Shows We Don't (Traditionally) Admit To Watching (Or Liking), Vol. 1 - Just Shoot Me!

The Good: Funny, Interesting Characters, Good cast
The Bad: Light on DVD bonus features, Intrusive laugh track
The Basics: When Maya Gallo is forced to work for her father's fashion magazine, she comes in to make big changes, only to be met by resistance by the eccentric staff in the first two seasons of Just Shoot Me!


So, as I have been eagerly rewatching Veronica Mars (reviewed here!), I continue to find myself impressed by actor Enrico Colantoni. Colantoni plays Keith Mars on the show and it was his next steady work following his work on Just Shoot Me! Just Shoot Me! was an NBC comedy, now on DVD with the complete first and second season bundled together, which on its surface was the vehicle for David Spade, post-Saturday Night Live, post-dumb film career. Fortunately for viewers, Spade's role is minimized early in the second season as the writers and producers realized that the real talents on the show were Laura San Giacomo and Enrico Colantoni, with George Segal and Wendie Malick trumping Spade as well.

Poor David Spade, but it does make for good television and it is one of the surprises I've found on DVD that has lived up to being worthwhile to watch and even own. Like NewsRadio (reviewed here!), the first season was far too short to warrant a full DVD set, so the first and second season were put together for the DVD release. The three discs in this set cover all thirty-one episodes from those seasons.

For those unfamiliar with Just Shoot Me!, the half-hour sitcom happens largely at the offices of Blush Magazine, a Cosmopolitan-type beauty magazine featuring supermodels and articles on healthy, style and beauty. Scenes are broken up by an image of a cover of Blush which features hints at what is coming next in the storyline, much the way the title cards on Frasier set up moods on that show. Yes, that might be the only time in the history of television that Just Shoot Me! was compared to Frasier!

Opening with intrepid investigative reporter Maya Gallo being fired from a television station, she soon finds herself in dire straits and desperate for a job. This leads Maya to Blush, which is owned by her father, Jack, where she quickly lands a job writing and aiding with editorial decisions around the magazine. This raises the ire of fashion editor and washed-up model Nina and the somewhat chauvinistic photographer Elliot. Moreover, Maya's presence complicates the relationship between Jack and his personal assistant, a sycophant named Dennis. As Dennis and the others adapt to having a feminist aboard the decidedly unfeminist Blush, hilarity ensues.

In the first and second seasons, Maya arrives and attempts to shake things up at Blush only to run into obstacles everywhere she turns. She overcomes being distracted by the setting (one of Jack's plans to keep her from changing the magazine), attempts to throw a party for Nina and everyone inadvertently gets drugged by candy Jack brings back from China. As well, in these seasons, Dennis dates one of Elliot's models and ends up in a cage, Maya tries to prove looks influence the ability to get a good job, Nina flirts with a window washer with disastrous results, Nina and Elliot feud over tickets to King Lear in London, and Maya spends the night in the sewer trying to get a newsworthy scoop. Nina's famous bikini gets put on display in a basement, Jack tries to resolve his differences with the man with whom he started Blush and Elliot tries to get a better apartment by having Maya pose as his wife.

This is, in many ways, a fairly standard office sitcom, but it still manages to make itself feel fresh, mostly through the character interactions and the speed of the conversations. For sure, this would have been a far better series without the laugh track (I loathe that!) but it makes good use of its strengths throughout the season, mixing riotous obvious humor (the resolution to "Nina's Bikini" for example is so funny that the image is indelibly burned into my mind and - seriously - whenever I think of it it causes me to smile) and heartfelt emotions (the emotional complications that arise in "The Kiss" set up a whole future arc with the two characters involved). Just Shoot Me! is a surprise only in that it takes a rather standard set of conditions - the office sitcom has very much been "done," not the least of which by NBC's own NewsRadio - and makes it feel new by dressing it up with a wonderful cast and interesting characters.

To better understand the show, it helps to know who the characters are and how these two seasons find them. The principles include:

Maya Gallo - Proud, industrious feminist, she arrives at Blush, the result of nepotism, something that sets the rest of the staff of Blush on edge. Single, with little time to date save those who she meets around the office, she strives to reconcile with her father the issues that have divided them for years. She often finds herself at odds with the other writers and editors of Blush largely over how women are treated. She is a fighter who is loyal to her principles and her friends,

Dennis Finch - Jack's personal assistant, he is a conniving office manager who manipulates Jack much of the time. He is petty and arranges such things as the theft and sale of Nina's bikini and the way into the bed of one of Elliot's ex-girlfriends. He works to keep Jack's life under his control while doing such things as renting out Jack's parking space,

Elliot - The photographer for Blush, he tends to date the models and he has a strong love for art and the women he photographs. He has a smart side that allows him to deflect much of Maya's complaints with his work on the magazine and he struggles to keep a relationship for more than a week,

Nina - The aging model turned fashion editor of Blush, she smokes a lot, is sarcastic and jealous of Maya. She also abuses her expense account, hits on younger men around the office and keeps Finch in his place,

and Jack Gallo - The scatterbrained boss. After bringing Maya aboard Blush, he juggles the magazine with his new daughter, Hannah, who he tries to get into a prestigious school (rather early considering she is born in the first episode). He also wars with his ex-wife (Maya's mother) over a painting and is frequently manipulated by Finch.

The characters are fun, if not the most original. Finch is clearly a type; the sarcastic lackey, but the others are less used, if they are "types." Maya is a relatively actualized character and she stands for many noble feminist ideals in standing against fashion's limited view of beauty. In this boxed set, that is consistent - despite what happens when Maya has Elliot take her new driver's license photo - and she seems rather different from anyone else on a sitcom, at least at the time this was released.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Wendie Malick's Nina. Nina, as portrayed by Malick, fills the same essential niche as Christine Baranski's character on Cybil. Malick even plays Nina sometimes like she is making a parody of Baranski. This is not necessarily a problem - Baranski was brilliant on Cybil - but it does make the show seem a little derivative.

What saves it, then, are the efforts of Laura San Giacomo and Enrico Colantoni. Colantoni, oft-neglected for the talent he is, has played everything from an alien to a mentally retarded adult (on NYPD Blue) to a loving father and private detective on Veronica Mars. As Elliot, Colantoni hones his comic sense with his use of dry wit and he creates a character distinct and different from anyone else he has played on television or in the movies.

Similarly, Laura San Giacomo easily proves that she is not just a good looking body filling the role. She is articulate, arguing strong and reasonable feminist dialogue in a voice that makes her seem a complete authority. Giacomo has a wonderful sense of body language that makes her a natural at the physical comedy when they play Maya that way and she seems to be able to go from completely articulate to slapstick effortlessly. It's easy to see why she was first billed on the show.

This boxed set features notable guest appearances by Dana Carvey and Brian Dennehy. On DVD, they do not seem like such a big deal and the nice thing about Just Shoot Me! is that they are used to serve the main cast, not overwhelm them. Despite how NBC promos at the time might have made it seem, their appearances did not make episodes completely about them, rather they fit into the lives of the characters and the principles used them to play off of. It's refreshing to see a series not dominated by the guest talent.

On DVD, the show is remarkably light on extras. There are a few commentary tracks - nothing as insightful as I would have wanted -, a featurette on fashion and a collection of the covers featured in the episodes. There is little that the DVD buying audience gets that those catching the episodes in syndication would not.

Still, rewatching this series on DVD with this little collection reminded me how smart the sitcom could be and that's a rare thing. Funny, with moments of genuine character, Just Shoot Me! - The Complete First and Second Season is bound to satisfied anyone bored with half-hour comedies on television now.

For other works from the 1997 - 1998 television season, please visit my reviews of:
The X-Files - Season 5
Ellen - Season 5
NYPD Blue - Season 5
Frasier - Season 5
Buffy The Vampire Slayer - Season 2
Ally McBeal - Season 1
Babylon 5 - Season 5
Friends - Season 4
Spin City - Season 2
The Simpsons - Season 9
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Season 6
NewsRadio - Season 4
Homicide: Life On The Street - Season 6
Millennium - Season 3
Star Trek: Voyager - Season 4

6/10

For other television reviews, please visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2016, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Veronica Mars Comes Full Circle With The Film Continuation Of The Series!

The Good: Funny, Wonderful character development, Good acting, Engaging story/references
The Bad: Some underdeveloped threads, Much of the case hinges on a retcon that is unsatisfying.
The Basics: Surprisingly satisfying on its own, Veronica Mars progresses the story of the title character and Neptune, California in a compelling way.


