It was horrible. Aside from a few fan-service callbacks, it had absolutely none of the tone, mood, or wit of the series whatsoever. And even the callbacks were so obviously inserted purely for fan-service that they come off as cringey and anachronistic.
Hopelessly miscast as well, full of people who look like actors and not gangsters -- one of the best things about Sopranos is that you actually believed these were just knockaround guys (and gals) from Jersey. The cast is so obviously just a bunch of primped actors doing bad Sopranos impressions that it's actually painful at times.
And whoever was responsible for the cinematography and color grading should never work again, because the whole thing looks like it was shot by a first-year film student going through a goth phase. It's not just that it looks nothing like the series, it's that it looks TERRIBLE. And it completely disconnects the movie from the series. What good is using iconic Sopranos locations like Satriales if you make them basically unrecognizable from the show with?
The only highlight was seeing Gandolfini's son play young Tony, but even he had such awful material to work with that he was completely wasted. Like, I could write a ten-page essay going through every single thing wrong with this movie in relation to the series, and still not even come close to expressing how bad it was.
The shame of it is that the core story really isn't that bad. It was just told in the worst possible way. This should have been a six-part HBO miniseries shot in the exact same way the series was shot, and written by as many of the original writers as they could get their hands on. Then it would've had a chance. But as it stands, it's a confusing, anachronistic mess, full of characters you just don't care about and a story that has been so compressed and rushed that it's not only hard to follow, but even harder to invest in as a viewer.
No time is devoted to exploring the motivations of all the people involved because there are like a half-dozen 'main' characters and it all had to fit into a two-hour movie, so you never feel invested in anything that's happening -- and when something DOES happen, it lacks any dramatic impact at all. It's a mess.
Like, I cannot adequately explain how little you actually care about any of these characters. You never know anything about any of them other than the most superficial, surface-level trivialities, and even they are reduced to cliches. Dickie is the big-shot, Junior is in his shadow, the father is an asshole, the mistress is tough but pretty, the wife can't have kids (until she did), Johnny boy is an absentee father, Livia is annoying, Tony is a typical teenager (with such potential), Harold is the oppressed but noble black man, etc.
Literally nothing about the WHY of their characters, zero exploration of their motivations. Just cliche. And it all adds up to a big fat nothing. I cannot stress enough that the reason Sopranos worked is because it took the time to explore each character, even relatively minor ones. They were all crafted with love, and the stories benefited tremendously for it. These characters... were not.
And yes a big part of it could be blamed on the time limitation. But that's why this story should have either been a miniseries -- so the writers had time to develop the characters properly -- or a simple character study of young Tony with his father and uncles, without trying to cram in a morality play about the Newark riots AND introductions to the entire extended family, each with their own mini-stories to follow.
I cannot believe David Chase allowed this. Was he behind on his mortgage or something, because it's obviously a cheap cash-grab. Very sad.
Hopelessly miscast as well, full of people who look like actors and not gangsters -- one of the best things about Sopranos is that you actually believed these were just knockaround guys (and gals) from Jersey. The cast is so obviously just a bunch of primped actors doing bad Sopranos impressions that it's actually painful at times.
And whoever was responsible for the cinematography and color grading should never work again, because the whole thing looks like it was shot by a first-year film student going through a goth phase. It's not just that it looks nothing like the series, it's that it looks TERRIBLE. And it completely disconnects the movie from the series. What good is using iconic Sopranos locations like Satriales if you make them basically unrecognizable from the show with?
The only highlight was seeing Gandolfini's son play young Tony, but even he had such awful material to work with that he was completely wasted. Like, I could write a ten-page essay going through every single thing wrong with this movie in relation to the series, and still not even come close to expressing how bad it was.
The shame of it is that the core story really isn't that bad. It was just told in the worst possible way. This should have been a six-part HBO miniseries shot in the exact same way the series was shot, and written by as many of the original writers as they could get their hands on. Then it would've had a chance. But as it stands, it's a confusing, anachronistic mess, full of characters you just don't care about and a story that has been so compressed and rushed that it's not only hard to follow, but even harder to invest in as a viewer.
No time is devoted to exploring the motivations of all the people involved because there are like a half-dozen 'main' characters and it all had to fit into a two-hour movie, so you never feel invested in anything that's happening -- and when something DOES happen, it lacks any dramatic impact at all. It's a mess.
Like, I cannot adequately explain how little you actually care about any of these characters. You never know anything about any of them other than the most superficial, surface-level trivialities, and even they are reduced to cliches. Dickie is the big-shot, Junior is in his shadow, the father is an asshole, the mistress is tough but pretty, the wife can't have kids (until she did), Johnny boy is an absentee father, Livia is annoying, Tony is a typical teenager (with such potential), Harold is the oppressed but noble black man, etc.
Literally nothing about the WHY of their characters, zero exploration of their motivations. Just cliche. And it all adds up to a big fat nothing. I cannot stress enough that the reason Sopranos worked is because it took the time to explore each character, even relatively minor ones. They were all crafted with love, and the stories benefited tremendously for it. These characters... were not.
And yes a big part of it could be blamed on the time limitation. But that's why this story should have either been a miniseries -- so the writers had time to develop the characters properly -- or a simple character study of young Tony with his father and uncles, without trying to cram in a morality play about the Newark riots AND introductions to the entire extended family, each with their own mini-stories to follow.
I cannot believe David Chase allowed this. Was he behind on his mortgage or something, because it's obviously a cheap cash-grab. Very sad.