"Barb and Star" is Delightfully Bizarre

I don't really miss the "Austin Powers" films, or the "Zoolander" films, or anything else from the sketch comedy-infused parodies of the 1990s and 2000s. I suspect that because I didn't know that "Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar" was a throwback to this era of comedy, it caught me by surprise, and ended up landing better with me than any of those films ever did. Maybe it's just because I respond better to the kitschy charms of a pair of middle-aged midwestern ladies who just want to go on vacation, than the charms of Austin Powers or Derek Zoolander.


In any case, "Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar" is a weird, but terribly charming movie. Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, who previously co-wrote "Bridesmaids" together, are back again, both writing and starring in this feature as Barb (Mumolo) and Star (Wiig). We first meet these two culotte-clad besties as they're being fired from their jobs at a Jennifer Convertibles, and then being ousted from their "talking club" for lying about it. So, they decide to go to the beach town of Vista Del Mar, Florida for a vacation to forget their troubles. Alas, at the same time the evil Dr. Lady (also Wiig) has dispatched her faithful henchman Edgar (Jamie Dornan), to unleash a fiendish plot to kill all the inhabitants of Vista Del Mar with weaponized mosquitos. Yes, it is *that* kind of movie.


The film milks the absurdist premise for all it's worth, following both the mundane and outlandish adventures of Barb and Star in a universe that keeps getting stranger and nuttier as the film goes on. There are spontaneous musical numbers, talking animals, ridiculous action sequences, and celebrity cameos. However, some of the best gags are the simpler ones, like a hotel pianist named Richard Cheese (Mark Jonathan Davis) who sings very inappropriate lyrics, or the talking club being lead by the despotic Debbie (Vanessa Bayer). Barb and Star themselves turn out to be quite loveable, leaning hard into every stereotype of being whitebread midwestern women in their 40s. They talk incessantly, are aggressively pleasant, and love shopping for the cheapest and tackiest items imaginable. On the other hand, they also turn out to be very receptive to having a drug-fueled threesome with a handsome stranger.


The biggest problem I see with "Barb and Star" is that it's not as funny as it could be. It's a solid feel-good movie and a nice escape from reality - especially for those of us still stuck in quarantine - but I found myself more happily distracted by the pretty colors and threats of impending doom than actually laughing. And I expect that it's probably only going to really appeal to a particular niche of viewers - a little older, and a little nostalgic for the glory days of '90s sketch comedy. It also helps to have actually encountered women like Barb and Star before, just to have a cultural point of reference. I suspect this one was dumped on VOD, because the film's distributor couldn't figure out what to do with it.


Still, this is a rare bird that deserves appreciation. I appreciate how oddly wholesome the film is. It's got plenty of sex jokes and some profanity, but it never gets as crass as you might expect it to. As ridiculous as it gets, at its core it remains a sweet-natured movie about the power of friendship. Barb and Star's relationship woes drive the story, and are always relatable and sympathetic. While it's fun to watch Kristen Wiig's take on her very own Dr. Evil figure, she's more entertaining as Star. Annie Mumolo also needs to be in way more movies, as Barb is a delight. And learning that Jamie Dornan has such good comedic timing is the film's best surprise.


Alas, Vista Del Mar isn't a real place, but I'm glad we got to visit.

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Rank 'Em: "Love, Death & Robots" Year Two

The Netflix science-fiction animated anthology series is back for round two, with a smaller episode count, and somewhat toned down content, but gorgeous eye candy.  I feel the level of quality is about on par with the first batch of shorts overall, but the quality varies considerably.  Below, find my rankings, from best to worst.

Very mild spoilers ahead.

"The Drowned Giant" - Based on a J.G. Ballard short story, written and directed by Tim Miller, this is the weirdest, most contemplative short, which works very well as an allegory for man's tendency to abuse and commodify all of nature's most awesome creations.  I especially like the tone of this one, the poignant, scholarly narration over these fantastical images.  Even the final punchline with the circus attraction is strangely compelling.   

"Ice" - This year's Robert Valley directed short looks absolutely fantastic.  It's easily got the best animation, character designs, and production designs, creating an alien environment that shifts between hostile and gorgeous.  There's not much of a story, but the chase and action sequences are really well done, and there's just enough conflict and character growth to make it feel satisfying.  This is easily the best executed one of the batch.     

"All Through the House" - It's one joke that goes for five minutes, and stops exactly when it should.  This version of Santa Claus is certainly one of the most original takes I've seen in a long while, and the CGI animation and certain sound effects are well executed.  The contrast between the Christmasy settings and the, uh, less traditional elements has a lot of impact.  The kids' reaction shots are what really sell it, and that last line is perfect.      