From the moment it was first announced, there have been few films I have eagerly anticipated the way I have looked forward to Veronica Mars. In fact, the only reason it has taken me two weeks to watch and review the cinematic rendition of Veronica Mars is that I was going through the entire television series (reviewed here!) with my wife (who had not seen it before) (and in Michigan, it didn’t remain in theaters very long). Given the terrible and abrupt nature of the show’s series finale to Veronica Mars, the show made for a natural subject for a cinematic follow-up. Like Serenity (reviewed here!), Veronica Mars is based on a television series that had an uncommon level of complexity and a number of characters that could not be properly serviced in a single 107 minute film.

Fortunately for fans of Veronica Mars who might have been wary of a film based upon the fourth season presentation presented in the bonus features to the Season Three DVD set, the film Veronica Mars is a return to form . . . and Neptune, California. In fact, the film Veronica Mars makes a conscious choice to disavow the Season 4 Presentation as part of the Veronica Mars canon. Early in the film, Veronica details her nine years since she was last seen and it is a very different path – Stanford, then Harvard Law – than the FBI Academy. My big fear before watching Veronica Mars was that, with so many characters to service, they would gloss over most or try so hard to give everyone a fair amount of screentime that they would not tell a coherent narrative. Veronica Mars is a surprisingly balanced film, with only one of the primary characters from the series being given a truly underwhelming place in the film. Regardless, it did not feel like a film that was just a random collections of allusions to the television series or cameos by beloved characters from the series.

Living in New York City now, and having recently reconnected with Piz, Veronica Mars has gone nine years without taking a case. Instead, she is now interviewing at a prestigious New York law firm where she illustrates her resolve and lack of ability to be flustered when one of the partners brings up her sex tape from college while in the interview. Having pointedly ignored the pleas from Wallace and Mac to return to Neptune for their ten year high school reunion, Veronica Mars feels a tug to return to her hometown when a pop star she went to high school with is killed. The primary suspect is Veronica’s former boyfriend, Logan Echolls. Feeling like an addict, Veronica takes a call for help from Logan and leaves Piz in New York to help Logan find a good lawyer to represent him.

Arriving in Neptune, Veronica finds herself returning to many of her old ways. Logan is, despite the murder charges against him, a stand-up guy who has joined the military and flies missions over Afghanistan (and he looks damn good in his uniform when he meets Veronica at the airport). Wallace is now a teacher at Neptune High, Mac has taken a job for Kane Software and Dick is still Dick, spending his days surfing and screwing. Underwhelmed by the lawyers she meets, Veronica starts to help Logan develop his defense, which is finding a more compelling suspect than Logan. Investigating the murder itself, Veronica encounters the pop star’s number one fan (and another former-classmate of Veronica’s), Gia Goodman, and others from her past, including Madison Sinclair and Weevil. Digging into the relationships of those she left behind in Neptune brings to light a missing person’s murder from ten years ago and puts Veronica in the crosshairs of a killer looking to protect their interests and secrets.

Keith Mars is, fortunately, not neglected in Veronica Mars. He is given a subplot, with Weevil, that puts him at odds with the new Sheriff Lamb (Dan Lamb, Don Lamb’s brother). Sheriff Lamb is not only incompetent, he is outwardly corrupt and Neptune, California is a much darker place than it used to be. Gone is the bright veneer that covered the seedy underbelly of the filthy rich city and Keith Mars’s plotline in Veronica Mars reflects that.

First and foremost, Veronica Mars is a darker, more adult continuation of the characterlines from the television series. The big moments of Veronica Mars (the film) are violent and abrupt. This is a film with a body count, wounds, and some particularly gruesome and tense moments. But, it’s still Veronica Mars. As such, the film is packed with witty banter, tongue-in-cheek humor, and lovable moments that remind viewers just why they loved the television show upon which the movie was based. Most of the relationship moments satisfy as well. Wallace has grown, but still has loyalty to Veronica, Mac is dismayed with herself for having gone over to the Dark Side for cash, and Dick is as vacuous as ever (in fact, despite him being a reasonable suspect in the film’s backstory murder, during the inevitable exposition wrap-up of the backstory, the guilty party goes to sufficient lengths to exonerate Dick for any involvement). Piz is still rather white bread, Gia is still pretty shallow, and Logan and Veronica instantly have more chemistry than Veronica and Piz, so most of the pieces in play are familiar.

As one might suspect, the film Veronica Mars is largely about Veronica. The story is one that gives her a decent character arc. She was out of the private investigation business and, more than any of the influences exerted upon her by other characters, Veronica Mars is about her willing return to the lifestyle she has run away from. Thematically, Veronica Mars is largely about one young woman discovering her passion in life and realizing that the things and people once important to her were not necessarily self-destructive as they might have seemed.

In fact, the biggest gripes I had with Veronica Mars was how it fit in with the larger series, as opposed to anything within the film itself. That means that while those who might watch Veronica Mars will not appreciate the full depth and range of the allusions in the film, those who are attentive to details will find some aspects of Veronica Mars unsatisfying. I was less than enthused by the resolution of the Weevil character arc in the film, after initially being impressed by his character growth. But there are other details that the film inexplicably flubs. Chief among them is in the corrupt sheriff plotline. The television series “resolved” itself with an election between Keith Mars and Vinnie Van Lowe for sheriff of Neptune. The presumption, given the plot that preceded it, was that Keith would lose the election because of corruption charges that surfaced the night before the election. The problem, though, is that we see Veronica’s ballot: Keith and Vinnie are the only two people on the ballot. One of them must have been elected – Dan Lamb could not have become sheriff after that election. As a result, Vinnie’s place in the film (without any acknowledgment of his disastrous tenure as sheriff) makes painfully little sense.

As well, the murder plot in Veronica Mars hinges on an unsolved case . . . that was never once mentioned in the television series. Sometime between the second and third season of Veronica Mars, presumably, there was a boat trip that resulted in a death. It’s never mentioned before and the retcon case is an unfortunate contrivance for the film. In addition to forcing fans to believe in yet another young person killed at Veronica’s high school (so soon after Veronica’s tenacious pursuit of the bus crash victims) was part of a case that neither Veronica, nor Keith, pursued, the resulting case hinges largely on characters that the viewer is not invested in. Gia Goodman was only present in the show’s second season and was not particularly missed in the third; Logan is never treated as a viable killer in Veronica Mars, and Dick Casablancas continues to be such a hapless dupe that he is never believably a suspect. Thus, all the suspects are reliably among the newcomers to the film, which leaves the viewer without a real emotional tether to the crimes past and present.

That said, Veronica Mars has wonderful acting. Kristen Bell, Enrico Colantoni, Jason Dohring, Ryan Hansen and Chris Lowell each fall perfectly back into their old, familiar roles. Percy Daggs III, Francis Capra, and Tina Majorino evolve their characters credibly to make their new personalities seem less abrupt and more plausible. Jerry O’Connell, Gaby Hoffmann, and Martin Starr blend well with the seasoned cast. Martin Starr is like he has never been before; he is downright creepy, with a dangerous quality to him that he’s not portrayed before. Starr gives one of the notable performances in Veronica Mars, even if some of his character’s arc is telegraphed by his performance.

Ultimately, Veronica Mars is well worth watching. It’s enough to please fans and get a whole new audience to pick up the television series. For a film that had such a public battle to get made at all, that is truly a mission accomplished!

For other works with Krysten Ritter, be sure to visit my reviews of:
She’s Out Of My League
Confessions Of A Shopaholic
27 Dresses
Gilmore Girls - Season 7
Veronica Mars - Season 2
Someone Like You

8/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Why Trekkers Love Galaxy Quest

The Good: Funny, Decent acting, Good concept
The Bad: Predictable plot and character arcs
The Basics: In a clever science fiction comedy, a crew of actors from a science fiction show are impressed by aliens to save their race from a brutal enemy.


As I consider Galaxy Quest, a story Robert Picardo (Star Trek Voyager) told at a Star Trek convention comes to mind. The venerable actor was on stage talking about being on a plane when the in-flight movie was Galaxy Quest. Several people on the plane had recognized him from his work on Star Trek and as he watched, he noticed people on the plane watching him with a generally nervous sense about them. He commented on how when he started laughing and made it clear that he was enjoying the film, the plane began to openly enjoy the movie. It was like the people on the plane who respected Picardo and his work needed his permission to enjoy the parody. Picardo, for his part, enjoyed the film quite a bit; he has quite a good sense of humor (actually, he's one of the funniest people alive today and he was perfectly cast as The Doctor on Star Trek Voyager). The thing is, most Trekkers - which I count myself as - have a sense of humor about our subculture and were thrilled to have a movie that actually includes us (even if in parody).

