Impugn_Original Reviews

Sons of Anarchy (2008–2014)

I like this show, but probably not for the right reasons.

[7/10 · 31 January 2012]

I have to disconnect a bit to truly enjoy this show because, if I don't, the unintentional comedy keeps getting in the way.

My beefs:

1) "Red, no blue...arrrgggghhh!"

Any geek who has ever played an adventure game (from Zork to Grand Theft Auto) knows the routine. The plot is moved by a chain of quests and little else. I need to exit the dungeon, but I need a key. The wizard has the key, but to get it, I need the unicorn. To get the unicorn, I need to get the princess. To get the princess, I need to get the rose. To get the rose, I need to get the painting. ...and so on, ad nauseam...

Once you pick up on that dynamic within this show, it becomes sort of laughable. Every time they encounter and interact with any external person or entity, they are left with a quest. Seriously. They could approach the local grocer to pick up a gallon of milk and, somehow, leave with no milk until a task to set up the grocer's son with a prom date is completed.

This method is not unique to this show, so it is not a deal-breaker.

2) "If it wasn't for bad luck..."

Jack Bauer is the only dude I know that has more problems in a given day than Jax Teller and his pals. I understand why Bauer's day is so unfairly loaded with horrible circumstances - that's the premise of the show 24. With SoA, however, the sheer number of horrible events in a short period of time is, frankly, exhausting. It feels unnecessarily compressed. They finish up their Irish adventure, return home, immediately deal with the Kim Bauer, er (sorry!), Tara kidnapping situation and, whew, relax for 10 minutes. Enjoy it, cuz, tomorrow, you're all going to jail! Real humans saddled with such an utter concentration of tragedy would have an uncommon tendency to find out what the business end of a pistol tastes like. Just sayin'.

I think the show's creators recognize this which is why they, very occasionally, show moments of levity or even (*gasp*) normality.

3) "Imperial Stormtroopers meets the A-Team"

This SAMCRO gang can do *nothing* right. Nothing. Even routine criminal activities reliably end in failure. They are the Gang That Can't Shoot Straight, yet almost always emerge unscathed. Handing off some scripts/drugs to a black market doctor? By all means, do it outside, in full view of the neo-Nazi guy! All the "bad guys" going to a rally? Simultaneously have your club show up with automatic weapons *AND* arrange for the cops to be at the scene! It is confounding. There is very little reason for me to believe this numbskull SAMCRO outfit would remain in business for more than a few weeks. I don't know who would pay them for "protection" or risk getting pinched buying guns or drugs from them.

4) "Beefcake! BEEFCAAAAAAAAAAAKE!"

I get it. Jax is "hot". My wife tells me so. Given we're watching the DVD release and there are no commercials, I actually appreciate the occasional Jax-shirtless-Diet-Pepsi-commercial thing - my cue to hit the kitchen. (Jax's accent - especially when he has to act alongside dudes with any accent native to the U.K. - drifts in and out, which is a riot.)

We dudes are hosed, though. To paraphrase Cleavon Little's character from Blazing Saddles, "Where all the women at?" We got a fairly worn out Peg Bundy, a tramp-stamped doctor with more baggage than sense, prostitutes and porn stars, and psychotic lesbian federal agents. How about throwing us a hot chick with a head on her shoulders and, just for good measure, make her immune (if not hostile) to Jax's, um, "charms".

I'll keep watching in spite of my sneaking suspicion that I have been Jerry MacGuire'd (tricked into watching a chick flick). The writing is pretty nimble - they haven't painted themselves into a corner quite yet. They have a sense of humor about themselves - I particularly enjoyed Jax telling the Porn Lady that he wasn't there to "Adriana her" (a reference to Jax's ex-wife's character on The Sopranos) and Gemma saying she'd rather go bald than red-head (Al Bundy is predictably indifferent on the subject). There are some fine moments with nice payoffs - even if you see them coming in advance to some degree.

So, it's a video game in TV-show form and it will make your wife hot for scumbags. It is simply *loaded* with supporting characters from all over the entertainment spectrum (You will spend a fair amount of time wondering exactly from where you know Characters X and Y...and who knew there was a *low rent* version of Eric Roberts out there?). You know, you just haven't lived until you've seen Gerry Bertier empty a MAC-10 into the back of a chick's head. Strong side, left side, indeed.

By all means, enjoy this show. I know I am. Just, please, please, spare Billy the posthumous gymnastics and refrain from the Shakespeare comparisons. It ain't that, at all. Also, spare us the indignation of decrying the "glorification" of the lifestyles portrayed. Those clownshoes at SAMCRO aren't an advertisement for much beyond making birth control very available and supporting your local law enforcement.

NUTSHELL: A very good watch, but be sure to laugh *quietly* at any nimrods (guys or gals) you see sporting SoA merchandise (cuts, shirts, hats, etc...)...for they know not what they reveal about themselves.

Dan in Real Life (I) (2007)

Starts bad...continues bad...ends bad.

[1/10 · 4 August 2008]

Okay, first off, the obligatory, "I'm a big Steve Carell fan...blah blah blah...BUT...".

You remember watching the Brady Bunch as a kid and, even at that age, being like, "These people are so fake I want to punch them all in their collective faces. Real families do not behave like this."? That's this movie.

