Bad_Penguin Reviews

Champion (II) (2023)

Just staying for the music

[5/10 · 19 January 2024]

This show started off pretty strong but it quickly turned into a series of cliché storylines straight out of a soap opera handbook.

The doomed love story, the family drama, the best friend feud, the dead relative, the bad decisions, the stereotypes characters, the disneyfied version of the music industry... It's a bit much.

The music is the only thing that's keeping me going at this point but as the episodes drone on, there's less and less of it.

I feel like there could be endless seasons of this show, they'd just find new and creative ways to add unnecessary drama but you'd keep on watching because the songs are all bangers.

Celebrity (2023)

Just get rid of all the side plots already

[6/10 · 6 July 2023]

Hear me out: this show is not bad but it's not exactly groundbreaking.

The premise sounded great; yes I want to see a show about the behind the scenes of the influencer life and how one of them seemingly came back from the dead (or did she) to expose all the dirty secrets of that shallow world. But in classic K-drama fashion, the show only uses that premise to offer a long and drawn out season full of useless subplots (cue in the dragged out romance ), stereotyped characters (why is the main girl villain always yelling? Just please stop, my eardrums have burst) and questionable casting choices (that woman who doesn't do social media and can barely move her face does not make sense casting-wise).

I'm halfway through the season and I'm tempted to fast forward through all the boring love story bits and weird hidden crime nonsense to just get to the parts about the influencer world and the backstabbing moves to get ahead of the other Insta-Celebs (because that's what I want from this show).

So far the main character's development arc is all over the place. Most of her actions seem to come out of left field (especially at the beginning when she can barely articulate 2 words in a scene and then blurts out a very intricate passive aggressive monologue in the next). The villains are way too clichés, especially the main one (Cha Yee ?), who's just unreasonably loud and entitled and there's no way this woman would not have destroyed her online career within 2 hours of being on Instagram.

I probably will finish this, only to know who BBBfamous is (my money is on the woman whose name eludes me but is the character that doesn't have an Instagram account and she used to date the guy who's now interested in our protagonist... I did say there were a lot of unnecessary side plots ).

Production value is top notch though.

Fast X (2023)

Cars go VRUM VRUM and guns go BANG BANG

[6/10 · 2 July 2023]

FAMILY!!!!!

That is essentially the plot of the entire franchise, however family, while omnipresent in the dialogue and the overarching theme, is very much not present in this chapter. Yes we see Dom's son and Mia and Jacob and their mum, and Shaw and Shaw's mum, and Dante and Dante's dad (retconnnnnn), and Elena's sister (remember Elena who Dom had a son with but that is never ever mentioned afterwards and I guess isn't really part of the family?)... Next thing you know Giselle and Han will reveal they did have a child together but they hid it from the gang but now the child is in danger and the child is part of the family so the cars need to go vrum vrum and the guns need to go bang bang to go rescue the endangered progeny.

All of that to say that in this 10th installment, the family is somewhat not very present. It's a bit like nobody knew what to do with the ever-growing number of family members because of course Dom can sort it all out himself (because HERO) and so they're all just scattered around the globe doing absolutely sweet-nothing while Dom and Dante pulverize every continent they step on (Bombs go Boom Boom ).

Jason Momoa is the best thing about this film by not an inch but a quarter of a mile. His flamboyant take on Dante's character is sure to steal every scene he's in while Vin Diesel is over there trying to act like he's in Hamlet or smth.

John Cena was actually pretty decent too. A breath of fresh air in this over the top franchise that takes itself a bit too seriously while defying all the laws of physics. Annoyingly he doesn't make it or does he? If Giselle's cameo tells us anything is that nobody ever properly dies in the Fast universe. So I'm expecting a Jacob's resurrection in Fast XII; return of the Jacob.