Years after the cult-classic science fiction show Galaxy Quest is canceled, the actors from the show are finding themselves virtually unemployable as actors and working the convention circuit making money signing autographs and dealing with their fans one on one. The star of the show, Jason Nesmith - who played the captain of the ship - is egocentric and thrives on the celebrity, while his sidekick, the accomplished actor Alexander Dane laments the loss of his legitimate career. When actual aliens arrive to enlist Nesmith in a fight against an oppressive adversary - misinterpreting the old television show broadcasts for historical documents - Nesmith reunites the cast to try to bluff their way through saving the galaxy.

The fundamental problem, of course, is that Nesmith is an actor, not a starship captain, just as Fred Kwan is not an engineer, Tommy is not a pilot and Dane is not actually an alien (though for the convention, he has donned his prosthetic). When it becomes clear that the stakes are life and death, the actors must rise to the occasion and work together to save the galaxy.

There are too few science fiction comedies out there. There are even fewer that are smart science fiction comedies (Dude, Where's My Car? - reviewed here - for example, would fall into the "not smart science fiction" category). Galaxy Quest manages to be a smart science fiction comedy in addition to being a clever commentary on the role of television - specifically shows that have a cult following - in American society and culture. Part of what makes this show work is the concept of how roles like the fictional show Galaxy Quest provide can both make actors and destroy their careers, sprout a loyal and devoted audience and isolate that following from living balanced lives. That's clever and well-executed in this film. It's what we in the subculture "get."

Some Trekkers object to the parody, as most of the fans in Galaxy Quest are overweight, living with their parents and dateless males. Writers David Howard and Robert Gordon call it as they see it and their representation is an accurate parody, the hyperbole of the most visible and disturbing element of the subculture (i.e. it's hard to parody the NASA engineer who was inspired by Star Trek as effectively as the socially-isolated teen whose sole interface with others is the convention experience).

As for the story itself - outside the commentary it seeks to make - Galaxy Quest is solidly entertaining. Nesmith and his crew of actors face the amusing foibles of acclimating to a real ship based on the one they operated for years on their television show. As they experience wonder at stepping on alien worlds and horror at the brutality of the enemy's attacks, the audience finds their fish-out-of-water struggle entertaining.

A lot of it, though, is tied closely with the commentary, though. So, for example, Gwen DeMarco, Jason's quasi-love interest and costar, finds herself feeling useless and angry as her role on the show - and on the ship - was to ask the computer for information. This is a terrible role to play in reality and one that is frequently redundant. Yet, watching her adapt to being the interface on the ship is amusing. Equally amusing is engineer Fred Kwan's easy adaptation to the ship, as if jumping off into outer space and becoming chief engineer of a space vessel happens every day to him.

While the character arcs are largely predictable - Nesmith learns the value of teamwork, Dane discovers the importance of the role he has so long despised - the characters here are intriguing. Nesmith is an entirely self-absorbed egoist and it's refreshing to see how he reacts when faced with reality. After all, how does a man whose career is based on the force of his personality react and survive when real peril presents itself? There's the famous quote to the effect of faking confidence and actual confidence yield the same result and Galaxy Quest seeks to explore that using the foil characters of Nesmith and Dane.

What sells Galaxy Quest to the larger audience is certainly the acting. Tim Allen pulls off the preening egoist Nesmith with amazing efficiency and realism. Allen, as Nesmith, energizes the convention audience when he appears on stage and it is Allen's innate charisma that convinces the movie audience that this is realistic. Allen can work a crowd and in his early scenes as Nesmith, he embodies that type of performer.

Sigourney Weaver, who portrays Gwen, is wonderful as a frustrated actress who lives very much in the real world. Weaver's strength in Galaxy Quest comes from being able to effectively play off Allen and convince the audience of the reality of their love-hate relationship.

Alan Rickman is great as Alexander Dane, though it seems like the role is not a stretch for such a dignified actor. Similarly, Tony Shalhoub (best known for his performance of the quirky detective Monk) is great as the easygoing engineer Kwan. Like Rickman, however, the role does not seem to push the actor into any terribly new territory. Instead, this is a role he makes appear effortless and the enjoyment in watching him perform is for the humor he is able to bring out as a result.

One of my favorite performances in Galaxy Quest comes in the form of Enrico Colantoni's portrayal of the extraterrestrial Mathesar. Colantoni is probably best known to American audiences as the promiscuous photographer Elliot on Just Shoot Me, though he gave an incredible dramatic performance of a mentally retarded son of Andy's sponsor on NYPD Blue for a few episodes in the second season. Colantoni is able to combine the two performances into a humorous, unsettlingly weird presentation of an alien on Earth with Mathesar. He steals the scenes he is in.

All in all, Galaxy Quest is solidly entertaining and genuinely funny, though the humor does not hold up terribly well over multiple (5+) viewings. It's worth your attention and a lot of fun for science fiction fans. Or those who like mocking us.

For other science fiction comedies, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Men In Black III
Paul


7/10

For other film reviews, be sure to check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing of films I have reviewed!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Steven Spielberg's Argument Against Having Children . . . Or Robots: A.I.: Artificial Intelligence!

The Good: Essentially good philosophical question, Some acting
The Bad: Overly graphic, Thematically heavy-handed, Characters that are difficult to connect with, Loses focus
The Basics: The MPAA drops the ball on not rating this nightmarish fairy tale “R.” Otherwise, there is little of note here.


It did not take watching A.I. or Artificial Intelligence long to realize that Steven Spielberg was the wrong director for this movie. At best, no other director could be accused of trying to capitalize on the same type feelings as E.T, at worst, no other director would be a target for trying so desperately to make a hit film. Artificial Intelligence fails to be as simply endearing as E.T. was upon its release and too pointlessly graphic and needlessly complicated to be the real hit that he wanted.

When Henry Swinton believes he has found the solution to his wife's heartbreak over their son's apparent coma, he purchases a robot (mecha) that has the ability to love her without question. David, the mecha, takes a while to endear himself to Monica and eventually, she begins to return his affection. When her biological son reanimates, there is natural conflict between the two children and Monica decides to abandon David. David, unalterably programmed to love Monica, begins a search for the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio in an attempt to become human. In the process, he flees the most dangerous element of humanity, the Flesh Fair, and journeys to the submerged Manhattan to try to become human.

First of all, if you are not a fan of Pinocchio-type stories, this will be a huge let down for you. Essentially, it is a souped up fairy tale with all the simplicity and none of the charm. Haley Joel Osment does a fine job portraying David with simplistic, childlike wonder, but there is no magic in his performance. There's no spark of joy in him, which makes watching Osment's David difficult.

If you read my reviews, you will no I am not a prude for most of the things Conservatives decry are wrong with movies. I was disappointed at how sexually graphic Henry And June (reviewed here!) wasn't and the ultra-violent "Empok Nor" rates as one of the best Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episodes in my book. That said, the MPAA completely dropped the ball when it came to rating this movie. Whatever dolts at the MPAA slapped a PG-13 on this movie instead of an "R" deserved to be fired.

Why? A significant portion of Artificial Intelligence happens at a Flesh Fair. The Flesh Fair is basically a bunch of hicks getting together and tearing apart robots. In the scene, we see a robot shot from a cannon, through a ring of fire and into a jet engine where it is destroyed, another is drawn and quartered before our eyes and yet another is melted completely with acid. The purpose of the scene is to illustrate what monsters humans have become in relation to their servants. This horrific scene immediately follows a scene wherein a dump truck of already destroyed robots attempt to reconstruct themselves and includes such things as one robot tearing jaws off other dead droids to find one that fits. The problems of these scenes are twofold. 1. They do what they do exceptionally well, to the point of being overbearing, oppressive and gross. In the robot dump scene, we see quite comprehensively how poorly the robots have been treated and any viewer with a brain is going to feel the sense of injustice and "get" that this situation is absolutely wrong. The scene that follows with the chase and torture of robots is therefore unnecessary. Add to that, the scene is supposed to illustrate how inhumanely the robots are being treated by showing their torture and we are to understand how wrong that is. The MPAA completely dropped the ball on this one in that it uses the excuse that the beings being tortured are simply inanimate objects to justify showing things it would never allow to be illustrated with human beings. Thus, the MPAA is desensitized, becoming in itself a flesh fair. It is unethical and desensitizing to allow such graphic torture to be shown, especially to youngsters and the idiocy of the MPAA's decision to rate this PG-13 is that the robots are, of course, humans in actuality! The second problem is both of these intense, graphic scenes of dismemberment, torture and destruction are too long. We get the thesis of the scenes. They feel like the Ripley Clone Room scene in Alien Resurrection (reviewed here!) - we got it, get on with it.

Following the disgusting and inappropriately rated Flesh Fair scene, the movie falls completely into chaos. The comic relief provided by Jude Law's character Gigolo Joe wears thin immediately such that the viewer is not disappointed by his rapid exit from the movie soon after. Then the movie descends into a weird fairy tale involving massive passages of time and alien beings.

