Review: The Tick - Pilot

Amazon Pilot Season is here! What does that mean and why the hell should I care? It appears to be Amazon’s slightly weasely means of getting out of putting its weight and money behind a variety of shows catering to different interests by backing the pilot episodes of three different shows and letting the public decide which show is worth the most money. In my opinion, the other two shows look just awful, so The Tick gets my vote for simply being the most immediately clever and colorful show. For perspective’s sake, I liked the old cartoon show, did not like the old live-action show, and I never read the comics. The Tick, as a character, is best not when engaging in visual gags like his contemporaries Freakazoid! or Earthworm Jim, characters known for their engaging encounters with their villains but in exchanging wacky, almost-mundane dialogue with his sidekick Arthur. This is probably the reason that the original live-action show seemed like a solid idea. Which it was. I just take extremely petty issue with their execution.

So how’s the pilot to the new Tick? God help me I have no idea. I understand what a risky thing this is to say for a reviewer, but hear me out.

The Tick, again, in contrast to Freakazoid, The Mask, or Earthworm Jim, has always been a parody: every aspect of it is ingrained in being a twist on the conventional formula. The Tick himself being an idiot is a joke on both the ridiculous degrees of heroism displayed by normal superheroes and something of a performance gag based on his ludicrously muscular appearance. The Terror being geriatric is a gag based on the concept of the elder space-villain, and his age having an effect on his performance as a villain is consistently funny. Arthur being both a mockery and kind of a dweeb is a play on the sidekick’s usual resignation to "the brains" to the hero’s "brawn." Freakazoid’s a freak because being a freak is funny, but the joke doesn’t rely on pre-established knowledge like The Tick does.

That being established, I cannot tell, for the life of me, how much of this new Tick is a joke. A shocking amount of time is given to the character of Arthur and his tragic backstory: spaceship lands on his father and the superheroes inside are blinded by space-syphilis and shot to death. Attempting to play that angle straight to any degree seems like a joke in itself, but lo and behold, characters take genuine pity on him and his sister takes a deeply personal interest in making sure that her brother is healthy. These scenes are played with equal parts silence and somber music. The degree to which it appears to be sincere is difficult to explain because explaining it sounds like the show is trying to be funny about it.

I’m not convinced that it is trying to be funny about it, though. It’s as if this show is literally trying to make my job harder on me.

The Tick himself takes up about 30% of the screen-time in this pilot and what I can say is that his presence is a genuine delight. Save for the dodgy CGI that surrounds his scenes and a suit that’s not totally visually appealing; The Tick is written as masterfully as he ever was and Peter Serafinowicz is a phenomenal actor, doing an amazing job with the part. The Tick's pilot would have been served much better by not focusing on Arthur's development before becoming a superhero but rather his development as a superhero. I understand this to be a pilot, and its efforts are in making sure everything is in place, but this pilot is also trying to sell the show as a whole to both its producers and audience. Spending so much time away from the show's main draw was always going to be risky, and I don't think it paid off this time.

This review is tough because while 30% of the show is funny and compelling, I can't tell how much the other 70% of the show is. If it isn't kidding, then the makers aren't phenomenal at character building and can only advise that they spend as much time on The Tick as possible, whether in or out of his suit a la Deadpool. If it is, I advise they spend more of their time on better, funnier jokes in the future.

This is assuming The Tick has a future. I will say I genuinely hope it does if nothing but to see what little character development we are given pay off and to see "average" fulfill its promises of being "good."

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The Tick - Pilot Director: Wally Pfister Writer: Ben Edlund Studio: Amazon Studios

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Review: Stranger Things - Season 1

Written by Jake Wood

Remember Super 8? The 2009 J.J. Abrams film, produced by (and largely inspired by) Steven Spielberg? Well directed, solidly entertaining, but shallow and derivative? This review is about Stranger Things.

For the people who have Ad-blocker on (and thus missed out on the ads for it on every Youtube video in existence), Stranger Things is that new Netflix series your buddies watched in one sitting the other day.

Is it worth watching yourself?

You liked Super 8, right?

Because I’m new to this, and I’m already testing your patience – Yes. If you have any interest at all in seeing Stranger Things, then you should absolutely check it out. It’s Amblin Entertainment nostalgia-porn, somewhat visually interesting at times, kinda touching in places, and I want more things like this to exist.

Still here?

That’s cool too.

I hope I don’t unconvince you.