Saint X (2023)

Saint Xasperation

[4/10 · 29 June 2023]

So there's this super annoying bratty character that gets killed while on vacation with her family in the Caribbean. Already we don't care because her character is the absolute worst. The murderer(s) (?) never get caught and so, on the anniversary of her death, her little sister (Emily?) who is now in her twenties, thinks she recognizes one of the dudes who worked at the resort when her sister died and that potentially could have been connected to the crime and is now working in New York as a cab driver. She then decides that she should definitely befriend the man in question (Gogo / Clive) to finally learn the truth about her sister's death and get closure. Unfortunately she's as annoying and entitled as her sister (if not more), hence you could care less what she does or does not do but you do, however, care a bit about Gogo / Clive because he's the only character with some depth and also he's not as one-dimensionally frustrating as pretty much everybody else in this silly show, which helps tremendously.

So if that sounds like an absolute waste of time of a show, you are on the money!! Could have worked as a mini-series of 4 episodes (maybe) but this is just way too long and void of any endearing characters.

At this point I don't even care who murdered the sister (although my money is on the preppy Yale fling or maybe she just fell in the waterfall like a muppet because reasons?! ) and I somehow do not care one bit if Emily ever gets the answers she feels she deserves more than anything else in the world (more than her so-called best friend deserved her career or more than her boyfriend deserved not being lied to). Do not care.

Update: she did fall like a muppet in the waterfall. Case closed. Called it.

Alice in Borderland (2020– )

Season 2 Review

[5/10 · 29 June 2023]

If you liked Squid Game but are on the market for a more nebulous scenario, a loose grasp on the concept of time, poor acting, unrealistic wardrobe choices and even worse wigs, then Alice in Borderland is THE show for you.

As far as the plot goes, you've got all these people that have been brought in this Tokyo-like environment and are forced to compete in childhood inspired games with a mortal twist. All the games are being given a difficulty and a style based on the different cards of a standard playing deck (so like club, heart, spade, diamond). Season 2 sees the players trying to tackle the kings and queens of each suit in order to defeat them all and go home (which they don't know that they can or even where they are ...).

The plot sounds alright, hence why I suffered through season 1, but apart from the sometimes over gratuitous violence, this show has not much to offer. Season 2 feels both dragged out and rushed at the same time, which how do you even do that? Some of the games they have to take part in start mid-episode only to end on a cliffhanger (and push people to watch the next one). But there's no good plot reasons for that, just they figured that was the best way to get people watching. Half the episodes are just the protagonist being absolutely insufferable (I hate him with a passion), and the games themselves stop being inventive or interesting after the first 2. Also who even is in charge of the wardrobe for this? Who thought that putting all the women in skimpy, unpractical outfits was the way to go in 2022?! There's this one girl that's just running about Kung-fuing her way to victory in flip-flops, jeans and a bikini top... Have you ever tried to run in flip-flops? It's just mental.

I suppose I can give season 2 props for some of the scenes involving the King of Spades (the dude is a killing machine) and the first two games. But most of it could have been either condensed in 4 episodes or better developed in 10. You have to make a choice, you can't give me 2 episodes on one game and then expedite the next in ten minutes with a bunch of fast forwards and ellipses...

One thing I just don't understand at all is why-O-why do people start giving philosophical speeches when there's about three minutes left on the death clock? They're all going to maybe die in three minutes unless they find a solution quick and they just start running, stop, turn around and give the longest speech known to mankind...WHY??? Can't you do that later?? There's three minutes left!! Three!!! But it seems time stops during those speeches because once they're over, the protagonists still have about three minutes left ...So yeah, like I said "loose grasp on the concept of time".

In conclusion: the best way to watch this show is to fast-forward through all the boring bits (60%) and hit "play" when the action picks up.

Run Rabbit Run (2023)

What happened to the rabbit?

[4/10 · 28 June 2023]

I'm sorry but what was the point of the rabbit? Who left that rabbit for Mia to find? Did the rabbit escape from someone else's backyard and now some little kid is heartbroken about their pet going missing? Why is the rabbit just roaming free around the house at all times? Do people do that with their pet rabbits? Don't they just poo everywhere though? And what happens to the rabbit at the end? Do we know? Is it just hopping about in the hallway full of broken glass from all the broken pictures? I'm very concerned about the rabbit.