The problem, ultimately, with Artificial Intelligence is that it does not seem to know what it wants to be. Too often, it is an oversimplified fairy tale. Other moments, however, it rises to a wrenchingly graphic and adult portrayal of ostracization and loneliness. In the end, none of the characters come alive. David is simplistic and monotonous, Monica is pretty much the worst mother ever, Joe is a one trick joke, and Professor Allen Hobby, who has great potential as a philosopher somehow loses his way in the last scenes we see of him. His philosophical quest motivates the movie, yet his actions at the end are inexplicable; until he knew the outcome of the David experiment, why would he start other such experiments?

In contrast to the characters, the acting is halfway decent. Almost redeeming the movie are the performances of William Hurt, who plays Hobby as intelligent and compassionate, and Haley Joel Osment, who earns his fee easily with his weird, robotic performance of David. The contrast between the warmly emotional Hurt and the quirky, quasi-dispassionate Osment works quite well.

Unfortunately, it is not enough to save this movie. It lacks serious direction other than trying to prove that the responsibility one would have to an artificial life form is the same as one would have to a biological entity, but that is proven rather quickly. The lack of purpose through much of the movie is complicated by a situation devoid of empathetic characters and ruined by an unnecessarily gruesome set of scenes that defy good taste. If you want a better time making an ethical argument over robots, I strongly recommend "Measure Of A Man" from Star Trek The Next Generation's second season. They say that if a movie resonates emotionally with you, it's good regardless; I say if it resonates only in that it makes you nauseous and others when you describe it, it's garbage. There's no antacid that counteracts the Flesh Fair and only sadness that 28 Days Later's Brendan Gleeson was a part of it.

For other big science fiction films, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Bicentennial Man
Inception
Minority Report

3.5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2003 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Marion Cotillard Makes Music Appear And The Strengths Are The Same As The Weaknesses Of Contagion!

The Good: Realistic presentation of the effect of a plague throughout various facets of society, Acting.
The Bad: Realistic presentation of the effect of a plague throughout various facets of society, Pacing.
The Basics: Contagion does what it sets out to do extraordinarily well, but in the process creates a movie so far from entertaining as to be impossible to recommend.


Over the summer, there were very few preview trailers for movies that actually excited me and made me think "I'd like to see that!" One of the few was Contagion which had a more engaging teaser than The Dark Knight Rises. But now, having gotten back from the screening of the film, I am finding I have remarkably little to say, though I am content to begin with the idea that the trailer makers cut the trailer to make the film look much more engaging, tense and fast paced than the movie ever came close to being. This is not 28 Days Later (reviewed here!) where things happen fast and there are quick reversals and a pounding sense of tension throughout.

In fact, Contagion is boring. Someone had to say it and I am fine with it being me. The movie is great at what it does - with one niggling exception - and as a result, creates a reality that is so close to our reality that it becomes tiresome exceptionally quickly. Writer Scott Z. Burns explores the worldwide phenomenon of a disease and he and director Steven Soderbergh explore every major conceivable category of people. This makes for a realistic, documentary feel to the film, but a movie with characters so largely underdeveloped that it is impossible to invest in the fate of any of them.

Contagion explores the 144 days of a highly infectious disease that wipes out tens of millions of people. This film is populated by various strata which include: an immune private citizen, the head of the Centers for Disease Control, a CDC field operative, a World Health Organization worker, a blogger, the head of Homeland Security in the U.S., two doctors, and a translator for the epidemiologist. To give each of the perspectives, each is robbed of their quirks or enough airtime to actually be worth empathizing with. To wit, Marion Cotillard's character, the WHO epidemiologist Leonora Orantes, falls out of the film from Days 14 through Day 133 (or more, I stopped taking notes at that point). She is not missed, though her character has one of the more overt struggles in the movie it goes largely unseen.

Starting on Day 2, Beth Ehoff is in Chicago where she has just cheated on her husband, Mitch. She arrives home in Minneapolis, sweating and exhausted. The next day, a blogger in San Francisco, Alan Krumwiede, tries to bring the San Francisco Chronicle a story about a man dying on a subway in Asia. Not believing he has a significant story, he is sent on his way. But the next day, Beth dies with wide eyes, foaming at the mouth and her son, Clark, follows shortly thereafter. Mitch is put into quarantine as the CDC, under Dr. Ellis Cheaver sends Dr. Erin Mears to try to study and contain the disease.

But soon, containment is the least of the worries as an estimated one in twelve people worldwide contract the disease and the death toll mounts. Orantes is taken hostage by the survivors of a village desperate to get a cure and Dr. Hextall, seeing the virulence of the virus, takes the most risky step to try to save humanity. And back in Minneapolis, Mitch tries desperately to protect his daughter from looters and the boy she likes by barricading themselves in their home.

There is a lot going on in Contagion and it is a highly plot-driven film. I have four pages of notes on the movie which detail plot points of places mentioned, populations and events, but the movie boils down to yet another near-apocalypse from a viral outbreak and the race to save humanity. The film is presented almost like a documentary (though blissfully without annoying handheld camera work). As a result, the movie is almost entirely devoid of a soundtrack, save when Marion Cotillard is on screen and an in-scene piece of music near the very end of the movie. While this helps to maintain the reality of the movie, it also makes the movie that is allegedly 105 minutes long feel about four times that length.

Some of the plots add to the reality, but do nothing for the viewability of the film. Alan's story goes from being one of a smalltime blogger intuiting his way into the biggest story of the era to a tale of corruption that is ultimately disappointing. Alan exposes the disease, starts pressing the idea that Forsythia is an effective treatment, is put on legitimate news outlets and ends up being exposes as a man profiting off his own advice. The truly disappointing thing about his arc is how Burns makes him into a monolithic character who is homogeneously wrong. Krumwiede raises the legitimate point that by rushing the vaccine tests potential side effects and long-term effects are absolutely unknown and could lead to tremendous troubles in the future. This is a legitimate concern and at the moment when it seemed like the movie might explore that, Alan is instead completely discredited. The dialectic nature of the character and the conflict he has makes it seem far more simple than it ought to.

The same could be said for many of the characters at one point or another, but because the movie is so plot-driven, it is pointless to elaborate. Instead, it is worthwhile to focus on the other major plot problem. In a movie where it takes twelve days for a doctor no longer on the project to grow strains of the virus, it seems ridiculous that by the twenty-ninth day, an effective vaccine is in mass production. As looting skyrockets and Mitch observes his neighbors being murdered from across the street, the peril drops off abruptly and is replaced by a very political sensibility to the movie.

For those who are freaked out by medical movies, Contagion has shockingly little gore or truly objectionable material. While the trailer revealed one of the most shocking moments with an infected person walking into traffic, which happens very early in the movie, the most graphic moment of the film comes on Day 6 when Beth's autopsy is done and her skull is cut open. If you make it through that scene, it's smooth sailing the rest of the film for the graphic unsettling department.

What keeps the film from being a total wash is the acting. Contagion features the best performance I have yet seen from actress Kate Winslet. Winslet plays Dr. Mears and she is efficient, clinical and at the moments she needs to be, deeply human. She is troubled by what she sees in the field, especially when she has to keep from Mitch that Beth was having an affair. Winslet is good, especially as the movie goes on. Mears also gives the opportunity for Laurence Fishburne's Dr. Cheever to do something we seldom see in film; have a boss show concern for an employee in a realistic way. Fishburne handles the jargon just fine and he presents the facts of the spread of the disease in a way that anyone who has seen C.S.I. or The Matrix would expect him to. But when he has to ask Winslet's Mears how she is doing, Fishburne makes Cheever into one of the most human and relatable characters in Contagion.

Unfortunately, Matt Damon is not so lucky. Playing Mitch, Damon's time to have the character truly rocked by the implication of Beth's death or by the struggle to save his daughter is lost. Instead, he is given his golden moment to shine early in the film when Mitch is shocked by Beth's death and anyone who has seen the trailer has already seen that. After that, Mitch protects his daughter as best he can, but before he can ever be truly impacted by anything going on around him, the movie shifts focus.

I have had a terrible record this summer of picking the winner for the weekend box office. But where I went into Contagion convinced this would oust The Help at the domestic box office, now I am utterly unconvinced it has the stones. The movie is slow, dry and while it seems very real - outside how fast a vaccine is developed - it never pops, it is never entertaining. And it is virtually unwatchable as a result. Judging by how neutral the theater I was in seemed after the fact, I know I am not alone in this assessment.

For other works with Laurence Fishburne, check out my reviews of:
Predators
Armored
Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer
Mission: Impossible III
The Matrix Revolutions
The Matrix Reloaded
The Matrix

5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Yes, Strangely, The Bonus Features Bring Down Veronica Mars - The Complete Third Season!

