488 Movies Like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Page 33)

Structurally, the show is very clear and intentional, spelling out the stories by giving us the who, the why, and the how behind the pranks. It's fun to think of them as revenge stories, where the payoffs and tricks can be entertaining—but the level of slapstick payoffs we get does not warrant the hefty, hefty setup at all. It fancies itself like a home renovation or baking reality show; difference is we're not really here for the process because we don't need to know how to stage these things, and we're not dying to hear 3 segments of brainstorming banter. It's a lot of sneak peeks and filler and bloat to get to the half decent stuff, but there is some half-decent stuff.

Genre: Comedy, Reality

Actor: Justin Willman, Kimberly Congdon, Kyle Marlett, Simon Taylor

Unsatisfying as the marriage depicted, Let’s Get Divorced had a promising premise but its approach to its themes betray its message. The couple, actress Kurosawa Yui (Naka Riisa) and incompetent political heir Shoji Taishi (Matsuzaka Tori), wants to split, much to the disapproval of Kurosawa’s agent and Shoji’s mother. At its most interesting, the show attempts to critique Japan’s attitudes towards divorce and the expectations surrounding famous couples, but it mostly shies away from the root of these views. However, what doesn’t help is how uninterested the show is in making us root for either character. Shoji is so incompetent that it’s downright infuriating. But it’s mostly the show’s treatment of Kurosawa that makes this comedy deeply unfunny. Gags about her (actually reasonable) anger reveal an underlying misogyny rooted in the show’s approach.

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Actor: Arata Furuta, Fuju Kamio, Kōji Yamamoto, Lisa Oda, Reiko Takashima, Riisa Naka, Ryo Nishikido, Shin Yazawa, Tori Matsuzaka, Yuka Itaya

Rating: TV-14

The series does a lot to place you in its time period of the late ‘70s—the strikes, the space obsession, the whole world halting when a blackout hits. Director Bharat Nalluri can say it’s not just a period piece as their collective worries still look a lot like ours today, but the time setting seems to be the most interesting aspect of this whole ordeal. The web of families we follow are no Dunphys and Pritchetts, but the drama doesn’t jump and the dialogue doesn’t bite at all. It just doesn’t ever come together into a dynamic engine of stories, just mere suggestions of tension 40 minutes at a time.

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Actor: Deborah Mailman, Iain Glen, Jacek Koman, Jesse Spencer, Linh Dan Pham, Radha Mitchell, Thomas Weatherall, Vico Thai

Director: Bharat Nalluri

There are some very interesting, culturally specific touches to In Your Dreams that tease a much more interesting adventure beyond the first two episodes watched for this review. Unfortunately, these first two installments can be a real test of patience—not necessarily because of a slower pace than expected, but because of how little the main plot moves forward. The series seems to want to establish its characters before anything else, which makes it even stranger that their development is made up primarily of cheesy comedy and confusing decisions made for the sake of kickstarting the plot. And when danger finally rolls around (in disappointingly short bursts), these characters just don't have the depth to inspire any concern over their well-being.

Genre: Action & Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Mystery, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Actor: Anthony Oseyemi, Didintle Khunou, Jesse Suntele, Kiroshan Naidoo, Thando Thabethe

Director: Fred Wolmarans, Gareth Crocker

Despite the efforts of this young cast, who all seem understandably excited about the little they've been given to work with, Pretty Freekin Scary consistently makes dull decisions that fail to take advantage of the show's weirdly dark premise. One would hope for a more offbeat tone à la Beetlejuice or The Addams Family, but instead we get subpar Disney Channel shenanigans rendered in visually unappealing ways, with no coherent concept behind its version of the Underworld. And in the show's absolute resistance to engaging with tricky subject matter such as death (even in a satirical way), it only ends up making light of what its protagonist is living through. Certainly not the most appropriate time in America to release a series that's so nonchalant about children's safety.

Genre: Comedy, Family, Kids, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Actor: Eliana Su'a, Emma Shannon, Kyan Samuels, Leah Mei Gold, Yonas Kibreab

Rating: TV-G

The idea behind the accident itself, the reason this story exists, is hard to wrap your head around because it borders on silly—how do you get a missing girl from that? The way it’s filmed doesn’t help either, as for the most part, you can’t tell if the bouncy house is just tipping over or what. The show sells itself as really serious and melodramatic, and I’m sure it is, but the execution really gets in the way. There are other things to be infuriated about, as well, like the unnatural expository dialogue, and the jumping timelines in the first episode that seem like they didn’t even trust that they could hold your attention with the main storyline. And maybe their instincts were right.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Alberto Guerra, Ana Claudia Talancón, Eréndira Ibarra, Erick Elías, Erik Hayser, Macarena García, Regina Blandón, Sebastian Martinez

Rating: TV-MA

In school, we all wrote essays when we weren’t feeling it, and churned out vomit onto paper to make it seem like there was something there. But we didn’t do that all the time, there is a limit, or so we thought. Every interaction on this series is hollow, self-aggrandizing, a wink to the cameras, an excuse to abuse abstract words. And they have the gall to blue ball you by gifting you with all these punchable people, then only give you passive aggressiveness in episode 1 like it’s some selling point to get you to stay? But that’s the luxury business, you know. It’s not what you know; it’s the (ugh) “relationships you nurture.”

Genre: Reality

Actor: Daniel Daggers

Rating: TV-14