"Automated Customer Service" - No surprise that the most humorous short is another adaptation of a John Scalzi story.  This one has a lot of appeal, with its heavily caricatured geriatric heroes, and an increasingly malevolent automatic voice messaging system that is at least as much of a threat as the killer robot on the loose.  I enjoy the way this one escalates, and you've got to love a short with a stupid looking dog.     

"Snow in the Desert" - This is my favorite of the shorts with photorealistic animation, and I like the way that it ends.  However, everything else about it isn't very memorable - the characters, the dialogue, the worldbuilding, and the themes.  It feels like a promising start to something that could have been much more striking, if the creators had put in more work on the characters.  It gets points for some good moments, though.    

"The Tall Grass" - I really like the designs and the animation style here, which is CGI done to look less smooth and polished than the norm.  However, there's just not much to the story.  It's a spooky little monster tale with a sinister ending, but it's too brief to feel like anything substantive.  I don't think it's a bad short, but it's the one I think could have seen the most improvement from being a few minutes longer.  

"Life Hutch" - This one is frustrating.  It's got Michael B. Jordan as the lead.  It's based on a Harlan Ellison short story.  The animation is so good, I'm not sure which shots are live action and which ones aren't.  However, it's so generic and so unimaginative in the way everything plays out, the short ends up being very underwhelming.  This one came across as more of an effects demo or test than a proper narrative piece.   

"Pop Squad" - Most of my objections to this one are due to the bland, generic visuals - which look way too much like outdated video game cutscenes - and the awful soap opera dialogue.  The antinatalist premise could have been more interesting if handled differently, but the choices here are so obvious and so preachy that they left me unmoved.  The opening shot looks great, but I'm afraid it's all downhill from there.    

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"Invincible" Gets Intense

Minor spoilers ahead.

We've reached the stage where we're seeing regular subversions of the superhero genre in the mainstream, an impulse that is generating all kinds of interesting media.  Amazon Prime has a new animated series, "Invincible," that is one of the better examples of this trend.  Like "The Boys," it takes all the usual tropes of your typical superhero origin story, and proceeds to do something outrageously violent and unnerving with them.  Superheroes have been so closely tied to animation, that it feels very satisfying to have a show like this really take advantage of the strengths of the medium to create something so unapologetically adult.  

Created by Robert Kirkman, based on his own comics series, "Invincible" takes place in a world very familiar with superheroes and supervillains.  Various super-teams are active, and it seems like there's always some mad scientist, interdimensional invader, or super-powered criminal wreaking havoc somewhere.  Our main character is teenager Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun), the son of the most powerful superhero on Earth, Omniman (J.K. Simmons), and a lovely realtor named Debbie (Sandra Oh).  After getting his powers, Mark decides to become the superhero Invincible and follow in his father's footsteps.  However, he soon discovers the difficulties of balancing school, superhero work, and his relationships with his friends, William (Andrew Rannells) and Amber (Zazie Beetz).  And Omniman is also keeping secrets.  

"Invincible" is one of the few animated series with hour-long episodes.  Otherwise, it looks deceptively like your standard DC or Marvel superhero series of the past few years.  The designs are brightly colored and many major characters are based on DC superheroes.  There are analogues to the Justice League and the Teen Titans in the series, with Omniman clearly a take on Superman.  The animation is a little higher quality than the norm, especially the action sequences, which are beautifully fluid and often epic in scope.  This also makes the jarring instances of gory violence all the more shocking.  The voice cast is great all around, with a significant number of high profile actors in the mix.  The superhero group, the Guardians of the Globe, have members that are all voiced by alumni of "The Walking Dead."

There's a lot being made of how mature the content in the show is, specifically the absurd amount of violence.  However, for the most part the story plays out on roughly the same level you'd expect from your average teen show.  Mark spends most of the series dealing with typical adolescent woes - his love life, parental expectations, and his own uncertainty about the future.  He meets other teen superheroes like Atom Eve (Gillian Jacobs), whose own issues are explored in subplots.  Really, the series only feels unusually adult because animated superhero media is often so infantilized.  The content here isn't remotely on the same level as something like "The Boys."  There's little sexuality, no nudity, and barely even any strong language.            

However, the writing is very, very good.  I like the way that this universe is set up and explored, and how we get to know so many interesting secondary characters.  I love that Debbie is a major character who has her own storylines, and we get a good look at her relationship with Omniman.  I love the way that Omniman is so morally gray, and he's less two-dimensional than someone like Homelander, in spite of being animated.  I love the wide variety of villains, and how normalized the fantasy aspects of superheroing are in the "Invincible" universe.  And I appreciate the way that Kirkman plays on our expectations of superhero media to deliver some good humor and thoughtful commentary.     