It’s a little over-simplified to just call Stranger Things “Super 8: The TV Show,” but for the most part – it kind of is. In a nostalgic time period (1983 in this case), small-town U.S.A. has a monster problem, with some confusing government conspiracy involved. It’s also “Super 8: The TV Show” because it’s aiming directly for that Classic Spielberg hole in your heart; it looks like it at times, it feels like it at times, but it doesn’t fill you up like the real deal (*snicker*).

The show ultimately revolves around three storylines:

Police Chief Jim Hopper and Joyce Byers (David Harbour and Winona Ryder) are the adult leads of the show. Their story has the most in common with Close Encounters (and a lil Poltergeist); with Joyce being the obsessed adult destroying her family life, as well as the sad mother whose child is abducted by the monster (so she’s both Richard Dreyfuss AND Melinda Dillon in Close Encounters).

Jim Hopper is basically your less-likeable Chief Brody surrogate. They investigate the conspiracy involving the local nefarious research facility (that they always had their suspicions of), the monster, and the disappearance of her son, Will.

The second storyline is the least derivative of Spielberg movies; this one focuses on Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers (Joyce’s creepy older son), admirably played by cutie Natalia Dyer and reanimated corpse Charlie Heaton. Their storyline is pretty much a teenie-bopper monster movie: Boy likes girl from a distance, girl has a douchey boyfriend who pressures her in to having sex for the first time, creepy boy creepily takes pictures of girl taking her clothes off before aforementioned dicking, and wuh-oh there’s something in the background of one of his creepy pictures.

Hey you liked Super 8, right?

Their storyline is actually inconsequential to the over-all plot, and has no real satisfying conclusions. Pity.

The third storyline revolves around Mike Wheeler (Nancy’s younger brother), a mysterious girl in a buzz-cut named Eleven (Elle for short), and Mike’s annoying friends – the token black one (also the ONLY minority character of significance in the show), and the token one with a speech impediment (also fills the "fat kid who likes food" role). Mike and the other two boys were Will Byer’s friends. They team up with Eleven, who has a connection to the monster, and also has psychic powers - because the writers ask a lot of you.

Oh they also dress her up at one point, with a wig and everything, just like in E.T.

There’s an infamous clip from the ad campaign of Terminator Genisys, where James Cameron says

“The movie starts – and I start to see things I recognize.”

This is the movie-going (and now TV-watching) experience these days. Nostalgia is the name of the game, and has been for years. Is it all bad? Kinda. I mean, not all the time. Just most of the time. Okay almost all the time. On the whole, we’re scraping for literally anything recognizable to make a movie or show out of. But this is different. If only slightly. Classic Spielberg is basically the pinnacle of entertainment to me. From 1975-1993, that dude just fucking cranked out masterpiece after masterpiece.  It’s nice to see a few take a step back, and at least aim high. Aim high. You might hit low, but you can’t hit high if you don’t aim high.

So yeah, The Duffer Brothers (they may want to work on a more showbiz-friendly last name) aimed high. Didn’t quite hit high.

The visual touchstones of the show are lovely, easily the most cinematic looking show produced by Netflix. I’m a sucker for Christmas-light lighting, so I loved how prominent they are, I loved seeing Winona stringing them inside her house like a crazy person (this is her Devil’s Tower mockup in the living room), or her clutching a clump of lights until they glowed. They aimed high. However, the look of the show is a bit too modern, too slick. I’m not a celluloid film snob, but it has its place, this is one of those situations where it needed to be shot on film.

And the monster looks like a Tremors: The Series reject.

The music, both score and soundtrack are great to listen to. They aimed high. However a synth score is more indicative of something like a John Carpenter film, not Spielberg. The show needed a more traditional score; I don’t know jack about music but I’d call the type of music John Williams did “dingly.” It needed a dingly score. With xylophones or whatever. Hell, the trailers for the show had that.

Winona Ryder is pretty shrill and not-believable – I think she got hung up on being "unhinged." I can’t stand almost all of the child actors (not that they give bad performances, I just hated them), don’t ever give a kid with a lisp that many lines ever again; the exception being Eleven (played by the unfortunately-named Milly Bobby Brown), Hollywood - do not ruin that girl. The rest of the actors are all serviceable in their parts: creepy boy Charlie Heaton is a serviceable creepy boy, douchey boy Joe Keery is a serviceable douchey boy (I want to punch his haircut), and David Harbour acts gruff or something.