The Good: Interesting cases, Good character work, Generally decent acting, Some of the bonus features
The Bad: Predictable character direction, "Season 4" preview
The Basics: Continuing a wonderful detective series with a strong young woman as its protagonist, Veronica Mars The Complete Third Season is another great boxed set!


A while back, I started working on a article on the Top Ten Television Shows I've Discovered By Boxed Set DVDs and already, I know what the top of the list will be: Veronica Mars. I never saw it when it was on television and with the release and my perusal of Veronica Mars - The Complete Third Season on DVD, the final season of Veronica Mars, left me in some ways glad I had not seen it when it was on. If I had, I would have quickly been obsessed with the show and made it a priority to watch it each and every week. That would have been the good thing about it, I suppose. If it had gone only into a fourth season and followed the vision put forth on the DVD release, I would have come to despise the program for what it became.

All twenty episodes of the third season of Veronica Mars are available on the six-disc set that also includes DVD bonus features like unaired scenes with commentary, a preview of the pitch for Veronica Mars Season 4 and the same feature broken up with commentary from the show's creator Rob Thomas. Thomas, based on the strength of the series in the first two seasons and the power of the third, might have been able to pull off the fourth season as envisioned in the bonus features . . . if it were the seventh or eighth season of the series. Had it been the fourth (see below), the show would have tanked quickly and gutted something truly wonderful.

But the bulk of the programming for this boxed set is Veronica Mars, season three. Following the climactic events of the second season (reviewed here!), this season finds the residents of Neptune, CA attending Hearst College. I missed something in the prior season, because I thought Veronica was headed to Stanford. Keeping the show in Neptune, though, allows the series to retain its original flavor and the setting acts as a character in and of itself, much the way Cecily, Alaska characterized Northern Exposure or Stars Hollow, Connecticut helped define Gilmore Girls. Hearst College, a community college in Neptune, allows Veronica Mars to include the colorful locals, like Sheriff Lamb and Weevil, who do not attend the college, as well as introduce new characters. Unfortunately, the direction some of the season goes is troubling and predictable as opposed to fresh and different ones. That said, Veronica Mars manages to be surprisingly fearless in its dealing with a string of serial rapes on campus, the dangers of what fraternities have become and the corruption that comes with secret societies.

Having ended up at Hearst College with Wallace, Logan, Dick and Mac, Veronica adjusts to college and her new friends, Parker and Piz. Parker, a victim of the serial rapist, quickly adapts to college by casting off her parents' influence, while Veronica begins to attract the attention of both the college dean and her Criminology professor. Supported by Professor Landry, Veronica begins to studiously investigate the serial rape case and then the murder of Dean O'Dell, which Landry is a prime suspect in. While Veronica gets closer to solving the rape case, her romantic relationship with Logan suffers because of his protective instincts.

Meanwhile, Keith Mars works to solve Dean O'Dell's murder following his disastrous attempt to save Kendall Casablancas from the Fitzpatricks. In the process, he takes on a case involving a dissatisfied wife whom he finds himself attracted to and later to investigate bars serving underage students. He remains protective of Veronica and tries to live up to her high expectations of him.

The third season of Veronica Mars begins after a season finale that did not end with the same level of intrigue as the prior season. It feels like a new beginning and in many ways, it is. As a result, fitting some of the characters in does not work nearly as well as the integration of some of the new characters. Weevil, especially, is neglected in this boxed set and Parker never truly integrates with the characters. Dick's character arc is rather simple; he's a traumatized jerk following the events of the second season and he spends most of the season drunk and uncomplicated. On the flip side, Mac's integration into the regular cast is long overdue and her chance to grow as a character is wonderful. She becomes Veronica's sidekick the way Wallace was in the first season.

As with prior seasons of Veronica Mars, there is a larger mystery - in this case two bigger mysteries: the serial rapes on campus and the murder of Dean O'Dell - and little mysteries in each episode. Bottle mysteries include Piz having his possessions stolen by the "Welcome Wagon" when he arrived on campus, a football player whose playbook is stolen before the big game and he risks losing his scholarship, the rapid degradation of Logan's trust fund. As well, Veronica is accused of plagiarism, aiding and abetting a fugitive who flees Lamb's custody, and finding an influential board member of Hearst College who goes missing before an important vote.

The mysteries are good and the show keeps fresh by pushing the envelope with the content of the bottle mysteries. The bigger mysteries are not as big as the prior seasons' and as a result, there is actually some satisfaction for the viewer when Veronica solves the rapes by the ninth episode. Dean O'Dell's murder does not have the same resonance as the Lily Kane murder or the same potential for suspects as the bus murder from the second season. The result is that there is a more intense investigation and it works quite well for the television show.

The biggest problem - for the third season - that I had with the show is more of a structural annoyance. The moment Chris Lowell's Piz in introduced, I had a terrible feeling that he and Veronica might end up together. Having enjoyed the relationship between Veronica and Logan and bothered some by the on-again, off-again nature of it (though I can live with a good turbulent relationship on television) I was rooting for it to succeed and frankly, Piz struck me from the beginning as a blandly good-looking guy brought on to appeal to younger people who watch the show. Meh. Similarly, Julie Gonzalo is very much presented as a generic Hollywood-good looking blonde to characterize Parker. The show is not quite bold enough to keep her bald for most of the season as realism would require. Parker, raped and head-shaved in the season premiere, quickly takes on a wig and an attitude that neglects much of the impact of being raped. Given that she is Mac's roommate and Gonzalo is a series regular for the season, we expect more.

What works with the series, in general, are the characters and the way the show is clever, most notably in the writing of the dialogue. Veronica Mars would have been an awesome series to write for and in some ways, I wish I had known about it when it was on to try to write for it. The dialogue is quick and witty and Veronica's, especially, is tinged with wit and a dry humor that makes each episode go very quickly.

And when not being conversationally smart, the show manages to be more than just a simple detective series by being clever with the characters around Veronica. Indeed, perhaps the most incredible and fun moment of the season comes when Logan learns that someone he trusted has been locked up on suspicion of a horrible crime, one that made him very afraid for Veronica. Having learned the information, the scene suddenly alters to a donut shop where two police officers are sitting enjoying a morning coffee. Logan appears and begins vandalizing their squad car and is, of course, apprehended. And it all makes sense with such simple directoral moves as showing him led to the mutual holding cell, the door closing and his fist balling up. It's a beautiful thing and it's clever and works to make a very rich series.

Indeed, understanding that Logan would go to such lengths for Veronica is a function of his character and it is worthwhile to explore the characters to understand who they are in the third season. Veronica Mars is populated regularly this season by:

Veronica - Having sworn off detective work, the young lady begins college, still dating Logan. Almost immediately, though, she finds herself involved in solving crimes committed on campus. This attracts the attention of Professor Landry, who uses his connections to arrange an internship for Veronica at Quantico. Veronica dates Logan until his overprotective nature loses its charm,

Wallace - On an athletic scholarship to Hearst, soon finds his dreams of becoming a mechanical engineer compromised by the difficulty of his classload and being caught plagiarizing. He soon prioritizes studying over everything, including helping Veronica, though he tries to help his roommate, Piz, overcome his inhibitions in approaching her,

Logan - Having decided to make something of himself, Logan attends Hearst, where he soon finds himself slacking off and getting involved in underground gambling instead of actually attending classes. As Veronica gets closer to identifying the serial rapist and is put in danger, Logan becomes troubled by the risks she takes,

Weevil - Out of jail on work release, he tries his hand working for Mars Investigations, then on campus as a janitor for O'Dell. He is wrongfully accused by Veronica for a robbery, which she exonerates him for,

Dick - Living down to his potential, Dick arrives on campus drunk and quickly joins a fraternity. After getting into multiple fights, he ends up bunking with Logan and running off with any woman who will have him,

Sheriff Lamb - The bungling moron of a sheriff continues his reign of terror by offending campus security and harassing Weevil and Veronica. He and Keith have multiple run ins,

Mac - The computer genius, traumatized by the events of the season finale, arrives on campus somewhat wounded and she remains close to Veronica. She does some work for Veronica and Logan and finds herself attracted - eventually - to two different men,

Parker Lee - Mac's roommate who is characterized as something of a slut. Her promiscuous ways end rather abruptly when she is raped and her anger at Veronica for it (she walked in while it was happening and did not realize what was going on) compels Veronica to pick up the case. She and Piz become friends, but she soon develops an eye for someone else,

"Piz" - The nickname for Stosh Piznarski, an audiophile and Wallace's roommate. He is shy, good-natured and somewhat bland,

and Keith - Veronica's father adapts to her having more of a life with Veronica not around. His disapproval of Logan endures, but he faces Veronica's disapproval when he gets involved with a married woman. He becomes involved in a special election for Sheriff, put up against and unlikely and unlikable foe!