    

"Invincible" has already been renewed for multiple seasons, and since it's based on a comics series that has already wrapped up, I expect that the level of quality will remain consistent. I'm very excited to see how this is all going to play out, and what other surprises the show has in store.

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Winslet Wins in "Mare of Easttown"

Spoilers for the first episode ahead.

The prestige miniseries about a  female police detective solving a crime in a small community with a lot of secrets has become its own genre, with "Top of the Lake" and "Sharp Objects" standing out as some of the better ones.  "Mare of Easttown" sets its story in Eastern Pennsylvania, and its success is due in large part to how well creator Brad Inglesby and director Craig Zobel are able to capture the specificity of this corner of the world and its staunch, blue collar characters - their particular dialect, lifestyle quirks, and behaviors.  Family bonds are strong, and every family seems to have ties to every other family, but of course there are lurking dysfunctions and tragedies everywhere. 

Mare Sheehan (Kate Winslet) is a local police detective, and former basketball star, who has failed to find a missing teenage girl, Katie Bailey (Caitlin Houlahan) for a year.  Her family life is complicated, and she currently lives with her mother Helen (Jean Smart), teenage daughter Siobhan (Angourie Rice), and young grandson Drew (Izzy King).  Things escalate after another teenage girl, Erin McMenamin (Cailee Spaeny), turns up murdered, one with a troubled history and ties to the family of Mare's best friend Lori Ross (Julianne Nicholson).  A county detective, Colin Zabel (Evan Peters), becomes Mare's new partner in the investigation, and a visiting academic, Richard (Guy Pearce), becomes her new love interest.

I like that the  first episode of "Easttown" takes its time to really get the audience situated in it's universe before any major events happen.  This is a place where drug use and poverty are rampant, teen pregnancy is commonplace, and infidelity seems to be a given.  The middle-aged women - Mare, Lori, and Katie's mother Dawn (Enid Graham), are the ones keeping families from falling apart worse than they already have, while the men around them are ineffectual or absent at best.  Everyone seems to have suffered a long list of traumas, and the worst of the neglect and abuse falls on girls like Erin.  I've never been more appreciative that a show cast age-appropriate actors to play the teenagers, so we get the full impact of seeing these young characters in some truly awful situations.  

Kate Winslet anchors the show, giving Mare a grounded toughness and grit that is very appealing.  She looks very much her actual age, and is styled very minimally, so I buy her as a police detective, and more importantly as a mother and grandmother trying, and often failing, to keep her family together.  She's still beautiful and charismatic enough that it's no mystery why Guy Pearce's character is attracted to her, but at the same time it seems perfectly normal to see her eating junk food and wrangling a small child at the doctor's office.  As much as "Easttown" is about a murder investigation, it's also just as much a character piece about Mare.  I like the way the show offers a slow, but steady stream of information about her past, balancing her personal troubles with the unfolding investigation so neither ever dominates the narrative.  

Backing up Winslet is a very strong cast, with Jean Smart and Julianne Nicholson turning in other standout performances.  There are several younger actors who are new to me - Cailee Spaeny, Mackenzie Lansing, and Jack Mulhern - and who I expect I'll be seeing more from in the future.  It's really the performances and the worldbuilding that make the show, much moreso than the fairly rote murder mystery that plays out with a few too many twists and red herrings.  "Easttown" probably would have benefitted from cutting an episode or two, removing some of the more obviously manufactured cliff hangers and false leads.   

Still, this is all around one of the best miniseries in this vein that I've seen in a long time.  It's a treat to see Winslet in a role that fits her talents, and the production does everything right.  This is also a comparatively easy watch next to some of the other prestige television we've seen recently, and not nearly as bleak as I was expecting it to be.  In the end, "Easttown" wants to uplift Mare and women like her, and that's always a welcome thing to see.   

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The First Six Episodes of "The Nevers"

I spent significant chunks of the 1990s and the 2000s watching Joss Whedon shows, and there was never really a question that I was going to watch this one.  Whedon has been cancelled for being a terrible person, and HBO has done its best to distance him from the latest series he created, "The Nevers."  He hasn't appeared in any of the marketing, and will be replaced as showrunner for any subsequent seasons. However, "The Nevers" is so clearly a Whedon project, featuring so many familiar Whedonisms, it's impossible to ignore his contributions.  

