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Jonathan Creek (1997)
A fantastic show ruined by some of the most miserable characters in the history of TV
The "Magician detective" is an idea that's been done to death but never done quite as well as when it was done by this show. This is mostly due to the main character's shyness and retiring nature, played to a "T" by Alan Davis. He would be perfectly happy just sitting at home planning tricks for his self absorbed boss but instead keeps getting dragged all over England to confront the British Isle's criminal population, all of whom are unbelievably well versed in stage magic techniques that are elaborately applied to rather unbelievable crimes. The writing is good enough to keep your disbelief dangling on a tight rope.
The downside of the show comes from every character who isn't Creek.
Take the British police who alternate between appreciating Creek's input to being abusive bullies. It's hard to understand how the main character is placed in the universe in the show when that same universe accepts or rejects him depending on whatever inconvenience is needed for the plot.
Then there's Adam Klaus, the magician who Creek works for. In the first season, he's played by Anthony Stewart Head who manages to make a repugnant sex obsessed narcissist seem charming and despite the fact that Tony Head can't do an American accent to save his life, you find him fascinating. But for the rest of the show the character is played by an actual American, Stuart Milligan who doesn't do my home country very proud when he somehow makes Adam Klaus so repellent that his scenes are actually a bear to watch.
It gets worse in the first three seasons with Maddy, played by Caroline Quentin. Maddy is the female lead of the show and Jonathon Creek's possible love interest but they never actually seem to close the deal, either out of neurosis or bad luck. The problem with Maddy is the opposite for the other characters: she's TOO well written, she's too human and broken. Unlike most female leads on tv, Maddy is a real woman with a real human body and down to earth looks. That's great and fun, she's smart and motivated and a great character. But she's also manipulative, cruel, and rather mean to Jonathon and after the first two episodes their "will they, won't they" becomes "God, why should they?"
Maddy's attitude makes sense when you learn her backstory but it's not much of an excuse for the generally cold blooded way she leaves Jonathon to twist in the wind. Also, despite NEVER actually being a real couple and acknowledging that Jonathon is free to be with who ever he wants, she essentially harangues him mercilessly when he does meet someone.
Maddy leaves after the third season and gets replaced with a series of other female assistants but that's a huge hit to the show because none of the successive assistants are A) As well written and B) getting prettier and prettier to the point that Sarah Alexander plays "Mrs. Creek" at the end of the show and it almost seems like a slap in the face to Caroline Quentin to replace her with, well, go look at a picture of Sarah Alexander. Maddy isn't a very GOOD person but she's definitely the soul of the show and it loses something when she's gone.
Alan Creek is also a prime example of the dumbness of British TV's "scheduling gaps" between seasons because by the end of the show in 2016, so much time has passed for Alan Davis that he looks like he's melted into a blob of Jonathon Creek shaped goo. It's hard to pull off "Boyish charm" when you lack, well, boyish looks.
All in all, the show is saved by the fantastic writing and excellent plots that remain consistently good throughout.
Paradise PD (2018)
Brickleberry...but actually funny
Okay so let's state the obvious: this is the exact same show as Brickleberry, an animated Comedy Central show that isn't nearly as funny as it thinks it is. There are two reasons for why Brickleberry sucked: first, Brickleberry was on basic cable and thus it always had to hold back and second, because it starred the voice acting "talents" of Daniel Tosh, a man who is also not nearly as funny as advertised.
This show stars most of the cast from Waco O'Guin and Roger Black's previous show but with a few major changes: first Daniel Tosh is gone (sadly not from earth, just this show) and they added Kyle Kinane, Dana Croker, and Sarah Chalke (who is playing VERY against type). Aside from these changes and a shift in setting (cops not park rangers) there isn't much different. Which is weird because usually after the cancellation of a show, people will try to change things up. O'Guin and Black are instead doing the same damn thing with even the same jokes and, in two very significant cases, THE EXACT SAME CHARACTERS (Bobby Possumcod is back y'all).
