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Reviews
The Good Place (2016)
Good to begin with but ends up wishy-washy
I give it 3 stars each for the first 2 seasons which were great! After that it fizzles out. It starts out interestingly by suggesting havoc in the afterlife, presenting those in charge as being flawed. Great movie concept where bad people go to Heaven by mistake and vice versa.
The series lifts off well, presenting various quandaries and philosophical and ethical arguments from a non-religious point of view but then disintegrates after the halfway point into a somewhat meaningless direction. I can't help but wonder if the writers were on something. By the 4th season it has lost the plot and wanders aimlessly with filler and dribble.
This would have been much better as 3 seasons, with the last two condensed down to one and the nonsense filler material ditched. To me the last two seasons expose the poor depth of understanding of philosophy and spirituality, as if they ran out of ideas and were grasping at straws after the conceptual seed of the series failed to mature and produce fruit. I suspect the writers got lost in trying to be too modern, ending up with existentialist nihilism and impersonalist tangents, but that's just me. Potentially it could offend the sensibilities of a lot of people, especially Christians (the largest religion i in the world) but I guess seriously religious people wouldn't be watching.
It is all very well to question doctrines and dogmas but to stumble with such a vague pollyanna ending leaves the viewer wondering why they bothered sitting through it all. To me the ending was both a waste of an opportunity and an anticlimax. Or was that the whole point? Would have been better off without it, hence only 6 stars.
Manifest (2018)
S4 pt2 I lost interest before halfway
Oh dear! The first half-dozen of the last ten episodes have morphed into a cross between The Days of our Lives, Passions, and Grey's Anatomy. No plot spoilers here, but I will say it has suffered from significant 'mission drift', perhaps from having to condense the last three cancelled seasons down to just 20 episodes. The last ten? It's not what I expected to see and certainly not what I wanted. But, to each their own, I guess.
I know we're supposed to bond emotionally with the characters to heighten the suspense during the serious series climax, but really? All the frosty-peripheral teary-eyed one-on-one close-ups (see what happens with too many hyphens?) just draw out the interruptions to the plot. Really, they could've moved things along much quicker and included more actual content.
We know who they all are. This late in the series there's no need for character development. Perhaps the writers figured the time gap between S4 parts 1&2 meant we'd forgotten. I'm sure a lot of us have been watching reruns of past episodes to fill the gap, so we need no reminders or re-bonding.
Anyway, I've only watched two-thirds of the last 10 episodes and lost interest already. In no hurry to finish, will just stroll through the rest between finding more interesting stuff to watch.
The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee (2020)
I enjoyed it.
This is a lot funnier than the negative review Wonkypedia gives it. Maybe septic tanks don't get the Aussie in-jokes or can't understand a movie that doesn't follow the Hollywood formula. Hogan's self-deprecating humour is great - I hope the Australian Taxation Office gets the irony! From when I first saw Hoges on Kevin Dennis New Faces not only playing the garbophone but also sending up the judges with a sarcastic critique of their lousy acumen, through to his TV show with Strop and Delvene, and then his Dundee movies, what's there not to like?
Particularly poignant is the storyline of how he is more concerned about his effect on his granddaughter than any of the superficiality of the showbiz world. It's pretty obvious that he enjoyed making this film for the opportunity to take a shot at red carpet bulldust. Sure, it's not a "fantastic blockbuster", but the extremely negative reviews given by Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and Wikipedia show just how out of touch they can be,.. that they're not capable of understanding ocker humour or anything non-USA.