So, in an alternate universe version of Victorian London, a strange event causes many women and a few men to develop mysterious superpowers.  Dubbed, "The Touched," they're treated as threats to the ruling elite, as a new resource to be exploited, or as unfortunates to be saved, depending on the person.  Two of the Touched, Amalia True (Laura Donnelly) and Penance Adair (Ann Skelly), run the Orphanage, a home for the Touched that have nowhere else to go.  They're supported by an invalid spinster, Mrs. Bidlow (Olivia Williams), and staunchly opposed by Lord Massen (Pip Torrens), who is convinced the Touched are dangerous.  Other characters include the murderous madwoman Maladie (Amy Manson), a hedonist entrepreneur Hugo Swann (James Norton),  Mrs. Bidlow's conflicted brother Augie (Tom Riley), a West Indian physician, Dr. Cousens (Zackary Momoh), and Inspector Frank Mundi (Ben Chaplin).

Among The Touched, there's Lucy (Elizabeth Berrington), Primrose (Anna Devlin), Harriet (Kira Sonia Sawar), Desirée (Ella Smith), Mary (Eleanor Tomlinson), and Myrtle (Viola Prettejohn) - and I won't reveal their specific powers, because discovering those is half the fun.  And the show really is an awful lot of fun, in a big, splashy kind of way, even though I'm not sure whether it's actually good.  It's every single Joss Whedon series (and a few of the movies) condensed into one big, messy Victorian "X-men" pastiche.  The pace is quick, big new reveals and twists are coming constantly, and HBO provides a hefty budget to make it all look fabulous.  In the third episode, there's a sensational fight scene between a man who can walk on water and one of our heroines that takes place both on and under the surface of a lake.

However, and it's a big however, "The Nevers" also features many of Joss Whedon's usual bad habits - there's a whole, terrible subplot involving a skeevy brothel, the dialogue is very stylized and often sounds ridiculous for this time period, and there's an awful lot of hastily skipping over the uncomfortable implications of certain situations.  You can tell with the minority characters that he's trying to be better, but he's not trying hard enough.  And if you're at all familiar with Joss Whedon's work, nearly every single character feels derivative of one from an earlier series.   Amalia has Buffy the Vampire Slayer's power set and quips, plus the existential issues of Echo from "Dollhouse."  Penance is essentially Kaylee from "Firefly" with an Irish accent.  Maladie is another "fun" mentally ill person.     

          

It makes me feel very guilty about enjoying the series as much as I do.  However, there are many, many other very talented people involved in the show.  The actors, especially Laura Donnelly and Olivia Williams, are strong, and mostly able to make the show feel less silly than it is.  The production design and costuming work is gorgeous.  The VFX crew is doing a lot of the heavy lifting.  The amount of work involved in putting this show together was clearly monumental, and it's an awful shame that it's been compromised by Whedon's bad behavior.   

"The Nevers" is at its best in little moments and specific scenes.  And there are enough of them that I keep being convinced to ignore all the uncomfortable parts of the show and watch the next episode.  There's clearly enough good pieces here for an entertaining, memorable series, and I sincerely hope that the show will be able to go on to be better without Whedon than it was with him.     

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"Infinity Train," Part Four

After the deeply emotionally fraught third season of "Infinity Train," I wasn't expecting a fourth one to happen so quickly, but apparently this was already in production last year, and the creators were hoping to continue the show for several more seasons. In fact, this latest batch of episodes serves as a terrible tease for the following season - which is not going to be made for the foreseeable future.

Min-Gi (Johnny Young) and Ryan (Sekai Murashige) are a pair of Asian-Canadian musicians who have been best friends their whole lives.  They start to grow apart after graduation, with guitarist Ryan striking out on his own as a solo performer, and synth-player Min-Gi getting ready for college.  They wind up on the Infinity Train together, with personal growth numbers that are mysteriously linked.  They team up with a sassy talking concierge bell named Kez (Minty Lewis), who is a magnet for trouble, and meet many other creatures as they try to find their exit from the train.  

This season of "Infinity Train" is much lighter and goes down easier than the last two, but it also doesn't reach the same kind of highs.  I like the new characters, especially Kez, who is really the first of the train's fantasy denizens who learns to be a better person alongside the two leads.  Min-Gi and Ryan are a fun pair with relatable problems, and the writers do a good job of giving them flaws and faults.  They're among the oldest protagonists we've had so far, and their woes feel more personal to the creators.  The train cars we see in this season are great.  My favorite is the car with an endless line to get into a club.  A close second is the art museum car, home to one of the creepier monsters that "Infinity Train" has featured.  This season is lower stakes and functions as a bit of a breather compared to the others, but it does have its share of thrills and chills.  

