning Red and Encanto. The film is a lot of family arguing.

In addition to arguments, the show is a lot of "show" don't "tell " The biggest issue is the son's desire to not be a farmer isn't portrayed favorably. Like what, he likes causing people to get into dangerous situations? And the mom sees him almost die and says that's good vibes? None of that arc is satisfying.

I assume many of the low ratings are because the son is gay. While I don't have a problem with queer characters, the arc didn't make any sense. The kid is too nervous to ask out the guy he likes. The show never teachss how to do something, even when you're nervous, or get over that nervousness. The son gets a happy ending but we're not told how this happen ending takes place.

Beyond the dropped nervousness plot, there's an arc of the Dad being afraid his son will abandon him just like his dad. In the end, the son chooses to stay in the down below. We never get a scene of the Dad accepting his son for leaving. We also don't get any actions about the Dad not letting the son go. A better way to have shown this would be the friends want to go an explorer trip, Dad says no you can't leave, and the son realizes it's because his Dad was abandoned by his grandfather.

I'm conflicted on the scene we're the Dad forgives his dad for the abandonment. That ends to happy for how that actually happens in real life. But I guess we want it to be happy so it happens.

Overall, this wasn't as pleasent or fun as I wanted. The comedy fell short and the plot fell short.

If people are looking for a son explorer animated movie, I suggest Treasure Planet, The Good Dinosaur, or Atlantis. Yep, I said the Good Dinosaur. I think that feels with family relationship better than this movie with a less convoluted setting.

This airy tv show had very pretty shots of the water and Italian/Croatian coast, however the script is poor. Many of the plotlines are painful to watch because the characters are unlikable and doesn't do justice to pre-WW2 Italy.

The show would be better with no nanny. Have the initial fish out of water as Alice, the possible bride. There's a lot of characters and some of them should have been cut to give everyone proper time for characterization. Mainly, more screen time needed to be given to "downstairs" to flesh out the Italian characters.

I hate when a show has information the characters know but is hidden from the viewer. Multiple times something happens off screen and we are not told about it, because to tell us would change the story. For instance, the nanny tells the cook why she's in Italy but we don't get to know what she told the cook. It's very frustrating as it's quite obvious why she's in Italy. The tension should come from the characters' relationships, not hiding the ball from the viewer.

• Owner - one of the few nice characters but lacks an arc. If it had been hotel dream versus marriage, that could work. Or maybe an optimistic, delusional rich woman who thinks she can run a hotel but is struggling. Her character isn't as well defined as Lord Grantham. On top of all of this, we see her horribly abused by a husband when we don't understand why she stays.

• Owner's husband - money grubbing villain and all of his scenes are painful because it's like watching a car crash

• Lucian, owner son - he's an entitled asshole yet we're supposed to like him?

• Indian doctor - I wish he had a little more purpose than "sad gay". Maybe they could have given him a job? Like he's working on a thesis paper but it's all an excuse to be near Lucian.

• new nanny - This should have been season 2.

• Italian maid - wish she got more lines. They could have done this by having 1-2 more servants (a kitchen maid and a taxi driver). Her arc of being in love with the son makes sense.

• Italian bell hop - we don't get enough characterization. Would have helped to have actual downstairs scenes.

• Owner's daughter - crowded out of the story by the nanny. They don't need both characters.

• Aunt and ward - I like them. Solid arc of finding youth in Italy.

• Alice's mom - I liked her as a villain but I wanted a backstory to humanize or explain her decisions

• Alice - I was expecting more backstory

• Mystery Art Man - this plot was so slow. Should have been max 1 episode

• Mystery Art Man Girlfriend - I like her plot as the hedonistic American trying to live life like it's the last because of war trauma. I do think we got too much male gaze and not enough historical explanation.

• Tennis man and wife - why did this need to be added?

• Town Fascists - nowhere near enough character development

• Italian count - nowhere near enough character development.

All in all, the show needed a more defined downstairs. There's a lot of history to dive into with post-WW1 and pre-WW2 Italy and we got very little historical explanation with many of the Italian characters feeling 1-note as not enough time was dedicated to character development.

Aldis Hodge was a great Hawkman!!! Best live action version of that character.

The backgrounds look like cut scenes from 2000s video games (or the Scorpion Game) and the lore dumps were painful. This should have been a 90 minute movie with none of that lore exposition until the last act. The entire beginning with the slaves and political talk was painful after seeing how artfully that's been handles in other movies.

