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Reviews
The End of the F***ing World (2017)
Incredible
I've never seen anything else on TV that has this atmosphere, and I want more of it. On the surface level it's a well-made road trip adventure with all the key ingredients - rebellious teens; romance; murder. However, never once does it become cliche. Never once does it dissolve into a glorification of edginess. Its secret ingredient is that its characters think, behave and interact like real people - they're not perfect, they make stupid mistakes for the sake of being stupid and they never outright try to teach you life lessons. They're not loveable in any way, shape or form, and yet you'll catch yourself sympathising with them because of what they've been through. Literally everyone in this series is terrible, and yet they've still got qualities that, if not redeem them, make you root for them.
Its uniqueness lies in the fact that it is, sometimes unexpectedly, a dark comedy. It's not exactly a laugh a minute but it's brutally, bleakly funny in the way that it attacks people as a species. It doesn't hold back, and the humour works because none of the characters are treated as special chosen ones; none of them are off-limits to be laughed at. It never pretends to tell any story other than the one it actually is telling, which is dark and messy and more complex than a case of right and wrong. Big disasters and small disasters are given equal screen time: instead of getting melodramatic with murder after murder, there are detailed and very poignant insights into the two main characters' relationship through narration. This slow-paced, gradually unravelling dynamic between James and Alyssa - he wants to kill her; she's terrified that she might love him; he doubts himself; she can't trust him; he only trusts her - is as important to the story as the murder itself and is treated as such. The characters' backstories, shown through flashbacks, are often tragic, but never condescending sob-stories - always genuinely offering a new perspective on said character.
The soundtrack for this show is absolutely perfect. Uplifting vintage songs are played unsettlingly over violent scenes, which has its own brand of awkward humour. Guitars and blues melodies accompany the teens' drive through the English countryside as if it were a less glamorous parody of an American road trip. It's a perfect blend of familiarity and uncertainty, and I love it so much. Honestly that could be the whole review. I just love this show. No further comment needed, and no pretending I know anything about cinematography. I just love this show.
Hop (2011)
I hate that I like this film
I'll preface this review by stating, very truthfully, that this film is awful. It's a nightmarish cocktail of all the bad parts of Alvin and the Chipmunks - obnoxious CGI talking animals; even more obnoxious talking humans; the cliche 'oh my god, you can talk' moment - mixed with all the trimmings of a bargain bin Christmas film. Except it's about Easter for...some reason. I'm convinced that this is a Christmas film script where someone's done a find and replace with the words 'Santa' and 'Easter Bunny'. Either that or it's just the sadistic creation of someone who just really hates film critics.
The thing is that this is not a film for film critics. It's a film for very, very young children who don't know what an Oscar is and couldn't care less. It isn't supposed to be a masterpiece.
Here's where I really start to hate myself, because I'm generally a strong believer that children's media shouldn't be dumbed down. However, the cynical truth is that most children wouldn't recognise a good film if it threw eggs at them. 8 year old me didn't want to sit down with my popcorn and my teddy bear and have a riveting discussion about 2001: A Space Odyssey with the rest of the primary school film society. 8 year old me wanted to see fluffy animals! That talk! And get up to all kinds of mischief! There was a time in my life when I could quote Hop by heart. It still holds a spot in my heart, as much as I've tried to have that spot surgically removed. Like it or not, for an animal-loving Year 4, this is the absolute epitome of comedy.
Ok, the plot makes no sense. EB (voiced by Russell Brand for some reason) is a teenage rabbit who likes drumming (for some reason) and wants to leave his future career as the Easter Bunny to become a famous drummer. So he goes to the Playboy Mansions because, heh, bunnies, get it? He meets a hopeless human man who is housesitting there, and Hilarious Hijinks Ensue. Meanwhile, EB's dad, the reigning Easter Bunny, sends out an evil chick with a Spanish accent (for some reason) and what I can only describe as three rabbit assassins (for some reason) to bring him back. Will EB manage to make his father proud and live out his dream of drumming? Will the human manage to get a job and a girlfriend, whose only role in the plot is 'girlfriend'? If you've seen any film remotely like this before, you already know the answer. Like I said, awful. This film is terrible in every sense of the word.
And yet...it's funny!
For some reason, even watching this now, there's something about the tone of the comedy that just sets it above Alvin and the Chipmunks for me. It's not sophisticated by any stretch of the imagination, but it's dark. I don't mean dark dark, just a touch of darkness that acts as a placebo, tricking me into thinking there's some value in the silliness. It makes the whole thing far less cloying than something like The Smurfs. From the point of view of its very young target audience, it's unimaginably funny. Silly man screaming and falling over as he's being chased by scary dogs, one of which is named Princess? Funny! Rabbit pretending to be run over when we can all see he's fine? Funny! Rabbit interrupting a school play because he mistakes some kids for the rabbit assassins coming for him? Funny! Rabbit assassins dressing a boiled turkey in main character's shirt so that other main character thinks they have killed him? Funny! Main characters being tied together and lowered into a vat of boiling chocolate? Funny!
I may or may not be realising something about my sense of humour here. Perhaps the film is just so terrible that I subconsciously enjoy seeing the main characters in emotional distress. Wait...that's exactly it. The film backfired on me. What was supposed to be a sweet holiday film about friendship and following your dreams gave the main characters the personalities of wooden spoons, making it impossible for me to empathise with them. Despite the cute and admittedly well-done CGI designs, I just couldn't root for these characters (apart from the assassins, they were pretty damn cool with a theme song and everything). As a result, I didn't care much for the beginning or ending, just for the parts where bad things were happening to the characters. Which is most of the film. Gosh darn it, director, you managed to make a film so bad that I've thought it was good all this time!
