Category Archives: Genre: Comedy

Little Monsters

Posted on by
Reply

I watch a lot of zombie movies. A lot. Zombie films are not often rated highly by IMDB and other aggregator sources. In fact, some of the best zombie films have a mere 40-50% audience approval. Then there’s Little Monsters. This film has garnered 100% (no joke) audience approval on Rotten Tomatoes. Frankly, I didn’t think that was possible and I was prepared to hate-watch it just to ridicule it and tear it apart.

Little Monsters

Instead I found myself laughing and cheering with almost every scene, from the death metal Christian music, to the ukulele zombie “pied piper,” to the zombie puppet sidekick. I couldn’t find any significant flaws. It earned it. It really was a very well-rounded zombie/horror/comedy, and one of the best I’ve seen. More importantly, the characters each had lots of character development and still stayed true to their origins — growing enough to make the film an honest and remarkable almost family-friendly tale of flesh-eating redemption and apocalyptic survival.

If all of that isn’t enough, the Australian location and international cast provides adorable accents and the only real human villain is a Pee-wee Herman wannabe that makes it ridiculously easy to dislike him.

Watch it. Watch it now.

Save Yourselves!

Posted on by
Reply

This film was designed to portray how an ultra-woke couple would deal with an alien invasion. On the verge of becoming social outcasts and losing their income and respect for one another, a NY couple is offered the opportunity to stay at a cabin for a week. They decide to go offline for their vacation to make it more personal and rekindle their relationship.

Warning: Spoilers!

The tagline for this film is “Turning off their phones was the dumbest idea on the planet.” Sure, but their first instinct the moment they had cell service again and learned that there was an alien invasion was to rush from the comparable safety of the forest back to the city as quickly as possible. The same city that was already leveled by the aliens.

Save Yourselves! — Don’t waste your time on this movie

They’re being attacked by aliens that literally suck the life out of people, and Su adamantly refuses to arm herself to defend from their attackers. She’s perfectly happy to chop up the little furballs when actually attacked (and then feeling guilty for saving her friends life afterwards), but no guns.

They’re perfectly happy to lie to each other while discussing why they need to be more honest and open, break promises and insult each other left and right. One of the opening scenes at the cabin is Jack talking about how he wants to learn how to make a rabbit trap to “humanely” capture them. In the final scene they’re captured in much the same way that a rabbit trap works. “Humanely.” They’ll end up being food for the puffs.

If you’re a fan of the end-of-the-world/zombie-apocalypse/alien-invasion genre then you’ll probably want to skip this one. There is very little to redeem this film. In thinking it through to write this up, the only real redemptive part is that you get to see these two babbling idiots place their politics above their lives again and again and again, demonstrating how true believers are insane.

 

Travelers and Crazyhead

Posted on by
Reply

The first seasons of several new series are now available on Netflix.

Travelers doesn’t deliver. I expected a lot more from a series by the creators (and much of the cast) of Stargate. It was pretty disappointing. Crazyhead, however, was pretty good.

About the only thing Travelers had going for it was that it was touted in every Sci-Fi mag and website as being the next brainchild from the creators of Stargate. Sadly, that’s just about all it has going for it. The story is weak and untethered. The concept is that an AI from the future is trying to save humanity by injecting the consciousness of a person from the future into contemporary people who have narrowly escaped their deaths. It is an interesting concept, but fails the paradox test since the people that are now still alive (though now functionally possessed by the personalities of people centuries hence) continue to live their lives and interact with the world around them. If the only way they can be possessed is if there’s a documented record of their deaths including time of death, elevation, latitude and longitude (their “TELL”) and they don’t die, there’s no documented record anymore, right? Sigh. Especially after they’ve possessed over 3,000 people, the butterfly effect should have been perceived and anticipated long before where the story begins. In theory it could get better next season, but as of right now my recommendation is to skip it.

Update: nope, still crap.

 

Speaking of possession, Crazyhead steps in to save face, as it were. This other new Netflix original series is about a couple crazy British girls with the ability to see people that are possessed, and, like any great good vs evil story, they kill the demons. Think of it as Supernatural meets Buffy. No, none of the leads are particularly athletic, but it makes up for the lack of action with quite a bit of comedy and a well-rounded story. It’s a little raunchy at times, and not for children, but well worth your time. It’s also a British series, so it’s pretty short (6 episodes): easy enough to binge watch in an afternoon.

So, go brew a “cuppa” and get your older children together to have a laugh with Crazyhead.