I would have preferred this movie to just have Hawkman & Black Adam team up against mercenaries instead of all the extra weird plot stuff. Kahndaq is suppose to be Sinai ruled by mercenaries but that doesn't make sense. Even in countries with large mercenary control there's always at least a fake government. They should have started with a map showing where this fictional country is (modern day Sinai, Egypt) and introduce us by showing the oppression of the citizens via mercenaries and the reverence to the statue. Cut to the mom reseructing Adam. All this in the cold open. Then Adam gors on a bad ramage of the mercs. Hawkman volunteers and goes and tries to stop him, fails, and then tries to convince him to be good. Boom - we now have anti-hero tension. Hawkman has to address whether due process is really working in fake Sinai and Black Adam has to realize that simply killing everyone in power doesn't work. But instead we got a 2 hour mess of a plot with an amazing cast. Oh well.

I love department store shows (Mr. Selfridge, Are you being served) but while The Paradise has beautiful costumes and a tight set, the episode plotlines are frustrating.

The second episode features a false accusation of sexual assault which is unwatchable after #metoo.

The third episode has a heartbreaking but realistic plot line about the limitations of women in this time period but, again, features a sex assault plotline that offers up either (1) a glaring plot hole or (2) makes a reoccurring character seems like an absolute asshole. While I realize #2 is historically accurate, this is supposed to be a light and fluffy version of Mr. Selfridge.

The show is based on Au Bonheur des Dames by Emile Zola so has an impressive origin. I wish the love triangle had been less of a focus of the show, as it's less of a focus in the book. The book version of Morary learns to stop being a womanizer early on and it's played for laughs. Here, they make Morary too much like Selfridge in his love life, in other words, unlikable. Zola wrote the books as a commentary on a woman finding financial freedom in the same structure that is trying to trap them. There was always a romantic, happy element to his novel. I never got that same lightness from Morary and Denise's relationship.

I liked the beginning a lot, especially the chemistry between the two leads and the sparring mothers, but the point where they decided to not follow history and instead made Richard of York be real and have survived was too much. Perkin Warbeck was a pretender. In 1497 Warbeck landed in Cornwall with a few thousand troops, but was soon captured and executed, none of this extraneous plot about curses or the real Richard was a thing. Also, it was Henry VII that ordered the death of the Princes in the Tower, not his mother. This was simply to make the attractive lead seem more attractive and is historically inaccurate. I realize that Gregory believes Warbeck's claim was genuine, but I do not as most of academia believes Warbeck was a pretender.

I really enjoyed Lucile Gleason as the aunt from the west. The whole start of this film is quite charming. A woman has resigned herself to a milktoast marriage because isn't that the best women should expect in life. The aunt whose in town for a rodeo is supportive but disapproving while her and brother don't quite know how to connect with the bride-to-be and greatly feel the loss of her mother. It's all quite moving! Walk in Bing Crosby and Bob Burns, two cowboys employed by the aunt. That should be a great set-up for a meet-cure in New York and then later love on the range while Frances Farmer's character discovers passion and her worth out in the west.

Instead this movie is a LOT of racial stereotypes, bad western stereotypes, and very little actual ranching. The bad racial stereotypes leave no one untouched.

I think a remake of this film would be great. It's already like a lot of Hallmark movies, it just needs to be cleaned up. The racism and bad ranching makes this unbearable.

For more detail on the cast, Lucile Gleason was one of the founding members of SAG, Bing Crosby needs no introduction, this is Bob Burns first movie with Bing, and Frances Farmer famously suffered under medical control similar to Britney Spears.

I don't know why this movie was on my to watch list. I really liked the sets, the entire film is very atmospheric. The staging of movement within these small sets creates magic. For recreating an Italian city in a small warehouse and make it seem like a dark fantasy is wonderful.

However, the dialogue of this movie is extremely patriarchal and chauvinistic. In the first 20 minutes, this film had every line that is horrible towards women. I don't know what's worse, "you're too pretty to jump off a bridge" or "if you hadn't run away from me, a creepy stranger, you'd never gotten sexually harassed!". Probably the latter.

The acting and sets are great in this classic retelling of "guy meets girl, girl is pinning over man, guy looses girl" the actual dialogue is horrible and unromantic. They're much better versions of this story that are actually romantic. Personally, Once is a better version of "white nights" as there the man isn't a sex creep like this one.