The series employs wonderful actors to characterize the characters and the peripherals are often as interesting as the principles. Memorable guest stars in this season include Ed Begley Jr. as Dean Cyrus O'Dell who plays the dean as very different from how he played his recurring character on Six Feet Under or his corrupt businessman from Star Trek: Voyager. As well, Laura San Giacomo appears as Harmony. Giacomo plays alongside her former co-star from Just Shoot Me, Enrico Colantoni. Colantoni remains the solid cornerstone to the Veronica Mars cast and the strength of his performance and Laura San Giacomo's is that neither plays their character like how they were on the sitcom. Other notable performances come from Patrick Fabian (Professor Landry) and James Jordan (his T.A., Tim Foyle), neither of whom had I realized I seen in anything before this.

The series regulars are generally good, though Chris Lowell and Julie Gonzalo are not given much material to run with. Similarly, Percy Daggs III and Francis Capra are neglected largely by the writers this season. Tina Majorino gets her day and does a wonderful job as Mac. She proves she has some depth, not the least of which is in a series of deleted scenes which gave her character an entire plotline wherein Mackenzie becomes paranoid about the young men around her based on the abuse she suffered.

It is Jason Dohring, Enrico Colantoni, and Kristen Bell who rule Veronica Mars, though. Indeed, it is because of that that the season four preview utterly fails to interest fans of the series: only Bell remains in the fifteen minute preview pitch episode. Dohring adds an unpredictable quality to the show in his performance of Logan. He is wry and more than just a good-looking guy. His acting allows him to provide maximum emotional range through minimalism in his performance and a very conservative sense of body language.

Kristen Bell continues to play Veronica in a consistent and ever-maturing way. She is smart and funny in the role and there is not a scene in the third season where she is not completely natural as the show's protagonist. Unfortunately, in the season four preview, she is Kristen Bell performing Jennifer Garner as Veronica Mars. This makes one glad that the series did not get picked up in its reimagined version.

But for what it is, Veronica Mars is pretty incredible. It is smart television, well above average and it is not at all what it initially appears to be. This is not a teen appeal drama, it's a surprisingly smart and clever character-focused dramedy. It works best when it remembers that is what it is and plays to that, as opposed to being predictable and catering to the demographic most like the actors in it.

Well worth the time to watch and the money for the boxed set, even if the "FBI Veronica" season four pitch paints a troublingly different show!

For other decent dramedies, please check out my reviews of:
Freaks And Geeks
Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip
Weeds - Season Five

8/10

For other television season reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.


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Answering The Essential Question: "Whatever Happened To Steve Guttenberg?" And More! Veronica Mars - Season 2!

The Good: Excellent acting, Decent storyline(s), Great characters, Excellent serialization
The Bad: A little light on DVD extras for my tastes
The Basics: When Veronica Mars returns for a second season on DVD, there is an even more intense and immediate mystery, more subplots, but no more substantive DVD extras.


Given how much attention I pay to popular culture in film, television and music (I'm not a part of it, but lists intrigue me and I've been known to acquire information for the sake of information), it takes quite a bit to surprise me with something being pretty amazing without me hearing about it before hand. That is, however, precisely what happened with Veronica Mars - The Complete First Season (reviewed here! ) when I picked that up on a lark late last year. It blew me out of the water and since watching it (over and over!), I have been eagerly awaiting the time when I could pick up Veronica Mars - The Complete Second Season. Now that that day has come and I've devoured with delight this boxed set, there are only two words that come to mind:

Even better.

Veronica Mars - Season 2 falls just shy of being a perfect season of television - mostly because of the preoccupation the series has with one of the least interesting characters (not a fan of Duncan Kane . . .) and on DVD it makes less use of the medium than one might prefer, but that's it. That's all the bad in this set right up front. Sure, it doesn't have extensive commentary tracks or a recap of Season One that adequately prepares new viewers for the full weight of all of the allusions and callbacks needed to "get" everything in this boxed set, but it is otherwise close enough to perfect to rate it with the five stars.

It is a rare thing that a show I did not catch in first run lives up to such high expectations, but Veronica Mars - The Complete Second Season was everything I was waiting for when I waited the months to pick it up.

For those unfamiliar with Veronica Mars (the full series is reviewed here!), this hour-long drama is set in Neptune, California, an extraordinarily wealthy community that is ethnically and economically divided between the fabulously wealthy and the middle/working classes and the predominately white students at Neptune High and the latino students who have a very different social/economic strata. It's an intriguing juxtaposition: the Hollywood wealth of SUV driving rich kids paired with a motorcycle gang. Literally. And Veronica Mars makes it work.

In the second season, protagonist Veronica Mars steps into her Senior year of high school to find Neptune more deeply divided than ever, mostly a result of elements from the prior season's finale. Having spent the summer bouncing between her new job at a coffee house, dating Logan who is under indictment for murder, and finally settling on Duncan, Veronica tries to avoid doing private investigation work until the moment Wallace is accused of using drugs. Things in Neptune almost immediately take a tragic turn when a school field trip ends in disaster as a bus carrying several students crashes through a guardrail and plunges the passengers to a watery death at the bottom of a cliff.

The mystery is made more complicated by the fact that many of the students - including Veronica - who were on the field trip - were not on the bus when it was destroyed and a peripheral to the accident ends up dead with Veronica's name written on the palm of his hand. While Veronica and her father, Keith, investigate who killed the students and try to determine why, Keith becomes overwhelmed with a case of hero worship/disappointment when his favorite ball player from the Neptune Sharks - Terrence Cook - who is working for the new mayor, Woody, becomes the prime suspect. While Woody works to pass an incorporation ballot initiative that will further separate the haves from the have nots, Keith follows the clues that put him at odds with Sheriff Lamb and in more danger than ever.

The thing about Veronica Mars in its second season is that this is a heavily serialized television show, but it is going somewhere. While on the surface it appears to be a standard "a-plot/b-plot" series with the a-plot being a bottle "mystery of the week" and the b-plot being the overarching question of who sent the bus over the cliff and why, this is an ingenious series where everything is serving the larger story. All of the little mysteries inevitably provide clues to one of the major mysteries of the season.

What is especially smart about Veronica Mars is that for a series titled after the female detective protagonist, there is ample material that only peripherally involves her, which lends itself to a much richer feeling television show. So, for example, when last seen at the end of "Season 1," Logan and Weevil were about to have it out on a bridge with Logan surrounded by PCHers (the latino motorcycle gang). It does not take long in the first episode of the season to reveal the outcome of that encounter: Logan knocks Weevil out immediately before being beaten by about five other people. The thing is, there is a greater mystery here that comes to involve Veronica not at all: Logan awakens to discover a knife in his hand and a dead body on the bridge next to him. The divide between the classes explodes when Logan is able to escape prosecution from lack of evidence and the PCHers begin to feel that Neptune doesn't care if their people get killed. This leads to a whole thread through almost the entire season wherein Logan struggles with being branded a murderer and Weevil's authority within his gang is challenged, usurped and fought for.

In other words, it is a complex television show that actually demands attention and devotion. DVD is actually the ideal medium for this series as there are details that one will want to explore and re-explore and, frankly, when one episode ends it is near impossible to not keep going to see what happens next. The web is a tangled web on the plot front and it leads Veronica into the lives of each of the victims as well as those peripheral to them.

And the beauty of the series is that it all comes together amazingly well.

Actually, and this is a very simple pleasure of mine, one of the things I respect immensely about Veronica Mars is that by its second season, it has a pattern that comes from the precedent established in the first season which makes for great television. Before the season finale, we know who the guilty party is. The finale, then, does not hinge on "whodunit" but rather how the characters reconcile that and the attempt to serve justice.