Natalia Dyer is a standout. If anyone’s going to breakout from this – I would expect her to; it’s nice to see a girl-next-door role played by a more mousey girl these days. If this were any other show, I would’ve expected an MTV Original Series boom boom young woman. Bella Thorne. I would’ve expected Bella Thorne.

Oh, and Matthew Modine is an evil science guy with white hair. There wasn’t anybody else available?

It’s frustrating at times, especially when ‘Stranger Things’ almost hits something truly special. The ending to episode three is where the story itself reached out for something daring and interesting, if only the producers took that route and ran with it – that sequence, set to a cover of David Bowie’s “Heroes” (sung by Peter Gabriel) is genuinely haunting and a hint at what the show could’ve been.

I have no idea whether this is a mini-series or not, because it was my understanding going in that this was a one-and-done story (and after a quick google, I still don’t know). There’s a lot in this show that doesn’t make a lick of sense (even after suspending my disbelief that all this wacky shit can happen), ESPECIALLY if this was supposed to end with some finality.  I already said the teenagers’ story doesn’t have a satisfying conclusion, but none of the other storylines really put a button on it either.  At best, the main story of “Does Joyce Byers get her son back?” gets a definitive yes or no.

…Or does it? Fuck you.

It’s not perfect. Far from it. It’s not amazing. It’s watchable overall. But only just.

Like Super 8.

But I want more people to try more things like this.

I want more Stranger Things to exist and less The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt or whatever. At least I think I do.

3/5

Review: Outcast E.01 – “A Darkness Surrounds Him”

To start with I have never read Outcast. I know that’s probably weird given how much I read and the fact that I run a comic book site. The reason I passed on it was A) it was picked up as a TV show before the first issue hit stands and B) I wasn’t sent a review issue because the sales for it were too good. I figured, why bother reading it if the sales or so good it doesn’t need to be reviewed. I don’t regret this choice.

It's hard not to compare this to Preacher since they're both summer cable programs based on comic books turned into TV shows and that said Outcast seems to be better suited for the TV medium. Even if it’s just slightly better. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that Robert Kirkman has had a lot of hands on time with The Walking Dead or that Fox/Cinemax was there to guide it better or simply the fact that by selling the TV show before creating the comic allowed him to write the story out as a rough draft in comic form and then final draft for TV. Whatever the case it worked better as a TV show than Preacher. That doesn’t really have anything to do with the review, but this is really the only place for me to make a statement like that.

To recap the show there’s a kid possessed by a demon. A dude whose mom was possessed by a demon or possibly the same demon, living back at his childhood home because supposedly he did something to his daughter which broke up his marriage. Eventually their paths cross and dude discovers that basically demons have been trying to get at him his entire life. There’s a lot of flashbacks from his childhood showing his possessed mom’s abuse and then one flashback that reveals that he’s not as bad of a guy as the story has 100% led you to believe.

It’s built for TV minus all the flashbacks. The flashbacks are typically a comic book gimmick and while I don’t know how many issues of the comic this is combining, I kind of hope that it’s at least more than one because the episode was bogged down by them and hopefully they lighten up on them for future episodes.

The acting is a mix bag. There’s some good acting when it comes to horror, but it also all involves children which is not for the faint of heart. Hopefully it being demon’s will pacify anyone that would be like, “there’s a lot of kid beating going on here.” On second thought it’s on Cinemax so I don’t think people who say such things have Cinemax. At any rate, the lead actor Patrick Fugit does a fine job. He’s believable even if he looks like utter shit. They show him at one point looking all clean-cut and dapper and while his appearance is reflective of where he is in life, it’s just not a good look on the dude. I know that’s that a weird criticism, but it bothered me the entire show. The rest of the cast is seasoned. There’s a lot and I mean a lot of familiar faces. It’s too soon to say if they’re a good cast together or just a bunch of good actors working on the same show.

I will likely watch more of Outcast and here’s why… I haven’t read the comic. I think that if you haven’t read the comic its worth watching as well. If you have, it doesn’t matter. It never matters because even though Kirkman wrote the comic for TV, TV still changes everything. Looking at this as just another TV show, I’m interested and would continue to watch it. For a first episode it did a hell of a job of not feeling like a pilot and rather the start of a season. That’s a difficult feat for any TV show so it should be applauded for that. It’s not perfect, but it’s a good start. If we did half points this would get one, but as decent as it was it's still pretty average when you remove all the shock value.[su_box title="Score: 3/5" style="glass" box_color="#8955ab" radius="6"]

Outcast E.01 – “A Darkness Surrounds Him”

Friday’s on Cinemax

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