But what's weird is that this show is A LOT funnier than Brickleberry inspite of being the same damn thing. It's grosser, has nudity, has actual curse words, and graphic sex. The new cast members are also a lot better at their jobs than the missing Brickleberry cast members. Cedric Yarbrourgh has been the funniest thing on TV for years, Dana Croker and Grey Griffin are so solid that it's a hard to believe they aren't on every tv show. Then there's Sarah Chalke who seems very happy to be able to play something other than the hot mess girlfriend or a stressed out single mom. Chalke has some of the best jokes on the show, playing a violent rageaholic cop. Kyle Kinane is also pretty funny as a drugged out police dog but also feels like he's being underused because even though Kinane's three pack smoker voice can make most gags funny, the drug addict jokes wear out pretty quickly. Rounding out the cast are David Herman and Tom Kenny who are using the same voices to play roughly the same roles they had before on Brickleberry which is good because hearing Tom Kenny freak out and yell is always hilarious.
It's a good, not a great show and they tell some of the stronger gags from Brickleberry while also leaning into the best parts of the new cop show setting. They have an ongoing storyline about crystal meth and a hobo, which is so silly it's oddly genius.
The problem with the show is that it occasionally tries to be smart, which is stupid. This is not Rick and Morty, that show tells intelligent jokes about smart concepts. It's also not American Dad or South Park where they get clever with silly ideas and tell political gags with just enough heart to still feel fun.
This is a stupid show and it should stay stupid. So when the show devoted an entire episode to trying to make a vague point about police violence and cable news...they completely drop the ball. When the two least funny characters have a b-plot set in a nursing home that's more amusing than the prolonged gags about Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow, then something went wrong in the writers room.
If this show is ever going to get from good to great, O'Guin and Black need to stop trying to make a point, stop trying to tell deep jokes, and just stick to the episode long butt puns.
Also, make Tara Strong a regular on the show, she's great.
Harper (1966)
A fantastic film...that still falls short of the source material
When you start naming detective authors from the 20th century, you get a short list of names. Christie, Hammett, Chandler, maybe sometimes Rex Stout or a few others. But the name that's on every real mystery fan's list is Ross MacDonald for his Lew Archer novels. The first and arguably MacDonald's best is The Moving Target, a thrilling pot boiler about a missing millionaire and a household of people who frankly would be much better off without him.
Harper is Hollywood's attempt to turn The Moving Target into a moving picture with Paul Newman performing the roll of Lew Harper (changed for some sort of Holly-weird reason). The result is Newman at his prime and by changing Archer to Harper, America's future salad dressing king can make the role his own. Newman sizzles on the screen and every single line out of his mouth feels smooth and as cool as a menthol cigarette. The film's cast is filled with talent as well. Lauren Bacall, Robert Wagner, and a cast of other old studio pros all support Newman's quest to be the first and best easy going PI.
But as good a film is, Harper can't seem to live up to the novel it's based on and it's easy to understand why this film (and it's later sequel) never quite stay memorable in the minds of American film fans. Harper is a film that tries so hard, achieves so much, and yet still manages to waste it's potential.
Pulse (1988)
Solid but not terribly earth shattering
One of the problems that cinema of the 1990s and 1980s is that filmmakers and audiences never really knew what they had on their hands. The Exorcist III by William Peter Blatty, for instance, was probably one of the greatest thrillers ever made and yet audiences and Hollywood executives at the time just didn't know what they had. Pulse is another example of a film that came just too early to be appreciated. It's a solid concept and a solid thriller that probably would be a bigger hit today than in the 1980s when there were no cell phones or computer controlled cars because the idea is so much scarier and more real these days. So on the one hand, Pulse suffers from being too early.
But on the other hand, it's also not exactly good. When you talk about all the underrated horror gems of the 80s and 90s (Exorcist III, Pumpkinhead, In the Mouth of Madness, The Resurrected, Prince of Darkness, or Event Horizon) Pulse will never make that list because it's just too flawed.