Let me start with the daughters. They all need their asses kicked...the middle one, especially. Any father that lets his kids push him around like Carell's character does, gets what he deserves. It all comes to a head when Dan's ho-bag of a daughter tells him she hates him and calls him a "murderer of love". I, myself, would be labeled "murderer of a smart mouth little b****" if I were Dan, but, hey, whatever. Let a kid give me lip in Spanish when he's trying to get in my 14 year old daughter's pants...and see if I don't have ICE raid his house inside of an hour. Instead of being a parent, let's hold our respective situations in equal regard and let the kid do what it wants. Why? Because it is easier to do. Kids are just little grown-ups, after all, right? (NO, THEY ARE NOT.) Let's hope this Baby Boomer method of self-centered ineffective parenting is increasingly a thing of the past.

Then there is the family. Watching them interact actually made me angry. The only thing missing was a potato sack race across the astroturf backyard.

The shower scene made me angry. Knock knock. "What you doing?" "About to take a shower." "Can I talk to you?" Now, we'll see how this comedy gem of a scene would have played out for me. "I said I am about to take a shower." "I'll come in and talk to you." "Do you want your ass kicked? Get out of the bathroom. Go away. I'll talk to you later, maybe, but probably not because you are pissing me off." Well, at least Dan wasn't caught in the laundry room with the lady because, as we can see from this movie, everybody within a half-mile is apt to be strangely compelled to do laundry at the same exact time.

This movie never ends. It's like eating a bad biscuit. You chew it and it just gets larger. There is no payoff for your suffering. You get the typical end-of-movie wedding - in the credits.

I honestly hated Little Miss Sunshine for being "too cute by half". That movie disappointed me, given all the hype and would be a 5, at most, for me. This is a 1 if there ever was one.

Maybe some screen writers should try living in the real world for fifteen minutes. Maybe that would help?

Premonition (I) (2007)

This is a great movie...if...

[1/10 · 25 July 2007]

...you enjoy screaming at the characters on the screen.

Yes we are all aware of the phenomenon of movie/TV characters doing absolutely stupid things - or - as is more the case with this movie - *not* doing the intelligent thing (ever!). Whether it is the bimbo running through the woods from a monster/bad guy while wearing stiletto heels ("Ouch! My ankle!") or somebody simply failing to call the authorities when any normal human would ("If Woody would have called the police, this would never have happened") one would think the day would come when Hollywood abandoned that nonsense.

The choices the characters make in this movie are either flat-out terrible or ridiculously under-explained. Does she care that her daughter becomes permanently disfigured? When she first notices it, it never occurs to her to ask, "Um, how did your face get torn up?" Later, knowing the cause of the accident and having an opportunity to prevent it, why didn't she "put the stickers on the door" in advance or throw a brick through it or, at the very least, have a sit-down with the kids ("Running through glass doors is bad, um-kay?").

This movie fails again and again in terms of satisfying the viewer's penchant of speculating "If I were that character, I would..." My list could be very long. Didn't Bullock's character ever watch "Back to the Future" or "Star Trek" or "Groundhog Day" or anything, at all? Put me in the character's shoes. By day three (at most) I'd be like, "Okay...I might be looney tunes, but this is how it is playing out." Dye the hair (or something) to see if what I already know about the future can be changed. In the meantime, don't call that doctor. Don't act like a raving nutjob around the family. Throw mom out of the house (her character bothered me a lot). Send the "best friend" packing - knowing how quickly she would place herself between my kids and me (when she was committed). Put stickers on the door. Play the lotto. Slash the spouse's tires. Confront the spouse about cheating. On and on and on.

This character did not - even one time - actually take advantage of the prior knowledge of events - actually turn the "curse" into a blessing. Frustrating with a capital "F-this noise".

If the message was that stuff is predetermined and that we are powerless to change our own future, well, then they delivered it in a unsatisfying way. If her character were to repeatedly take *sensible* and (sometimes) *drastic* measures to circumvent future events only to be thwarted by extraordinary developments, well, we'd have something. That would take clever script writing and has been done in the past with other movies ("12 Monkeys", for example). This movie though...she can't even manage to *not* tear a page out of the yellow pages and avoid seeing a particular shrink.

Another opportunity was missed to actually make this a movie worth watching. In addition to patching up the various things described before, they could have made this movie nearly legendary. I suspect that many of the males out there who have watched this movie were coerced into doing so by a spouse/girlfriend. Imagine the phenomenon that would have occurred if the character, reacting to knowledge and events, actually did have a clear opportunity to save the husband. Change the cheating husband plot line a little bit - develop it as ongoing with no change of heart on the husband's part. At the 11th hour, she just lets the bugger get whacked. If implemented in such a way that it was a dramatic twist accentuated by the "evolution" (or de-evolution, if you will) of Bullock's character, it could have amounted to a genuine "Fatal Attraction" moment. This impact of this storyline would have been heightened by the fact that Bullock typically plays the "good/sweet/naive girl" types. Opportunity missed, in my estimation.

Given all of the poor choices made by the characters in this flick, I am all the more upset that the now-retired MST3K guys will never get a crack at being subjected to this movie.

The Big Lebowski (1998)

I do not get it.

[1/10 · 29 January 2007]

Absolutely unwatchable. Tried it twice, figuring one attempt wasn't sufficient.

I am not offended by vulgar language, but when it is such a major portion of the dialogue, it had better be with good reason and to great effect. Neither is the case, here.

These characters are the types of people that normal people with lives pass by numerous times a day without taking any notice. There is a reason for that. Folks like that are uninspiring, dull, and generally useless to the world they inhabit. Centering a movie script on them is going to make you a dolt or a genius, depending how sycophantic your fan base is. It seems too many people checked their good judgment at the door - not only giving this movie a free pass, but pumping up the votes to the extent that this turd rates in the Top 250. Whoa geez.

Again, I say, "Absolutely unwatchable."