Also this movie is just way too slow, the atmosphere is great but you're just waiting and waiting and waiting for something, anything to happen. And nothing ever happens. You guess halfway through that Sarah is responsible for whatever happened to her sister. So the whole "grief bringing out deeply buried trauma to the surface" angle is quite obvious and not very well executed.

I also still have no clue whether the kid was possessed or whether the mum was just having a mental breakdown and hallucinating massively. Was there meant to be a supernatural element to it or was it meant to be more of a psychological study of repressed memories and their effect on the human psyche? Was it all just in Sarah's head? Did she even have a kid and an ex-husband?! We will never know because the film explains NOTHING.

Also what was the point of that bite wound on her hand that seemed very infected in one scene then completely forgotten about in the next then squirting puss later on, then forgotten again forever?! Was it supposed to mean smth? Was it a sign of smth? WAS IT ALL IN HER HEAD?!!!

So many questions (mostly rabbit-related) and zero answers.

No thanks.

Tiny Beautiful Things (2023)

Muddled Mess

[5/10 · 8 May 2023]

I thought the show started off well and I was intrigued enough to move onto the next episode despite a few narrative oddities (all those muddled flashbacks were probably designed to give you insight into Clare's character but were just super confusing because young Clare always looked 18 despite some flashbacks being set in her late twenties). But honestly, you get to the end of this show and you feel like the last episode is not a finale at all. What has changed? What journey has she truly been on? Yeah I guess she somewhat sorted her relationship with her daughter out, but barely and meanwhile her husband is or isn't cheating on her with the therapist?? A storyline that's foreshadowed early on then completely abandoned for the rest of the show...

This show was a mess of flashback scenes that start making sense once you realize the actress playing young Clare is a vampire and thus never ages. Actually wait, I might just have cracked the code there. Maybe this entire show was about vampires and no one's clocked it. What about the time she was addicted to drugs? Was that before her mom's death or after?! And when did she ever divorce her first husband and why and was that before or after she met her new one?! MAKE IT MAKE SENSE.

The whole coming to terms with the death of a loved one plot is good and thoughtful but it's being let down by everything else.

Tell Me Lies (2022– )

Soft porn slash teenage drama slash absolute nonsense

[2/10 · 28 December 2022]

What is up with all the great reviews? Have we watched the same thing?

This show is an absolute car crash. ALL the characters are insufferable, the actors can't really act, the storyline(s) are so predictable and have been done a million times before (much better too) and there's just an absurd amount of gratuitous sex scenes that add NOTHING to the plot.

Also what is up with portraying young adults as being interested in one thing and one thing only (that thing being sex)? Sure they'll explore their sexuality in college, but can't they have other personality traits? Is that too much to ask for?

I have no patience for this buffoonery.

Bayou Caviar (2018)

Alright

[5/10 · 5 October 2018]

It's definitely not the worst movie out there but it just drags on and on with almost no purpose. It's like the scenes have just been pasted one after another without any real continuity and the characters are not developped enough for us to relate with any of them. Subsequently, we don't care what will happen to them at all. The plot is also a bit convoluted and the whole thing jut feels amateurish

Ruin Me (2017)

Not great, not horrible

[4/10 · 27 July 2018]

I see a lot of prettty good reviews, which I'm a bit skeptical about... This movie was definitely not the worst, but it was far from great. The plot is somewhat predictable, halfway through you start suspecting the perfect boyfriend might not be so perfect after all... The acting was better than I expected (I'll give it that). But overall it's a very forgettable movie.

The Row (I) (2018)

Not a masterpiece

[2/10 · 27 July 2018]

So cliché (girl goes to university and wants to join a sorority, overbearing cop dad is having a hard time letting her go, people are being killed on campus, stories merge, you can predict where it's gonna go from there ...). Bad acting, bad editing, bad soundtrack... Just don't bother.