With that out of the way, only one point remains. One thing that continues to baffle me. One thing that brings the very existence of this film into question.
Does anyone actually like Easter that much?
K-12 (2019)
Filling in the gaps with gorgeousness
(Warning: this review is almost as long as the film)
For all those expecting to see a feature-length film: this is more like a series of music videos, one after the other, with some dialogue. It's interesting to read that Melanie Martinez, who's responsible for pretty much this whole thing, originally planned it to be much longer and had to cut several scenes to fit the budget. To put it simply, it shows.
From a musical perspective that isn't necessarily a bad thing. The choreography is absolutely outstanding. Martinez is just as good as the professional dancers and their moves fit the themes and moods of the songs. There's diversity among the dancers, too, although given their messages I would have quite liked to see some more variation in body type.
The problem is that the powerful emotions Cry Baby displays while she's singing and dancing just aren't carried through into the script.
Honestly, the writing isn't bad, and for someone like Martinez who is known for writing music to branch out into scriptwriting is a brave thing to do. She knows she's putting it out there for criticism and that's what she's going to get. It just lacks something - there are scenes where a song will end with a furious character literally murdering an antagonist only to show the same character blandly smiling and chatting with her friend. It's very obvious where Martinez's talent lies, which is to show emotion through music and dancing; adding dialogue to the mix just seems to complicate things unnecessarily. The images in the film - Martinez holding up an orange as dancers lie around her like a religious painting; a woman cutting open another woman's head; a character about to be dissected by a science teacher - speak louder than the script ever could.
I'll acknowledge the elephant in the room and say that the visuals in this film are absolutely stunning. I've never been a fan of Martinez's pastel aesthetic but this is another level, diluting the cuteness with toned-down shades of pink and blue and imposing camera angles of misty fields so that it is more sophisticatedly sinister than cloying. I found myself wanting to sleep in a bedroom as cosy (and enchanted) as Cry Baby and Angelita's. It is obvious and rewarding how much thought went into hair, costumes and makeup. The special effects are hit and miss - there's one awkward moment where a character stares into a mirror and it shatters, only for it to be left painfully obvious where the shot changed - but when they work, they really work. A school bus goes under the sea and flies through the sky, and this manages to be convincing. Ghosts are ghostly enough. Puppets are enjoyably creepy and two characters even manage to levitate during a playground fight. For all its eerie prettiness, though, there is a frustrating lack of substance.
'Frustrated' is probably an accurate word for how Martinez felt trying to condense a planned three hours' worth of plot into about half that. 'Frustrated' is an accurate word for how viewers will feel when this leaves some characters' stories rushed or untold. It's a sad spoiler alert that the bully character, Kelly, is never given redeeming qualities or even a backstory. We see Cry Baby's mother passed-out drunk and yet Cry Baby still has a home, complete with a magical alarm clock and a pet tarantula, with no other indication of what her home life is like. Cry Baby spends a much too fast-paced section of the film skipping from song to song as she recruits friends, finding one in a cafeteria and introducing her as 'Magnolia' without having even spoken to her (I can just about excuse this scene because of the incredible dancing). On the bus, she talks to Angelita as if they have met before, but this is never explained. She finds another friend, whose name could be Flora or Fleur due to the lacklustre sound editing in the scene, who suffers from an eating disorder. All it takes is a very in-your-face speech about loving yourself from Cry Baby and Flora/Fleur is cured. Martinez checks off a list of societal problems - body image, the patriarchy, transphobia - without devoting more than five minutes to most of them, leaving some subplots that the story would have made sense without. A transgender teacher never gets her acceptance, for example, and the sources of the children's 'powers' are never clarified. Doesn't Kelly have powers? Doesn't Flora? Cry Baby's character can become convoluted due to all the conflicting morals she's pushing - why is she singing about being unsure of her body when she's already made the revelation that bodies are temporary? I couldn't help but think that the messages, especially coupled with the spiritual aspects of the film, were not as subtle as they could have been, though Martinez has demonstrated her mastery of metaphors in the past. It seemed like 'Strawberry Shortcake' and 'The Principal' could have been simplified versions of 'Alphabet Boy', whilst 'Orange Juice' was another level of 'Mrs Potato Head'. This loss of ambiguity in favour of expositional dialogue, as well as errors in pacing in which the lengths of gaps between songs would vary too much or too little, was probably the most disappointing part of the film. Perhaps it's the surrealism causing the confusion - although there are fine lines between fantasy, surrealism and using the above two to justify style over substance, and Martinez has parked her pastel pink school bus over all three.
For all its flaws, it's obviously very worth a watch for fans of Martinez's music and for all who enjoy films with a strong aesthetic, as long as they're willing to settle for some moments of questionable acting (Martinez is actually one of the strongest actors in the cast). It's by no means a triumph of cinema, but for what it was meant to be it's definitely a treat to both listen to and look at. There is a distinct lack of the dark comedy that was promised, and at times it's more like watching a sleekly nightmarish ballet than a human-made film about humans, but it should be considered where it came from. All of it is straight out of the mind of a woman with a clear creative vision, one which she has executed for the first time into a project full of loving detail. It's like Wes Anderson shot a musical based on a fever dream Tim Burton had about Mean Girls. Whilst it's ultimately missing the sarcastic, flawed, slightly scary side of the Cry Baby character we saw from Martinez's first music videos, it's a visually impeccable continuation of her story - and it's definitely a lot more interesting than a typical day at school.