ecanarensis

I had absolutely no idea what this movie was going to be...a friend rented it & just popped it in. I'm pretty sure that for most of the movie, I looked just like the audience in "The Producers" right when the cast starts singing "Springtime for Hitler." It was like watching a train wreck. And not a real well done train wreck.

The acting was pathetic, tho it fit well with the script. One really awful scene comes when the girl goes to her first ob/gyn appointment...it does not go well. The doc ends up wallowing on the floor, blood spurting from the stumps of his bitten-off fingers, wailing "Vagina dentata!" over & over & over (Latin basically for "vagina with teeth). The characters are despicable, but at least they have a lousy script.

However, I am actually glad that I was too stunned to lurch off the couch & rip the thing out of the player; I was still sitting there clutching my head when the final credits started...and thus got introduced to the music of Chuck Prophet. The song over the final creds is "You Did (Who put the bomp in bomp shooby dooby bomp)"...don't hate it because of the title.

So do yourself a favor; skip the flick & catch some Chuck Prophet.

This is a wonderful series ...I'm watching S1 & S2 again for the 2nd time in less than a month. The writing is great, so is the acting, the characters are3-D & interesting, not from stock. The stories do share some sameness...there's a murder (maybe 2) in a small, place that's fairly isolated, in one part or other of the Shetland Isles. There's several potential suspects. The stories & mysteries are the kind that seem like what could happen in any small town, village, or big city, for that matter; the types of things that happen to real people, as opposed to dramatic, wild, over-the-top happenin's. Not as cozy as a drawing room mystery, but easy to relate to.

Which is not to say they're boring. I really grew to care about the characters, & when bad thing(s) happened to one (or more)* of the regulars, it really moved me.

The islands play a big part in the series; as at least one other reviewer observed, the land & sea are pretty much main characters as well as the people. Beautifully filmed in a gorgeous (if minimalist) land, the scenery makes me want to go there to get in touch with my own Scottish roots.

Lovely series; I hope the Beeb has more sense than most of US TV decision-makers & keeps it up (this show wouldn't have lasted a full season on a US channel...too intelligent & classy).

It occurred to me mid-way thru the second run thru that part of what I like about the characters is that the actors look like real people, rather than the plastic Barbie/Ken people that we get on US TV shows; older characters may have belly bulges or wrinkles. Most look as if they've never been near a Botox needle. There's very attractive people, and some very unattractive people. Realistic people. What a concept!

Though, one silly nit-pick: why does the GP who does the forensic work for the Shetland police always shake down her electronic thermometer?

*trying not to intro any spoilers

I'm not going to bother going through all the instances of scientific idiocy; many, many reviewers have already done an excellent job of pointing them out. And lord knows there were a lot of them.

Many reviewers also point out, in various spirited ways, that the characters are dumber than rocks, but I'm going to chime in on this point: Can no script writer manage to create a plot that doesn't depend almost entirely on characters doing moronic things? It's a good thing I didn't indulge in as many face palms as I was inclined to, or I would've ended up with brain damage and now be as dumb as the pea brains in this movie.

One question I didn't see in the 15 or so reviews I read: did anyone else get tired of hearing the first 9 notes of the Star Trek theme --over & over & over, & many more overs, throughout the movie? ? Did they put it in as a subliminal (actually, overt) attempt to get trekkies to love-love-love this turkey?

We get a ship of white folks with 1 token black guy, 1 token Oriental; I kept wondering if the captain (the black guy) would be the first one killed. And why the heck did they have Idris Elba do a ghett-toe accent, when most everybody else has accents from the British Isles (where he's from)??

Points to ponder: -Why does an android need (or want) to bleach his hair? And David even says at one point that he doesn't understand what it means to"want." But he apparently "wants" to become a blonde. If it was meant as a sideways sort of nod to Jamie Lee Curtis' hilarious mustache bleaching in "A Fish Called Wanda," it missed. -a space age med pod that's sex-limited (i.e. would treat only men)?? -"Smells fine to me" is not exactly a reliable way to determine alien air safety. -shouldn't space weapons be more advanced than flame throwers, BB pistols (apparently; they weren't any more effective than BBs), & a pickaxe?

Sooooo glad I got this at the library & didn't pay any money for it!