But the key to any great television - especially serialized television - is in the quality of the characters. Veronica Mars - Season 2 has great characters, most of them continuing on from the first season. The key characters in season two include:

Veronica Mars - A high school student and coffee house waitress, she is reluctantly pulled back into private detective work to help Wallace and to try to determine why several of her peers were killed. Caught between her love for Duncan and circumstances that continue to push her and Logan together, she becomes distressed when it becomes clear Duncan is not over his ex-girlfriend Meg (the only survivor of the bus crash). When Duncan runs off, she becomes obsessed with the bus crash, putting herself in more danger, even as her father tries to encourage her to look toward college,

Wallace Fennel - A good guy who is Veronica's best friend, he no longer is her tool as he no longer works in the main office. Attracted to a new student, Jackie, Wallace becomes a true basketball star and in the process grows away from Veronica some when her priorities do not match his,

Eli "Weevil" Navarro - The head of the local motorcycle gang, he is poor, works with his uncle at his bodyshop/junkyard moving cars, and becomes disillusioned with his gang when some of the members begin to run drugs into Neptune. Eager to destroy the relationship between the PCHers and the psychotic Irish gang in Neptune, Weevil enlists Veronica to aid him in smoking out the rat in his gang without resorting to violence. When that fails, Weevil and Logan determine they have a mutual adversary and an unlikely partnership is formed,

Logan Echolls - Mostly on his own as a result of circumstances surrounding his parents, Logan is deeply wounded by Veronica leaving him. He soon finds comfort with the Casablancas's eager stepmother, Kendall, and he works to learn what truly happened on the bridge that night. When his house is destroyed by those who framed him, Logan moves into the penthouse suite with Duncan, which puts him even more in the path of Veronica,

Duncan Kane - The bland boyfriend of Veronica until it becomes clear that his feelings for Meg Manning are not so much a thing of the past and the comatose girl reveals her secret. Kept away from Meg and his unborn child by her parents, Duncan must choose between being the father to the baby - if it will survive Meg's coma - and Veronica's boyfriend,

Dick Casablancas - Logan's simple friend who likes shooting guns, having sex with lots of girls and playing video games. He is the archetype of the spoiled rich kid and when his father flees as the result of a real estate scheme, Dick rolls with it by simply tapping his trust fund and going back to his games,

Cassidy Casablancas - Dick's younger brother, called "Beaver" by virtually everyone, he is a shifty boy who is neglected by all. When his father abandons Dick, Kendall and him, Cassidy sets up his own real estate business and goes into business with Kendall. He begins to date Mac, though Dick picks on him mercilessly for that,

Jackie Cook - Daughter of Terrence, she seems spoiled and conceited, though Wallace warms right up to her. Her father's problems - gambling, possessing explosives, etc. - quickly spill over into her life and leave things very strained for her on all fronts,

and Keith Mars - Veronica's father, he is a laid-back detective and former sheriff who now has some measure of celebrity for having written a book about the Lily Kane murder investigation. Still pragmatic and loving, Keith goes out of his way to protect Veronica and still solve the bus crash case, a case that becomes emotionally difficult for him when the prime suspect appears to be his baseball hero.

There are other prominent recurring characters, like Sheriff Lamb - Keith's nemesis, Mayor Woody - whose incorporation plan makes him enough enemies that Keith has to aid him, Terrence Cook - the washed up ball player idolized by Keith, Thumper - one of Weevil's rising adversaries in the PCHers, Mac - Veronica's technically brilliant friend who begins to date Beaver, and Kendall Casablancas - the gold digging mother-in-law of Cassidy and Dick who is sleeping with Logan and (it sure seems) Duncan.

Veronica Mars is such a smart show that it easily attracts amazing guest stars. Kendall is played by Charisma Carpenter of Angel and there is a delicious scene for fans of Joss Whedon's works in this boxed set that puts Carpenter opposite Buffy The Vampire Slayer costar Alyson Hannigan for a sparring match. Fans of those shows will get a kick out of that and those who aren't will simply experience it as a function of this series. Stars of Arrested Development Michael Ceria and Alia Shawkat are reunited for a mystery that foreshadows the final season of the series and they are wonderful.

And for those of us fans of films from the 1980s, Veronica Mars - Season 2 is where Steve Guttenberg ended up. He plays Mayor Woody and he's surprisingly good in the role. Originally appearing goofy, Guttenberg has the ability to infuse subtle menace into his performance to present a character who has an underlying dark side and the brilliance of his performance (yes, I'm using "Steve Guttenberg" and "brilliance" in the same sentence!) is that Guttenberg plays Woody as a terribly liar who thinks he's on top of everything. It's subtle and truly amazing. Who would have thunk that from the star of the Police Academy franchise?!

But it is the regulars who sell this series. While newcomers Tessa Thompson (Jackie), Ryan Hansen (Dick), and Kyle Gallner (Beaver) fail to light the world on fire - none carries the weight or presence of Tina Majorino when she recurs as Mac - they have about the same screen resonance as Teddy Dunn, who plays Duncan with a very whitebread quality. Sadly, Francis Capra and Percy Daggs III are too frequently neglected in this season on the character front, giving them little time to stretch their acting wings. Capra's best moments come when paired with Dohring or in scenes that put him at odds with his character's gang.

But there are three performers who consistently knock the socks off their performances and make the show gripping every moment they are on screen: Jason Dohring, Enrico Colantoni, and Kristen Bell. Dohring plays Logan and he shades in the character with far more depth than he was even allowed to in the first season. Dohring is able to play complex emotions with minimal movement and facial expression. Tormented in many ways by his family life and the growing divide in Neptune that he is the cause of, Logan makes for an intriguing character. Dohring slouches through much of the role until he is required to explode and he sells the transformations masterfully.

Enrico Colantoni, who I find myself constantly impressed with, from his work on NYPD Blue to Just Shoot Me, all pale in compared to his embodiment of Keith Mars. Keith is a wonderful character and Colantoni is able to make the biggest character shift in Keith completely plausible with his performance. Keith is dating Wallace's mother when he learns a truth from her past that ought to change everything between them. It does, but given Keith's character it seems like he might be emotionally desperate enough to let it slide. Colantoni completely sells the plausibility of a divorced, often insecure, middle aged man booting a hottie to the curb on principle. There's nothing more that can be said about his performance in this set that will top that; it's the stuff acting classes ought to revolve around and his performance in this set ought to be the masterwork to strive for.

The show rests on Kristen Bell as Veronica and in this season, she takes the role and makes her performances her own. In my evaluation of season one, I compared her to Jennifer Garner of Alias. In this boxed set, there is no hint of Garner in her performance, it's all Bell progressing the character in her own way and she is compelling and interesting. One of the few DVD bonuses, a Day On The Set featurette exhibits what a wonderful actress she is as it illustrates how Bell is able to embody a strong, together, articulate character from a series of clips that insinuate she is anything but.

It's easy to look at this boxed set, see the Hollywood beautiful teens and think this will be dumb fare aimed at young adults, but it is far too smart for them and the (mostly) young cast is surprisingly mature and astonishingly good. Anyone who likes drama and has the patience for a true twenty-two episode mystery will love Veronica Mars - Season 2. While it is certainly enhanced by season 1, it stands on its own remarkably well as the first episode immediately ties up the cliffhangers lingering from the first season and establishes the new mystery.

On DVD there are deleted scenes and a few featurettes. There is also a quasi-preview of "Season 3" which is essentially clips of seasons one and two and announces that there will be a season three, so that seems pointless and dated now.

It's not enough to drag this set down. This is one of television's big surprises and it's a shame more people didn't tune in. Because now I only have one more season to track down and given how amazing this set was, I know there is disappointment coming either way. Either the third season is even better and then it is followed by nothing or it cannot live up to the wide shadow Veronica Mars Season Two casts.

More people ought to be watching and adding this to their permanent collection!

For other works featuring Kristen Bell, please check out my reviews of:
Couples Retreat
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Heroes Season 3
Heroes Season 2

9/10

For other television set reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.




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Who Woulda' Thunk?! Veronica Mars Season 1 Is Engaging And Wonderful!

The Good: Interesting characters, Decent acting, Engaging plot
The Bad: Predictable, Lack of significant DVD extras
The Basics: Following a chain of events surrounding the investigation of her best friend's murder, Veronica Mars, young detective, helps her fellow students and father solve mysteries!


I'll admit it; every now and then I pick up something I think I won't like in order to review it. Yes, I rail against those who rate virtually everything with ten to eight out of ten and I argue for the importance of balance and having standards, but I put my money where my mouth is and I actively seek things out that I might be biased against. Truth be told, when I sat down to watch The Benchwarmers I was pretty sure that it would not be getting a favorable review from me. Why? It had elements to it - clearly visible in the film's advertisements - that were unfavorable to me, detractions from seeing it as a remotely decent film. And as it played out, that movie lived down to my expectations; it was bad.

Veronica Mars, at first glance, embodied much of what I do not like about quite a bit of television (specifically geared toward late-teens). Originally on UPN, I would catch the beginning of new episodes of the series when it followed immediately after Gilmore Girls the last season Gilmore Girls was on. And it appeared to me to be exactly what I loathe about Hollywood television: stick-figure, Hollywood-beautiful girls acting like women beyond their years, flawless guys who have more money than anyone their age ought to and a kind of bland generic quality to everything that might include the obvious attempts to appeal to more than just white middle America by including token cast members of other ethnicities (Veronica Mars has exactly one black and one latino character).