Pulse suffers from "Writer/Director disease", where there isn't enough eyes on a single scene or concept to really understand how it works. The idea of making the main character a little kid instead of the step mom (who steals the show) seems like something someone else should've mentioned during pre-production. Certain scenes feel out of place in the film and you can tell that a large part of the movie was left on the cutting room floor. I'm not saying the movie would do better with a longer running time, because in this case the film is tight enough to hang together, but a lot of ideas are picked up and dropped (voices in the wires, a tv set that seems to talk to you, other houses in the neighborhood being infected).
All in all, Pulse suffers from being too early and not well defined enough from the rest of the 80s horror pack. It tries very hard to be Poltergeist but the flaws in the script and the direction just can't pull it off.
Cry Wilderness (1987)
This film can't be killed. Run! RUN AWAY!
There are bad movies and there are awful movies and then there are movies so stunningly terrible that even Mystery Science Theater 3000 can't make them better.
Covered in the second episode of the show's 11th season, you'd expect the jokes about this bad movie to be a welcome dose of fun for MST3K's return. Sadly not. Either because of the new cast's inexperience or returning producer Joel Hodgeson's tendency to "play nice" with the bad movies, Cry Wilderness actually manages to defy satire.
This film is so god awful and poorly made that it actually can't be made fun of. The acting is bad, the script is drivel, the story is razor thin. It's everything MST3K has made fun of for nearly twenty years and yet some how it's worse, none of the jokes made at Cry Wilderness' expense manage to be funny because it's just...that...bad. it's by far one of the top ten worst films they've ever ridiculed and it's certainly one of the worst films I've ever watched.
Don't watch this movie, even if it's in the context of an MST3K episode, it defies all expectations for awful.
Whatever Works (2009)
This is, without question, one of the most self indulgent grating movies ever made
As a former New Yorker myself with some understanding of the culture of the City and State from where I hail, I feel I can give an unbiased and honest assessment of Woody Allen's ten billionth love letter to the Big Apple.
And that assessment can be summed up as *fart noise*.
Seriously though, this movie is a god awful exercise in navel gazing and seems to exist for no other reason than to confirm every terrible thing anyone ever said about the East Coast.
Larry David plays a thinly veiled Woody Allen stand in who immediately finds love and sex with a woman forty years younger than him while constantly whining about his life in a way that makes both his character and everyone else's character seem unlikable. David's character in any other movie would seem like an anti-Semitic dog whistle if not for the fact that Allen is himself a walking, talking Jewish stereotype so the most I can say is that the film probably isn't a hate crime against the Jews.
The running plot of the film is thin and annoying but it can be summed up as an insult to both New Yorkers and to Mid-westerners at the same time. New Yorkers should be scandalized by Allen's assessment of their day to day lives as nothing more than a series of hippie/hipster/radical liberal stereotypes who gaze into their navels so hard that it gives them eye problems. While I'm sure there's some truth to these thinly veiled stereotypes, their use in this manner seems to surpass satire and become a grating affront.
Meanwhile, Allen's assessment of people from Flyover states seems to swing between infuriating to disgusting as he assesses these poor, unwashed ignoramuses as both repressed Luddites and easily seduced bumpkins that will abandon all of their closely held beliefs and relationships at the mere mention of the siren song of New York's shopping and baby boomer three ways (seriously, that's literally how one character decides to move to New York permanently). At times, you wonder if Woody Allen has ever met anyone from west of Staten Island or north of Yonkers.
Also Allen's normally tight direction seems to have sat this movie out as he seems incapable of getting a decent performance from normally talented actors like Evan Rachel Wood or Patricia Clarkson. In fact I feel sorry for Wood since this entire film seems like one long creepy love letter to young flesh as glimpsed by an elderly horn dog. Henry Cavill shows up to be his usual, boring slab of meat self because even Woody Allen can't summon up the self delusion needed to believe Evan Rachel Wood's character would remain with Larry David's character.
Generally the whole film seems designed to get a quick pay check and to allow some of Allen's few remaining fans to leave the nursing home for a few hours.
It's just a really bad movie, frankly.