Reviews

I kept going back and forth between giving this a one and a three. Without a doubt I hated it and never want to see it again. I choked my way through 4 episodes and I skimmed the rest of season 1 to see if maybe there was some big payoff that I just didn't have the stomach for, but no dice.

So first, the good things--the camera work is top notch. The score wasn't memorable to me, so even if nothing stood out that means nothing was so garbage that it comes to mind. The acting was consistent among the actors, so it was technically good in the sense that it just have been what the director was going for. And finally, it is certainly one of a kind.

But a volleyball made from frozen vomit studded with house flies carved out of diamonds is also one of a kind. The save questions apply to both--

who was this made for?

Why would anyone want this sort of thing?

I get that this is meant to be some sort of satire and a commentary on... something... but it's simultaneously lacking in subtlety and unclear in what it's trying to say.

With something like the Stepford Wives, you've got an entry point into the world through the perspective of a character you like and can relate to. With 3 D's, everyone sucks and nothing is funny or clever enough to make it worth deliberately spending time in their world.

Give it a minute to get its footing. This is the only show that deals directly with a mother-daughter relationship where the mom is a malignant narcissist.

It's rough around the edges and crass, but it has something legitimate to say and deserves the time to get to say it. I hope it isn't cancelled before it has the chance to blossom into its potential.

I first became aware of the existence of this cartoon when I was looking to see what projects the incomparable talent Maria Bamford had been occupying herself with lately. This show is a worthwhile investment of her time. I hope that enough people recognize its charm and give it a chance so that it isn't one of the good ideas that gets discarded before it has the opportunity to say something worthwhile. At this point, s02e07, it feels that it's just starting to turn the corner.

This is an example of a genre that is precious rare. I grew up reading science fiction. The best stories were the ones that dreamed of future worlds and made them feel fleshed out with real people facing real problems. They showed how new advances might change things, and how some fundamental aspects of human nature might remain unchanged.

Science fiction in movies has become oversaturated with action adventure operas and Fate of Humanity hanging in the balance. This is not one of those. This is a story of ordinary people trying to scrape by in an inhospitable frontier. It is a small story told in a way that let's you imagine a very believable greater world that exists beyond the screen.

This is the type of science fiction that sparked my imagination as a child, and there is far too little of it making its way to television and movies. My hope is that the star power of Pedro Pascal will do some of the heavy lifting towards pulling a little bit more of the limelight in the direction of stories like this within the genre.

I keep seeing reviews that this movie faithfully adapted the novel. It didn't. Not that the novel was so profound, but it at least made the world make sense. The movie fails at that. I know nothing about making films, yet as the credits rolled I was immediately thinking of how i could have done a better job adapting this. It's as if they tried to scoop up as many surface level elements of the book while failing to make us connect with the rationale behind the main characters' misconceptions.

In the intro l beginning, they don't emphasize how important the children find the mysterious gallery. In the ending, they don't allow the headmistress even an additional sixty seconds to explain why the school existed in the first place and the purpose of her life's work and the system she was fighting to change. The other changes they make to the story are fine, as neither the novel not the film give us any real sense of deep feelings between the three main characters. What is meant to be a sneaky sci Fi story hiding inside a romance fails equally in both genres, and that much the movie captured from the novel quite adequately.