I'm a big enough person to admit when I'm wrong. Sure, most of the main cast and supporting ensemble of Veronica Mars is too good-looking for reality and most of the characters have ungodly amounts of money, but the series is not vacuous and the multiethnic cast is well-used (and addressed in the storylines). And it is engaging. Catching Veronica Mars - Season 1 on DVD, I found myself shocked at just how good it was.

Set in the affluent California suburb around Neptune High School, about a year after the murder of socialite heiress Lilly Kane's murder, Veronica Mars finds herself trudging through high school, unpopular and alone until the day that she cuts a fellow student down from the flagpole. Wallace, the boy she rescued, is a new arrival at Neptune and he quickly becomes Veronica's steady friend and accomplice in the right place. Ironically, Veronica manages to befriend the head of the motorcycle gang that was tormenting Wallace, a troubled young man nicknamed Weevil. She finds herself often at odds with her former friends, the very popular ex-boyfriend Duncan Kane and his best friend, a jerk named Logan.

Veronica lives with her private detective father, Keith, having been abandoned by her mother as a result of Keith losing his job as sheriff during the Lilly Kane murder investigation, which was solved almost immediately once Keith was no longer the sheriff. Keith has severe doubts about the validity of the confessed killer's story and has quietly continued an investigation into the Lilly Kane murder, an investigation Veronica - as his assistant and Lilly Kane's best friend - is very interested in. Keith had many suspects, focusing mostly on the Kane family, Logan and Weevil, but everyone becomes a suspect again when Veronica stumbles onto information that illustrates Lilly's time of death was off by hours. Veronica and Keith follow trails of money, broken alibis and personal histories to try to piece together why Abel Koontz confessed, why the investigation caused Lianne Mars to flee town, and who killed Lilly Kane!

Along the way, Veronica investigates other mysteries and tries to piece together what happened to her the night of a party when she was drugged and raped. In the course of the first season, she uncovers a dog thief, a secret society of elite students who might be manufacturing fake i.d.s, a cult that actually is pretty all right, and a young woman who has been spurned by her jerk boyfriend whom she wants to break up with.

Veronica Mars manages to be so engaging that some of the usual conceits that I despise actually work out fine in this season. So, for example I have a thing right now about voice-overs. I loathe them. This season - the 2007 - 2008 television season - seems to find an inordinate number of television shows using voice-overs. If something on television isn't shown, it generally means the show is put together poorly. Seriously, voice-overs provide exposition, move the plot along or flat-out explain what's going on, but it's a poor use of the television visual medium if a show needs to rely on one; if it can't be made clear through showing (either in physical actions or actor's reactions/acting) then it is not making good use of the medium. Veronica Mars uses voice-overs in the first season judiciously to simply make explicit what is going on behind Veronica's eyes. Often the voice-over will come up simply to remind viewers of a fact presented in an earlier episode that may now be applied to the new information. This works out well in this mystery series because by the last few episodes, there are so many details surrounding the Lilly Kane murder investigation that if the show did a "Previously On Veronica Mars...." that actually included everything that was relevant, you'd begin each episode with a clipshow!

And yes, most of the characters are Hollywood-beautiful and ridiculously wealthy, but that's addressed. It's part of the setting. Neptune High is where the well-off go and given that virtually everyone local works under Jake Kane's multibillion dollar Kane Enterprises empire, it makes sense. Furthermore, Veronica and her father are two of the poorest characters in the series. While Logan and Duncan run off to Mexico whenever they feel like it, Veronica works for her father and the two have very real concerns, like paying for college, affording gifts, and coming up with seed money for investigations.

That level of detail and authenticity brings a true sense of reality to the show that is frequently lacking in other series'. Moreover, it made the first season come alive in a way that was very engaging. Veronica makes sense as a protagonist helping out the downtrodden in Neptune because she herself is an outsider and frequently pushed aside or ridiculed.

Veronica Mars is ultimately rather focused on the characters and they unify the series of mysteries that are explored in this boxed set. It helps to know who they are and they (mostly) are appealing. The principle characters in the first season are:

Veronica Mars - A high school student and professional detective, she chose standing by her father when the Lilly Kane investigation cost him everything. Living with him, she still harbors the fantasy that she can find her mother and have an ideal family. A social outcast since Duncan broke up with her, she is aided by Wallace and Weevil in many of her investigations, and while she pines for Duncan, she opens up to a new boyfriend as well as forging new friendships, like with computer geek Mac,

Wallace Fennel - A good guy who is rescued by Veronica at the outset of the series, he tries to do the ethical thing and help others out. He works in the records office, which allows him to slip Veronica student files when she needs them. He has an unquestioning devotion to her and he is her most consistent ally and friend,

Eli "Weevil" Navarro - The head of the local motorcycle gang, he is poor, works with his uncle at his bodyshop/junkyard moving cars, and had a secret affair with Lilly Kane. Weevil and Veronica aid one another in a series of backscratches that keep Weevil out of jail and in school and have him punishing those who would do her harm,

Logan Echolls - The abused son of famed movie star Aaron Echolls, he is essentially a jerk and the on-again off-again boyfriend of the late Lilly Kane. He is very well-off and he acts as if he has a sense of entitlement as a result, often causing him to act out,

Duncan Kane - The bland son of billionaire Jake Kane, Lilly was his sister. Duncan suffers from fits and blackouts, for which he is medicated. He used to date Veronica and now avoids her for the most part,

and Keith Mars - Veronica's father, he is a laid-back detective and former sheriff who was virtually run out of town when he investigated Jake Kane as his prime suspect in Lilly Kane's murder. He has a clear love for Veronica and when he gives up on his estranged wife, he begins to look elsewhere for love and adult companionship.

Indeed, one of the things I enjoyed most about Veronica Mars was that Keith is not an incompetent detective. Veronica is the amateur and he's the professional, so while Veronica contributes and is the prime mover of most of the plots, Keith is neither an oblivious parent, nor in her shadow professionally. That level of realism - like when Keith realizes Veronica has cracked into his safe and he changes the combination - makes the characters seem quite vibrant and realistic.

The series is generally well cast and well-acted. Sure, there are a lot of white bread generic looking white teens in the first season of Veronica Mars and the casting of Aaron Ashmore as Veronica's new boyfriend (the first in the season, anyway) Troy is a poor one considering how much he looks like Teddy Dunn, who plays Duncan Kane. It is also worth noting that the series had Sydney Tamiia Poitier as a regular cast member - newspaper advisor Mallory Dent - but the producers didn't seem to know how to use her and she was written out after only a few episodes.

The cast that endures is quite good, though. Young actors Percy Daggs III, Francis Capra and Jason Dohring all each make an impression as Wallace, Weevil and Logan. the latter two, especially, are charged with playing multifaceted characters whose performances must turn from harsh to likable on a dime while staying in character. Capra and Dohring do that wonderfully in this season.

The two standouts of the cast - rather sensibly - are the Mars family members. Enrico Colantoni, whose work I was familiar with from Just Shoot Me and Galaxy Quest, is incredible as Keith Mars. Unlike prior roles where he plays characters who are smarmy or mentally unbalanced, here he gives a perfectly convincing performance as a loving father and down-on-his-luck private detective. He has an ease of performance that makes the character seem effortless and like the ideal television father, something one might not have expected from Colantoni.

But it is Kristen Bell who got me to watch Veronica Mars and is responsible for much of the show's success. I've not been enjoying Bell in her role on Heroes and I was curious to see how she got there, other than her Hollywood good looks. Bell is talented as an actress, easily portraying a young woman in that uncertain time between being a girl and woman, she has a quality to her that makes her believable when she stands strong as Veronica the enforcer and a spacy quality to her expressions that makes her Veronica the hurt girl portrayal work completely. Indeed, Bell has the ability to alter her body language and sense of character to play a versatile number of roles and emotions, the likes of which I've not seen since Jennifer Garner burst onto the scene in the first season of Alias. Indeed, Bell seems like a younger version of Garner in many of her affectations and her versatility.

On DVD, the first season of Veronica Mars is remarkably light on extras. There is a library of deleted scenes on the sixth disc, but there are no commentaries, featurettes or other goodies. The programming is strong, but it would have been nice to see the DVD medium used better, especially for a series I suddenly found myself enjoying more than I ever thought I would.

The first season of Veronica Mars is very accessible to anyone who likes television dramas and mystery stories. There are a number of remarkably predictable plot twists throughout the course of the season, but the show is enjoyable with its clever dialogue, straightforward acting and likable characters. And the nice thing is the series continues high enough that it is worth picking up the entire series, reviewed here!

For other works with Amanda Seyfried, please check out my reviews of:
Letters To Juliet
Dear John

7/10

For other television reviews, please be sure to visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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