The production value of "Infinity Train" remains consistently high, and I continue to marvel at the talent involved.  J.K. Simmons and Margo Martindale pop up to voice some pretty wacky minor characters - a giant pig baby and a butterfly judge respectively - and there are a few returning actors who I won't spoil here.  The music is more prominent this time around, because so much of the plot has to do with music and the give and take of a creative partnership.  Chrome Canyon has been one of the show's MVPs, and I'm glad that this season gave them a chance to seize a bit more of the spotlight.  

For the show's fans, however, the most interesting elements are happening around  the edges of the main story.  This season takes place in the 1980s, when the Infinity Train was a very different place from how it appeared in previous seasons.  There are events happening offscreen during the course of this season that hint at filling in important backstory for other major characters we met in other seasons.  You can piece together a few things, but the big revelations were reportedly saved for the fifth season, which was supposed to have a story that ran concurrent to this one.  

So again, it's frustrating that the show is leaving so much unfinished business.  I am really gunning for "Infinity Train" to return in the future in some form, even if it's not as an animated series.  There are still an awful lot of mysteries that need resolving, and a lot of this world that I'd still love to see further explored.       

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"The Flight Attendant" Has Great Highs

The best thing about "The Flight Attendant," created by Steve Yockey for HBO Now, is that it's very fast-paced and engaging.  It's one of those murder mystery shows where nearly every episode ends on a cliffhanger, and you get satisfying payoffs constantly.  The second best thing is Kaley Cuoco, playing the ordinary woman who wakes up next to a dead body, and spends the rest of the season trying to piece together what happened, while getting thoroughly tangled up in a larger conspiracy.  Well, she's not quite ordinary.  In the grand tradition of detective noir, Cuoco plays Cassie Bowden, a flight attendant who lives an enviable party-girl life, but has a lot of secret vices and terrible traumas in her past.  

Cuoco has no trouble carrying the show, bringing just the right amount of comic energy to keep the proceedings light, while still selling the darker, thornier psychological underpinnings.  The murder sends her life into a downward spiral, and Cassie engages in a lot of self-destructive behavior.  However, it takes a while to appreciate how screwed up she actually is, because Cassie is so vibrant and has a fun personality.  She is very good at pretending that everything is alright.  Her fellow stewardess Megan (Rosie Perez) and her attorney gal-pal Annie (Zosia Mamet) both automatically call Cassie their best friend, even though neither of them know her all that well.  Her brother Davey (T.R. Knight) is more reluctant to trust her, as he's the only one who knows the truth about her troubling past and lingering demons.      

When the murder happens, Cassie gets so blackout drunk she only has fragments of memories of the night she spent with the victim, Alex (Michiel Huisman).  Soon, she's digging into his life for clues, while being stalked by a scary assassin lady (Michelle Gomez), and hounded by FBI agents (Merle Dandridge, Nolan Gerard Funk).  The show employs a neat gimmick where Cassie occasionally pops into a physical space that represents her mind, and she interacts with a version of Alex as she remembers him.  This dramatizes her internal thoughts in an appealing way, and allows for more fanciful visuals.  Sometimes Cassie and Alex will argue over what to do next, or puzzle out clues together.  Sometimes they'll observe what's going on outside of Cassie's head, and comment on the scene together.  Cassie's childhood traumas are represented by deer and rabbits, and they can literally invade her headspace.

Even without these jaunts into quasi-fantasy, "The Flight Attendant" takes place in a pleasantly heightened world, where corporate espionage and organized crime seem to be commonplace, and everybody's got a secret.  Being a flight attendant has never looked more appealing, as the characters are constantly travelling all over the globe and enjoying the local nightlife and amenities.  The action takes place across three cities - Bangkok, New York, and Rome - and it all looks gorgeous.  The show features copious amounts of eye-catching production design, and Cassie has a wardrobe to die for.  The jazzy score from Blake Neely does a lot to set the mood, keeping tensions high during the chase and suspense sequences, and underlining the nervous humor.

There's not much new or novel in "The Flight Attendant," but the execution makes all the difference.  Even though a significant amount of the narrative is about watching Cassie hit rock bottom and confronting the ugly truths about herself, the show functions very well as an appealing piece of glitzy wish-fulfillment.  Our heroine is sympathetic and relatable, but also credibly a glamour girl who is sharp enough to step into the roles of detective and spy.  Cassie even manages to attract handsome casual partners on every continent, including Buckley (Colin Woodell) and Enrico (Alberto Frezza), with a refreshing lack of self-consciousness.      

I look forward to future seasons of this one.

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