The Worst 10 Movies Of 2014!

| | | The Basics: 2014 was hardly a sterling year for films . . . but these ten are the movies that ought to be avoided at all costs!


It has been a long time since I have cared so little about what movies might win the Best Picture Oscar than this year. 2014 might have had some big blockbusters and two perfect films, but it had a giant load of mediocrity for the bulk of the year. While the Razzies tend to pick out the most obvious commercial failures, this year’s list of dud films would not be complete without the ten movies below.

It is important to note that while I’ve seen a great number of movies from 2014, I tended to avoid horror movies (on principle) – I’m certain if I had bothered with the latest movies from the overdone franchises of horror there might be some alterations to the list. But, for cinephiles and those who value their time, these are the 10 films too annoying, painful, boring or poorly made to bother watching from 2014:

10. Behaving Badly (reviewed here!) – The sex comedy Behaving Badly was so poorly received that even Selena Gomez appearing in it couldn’t scare up interest in the film at the box office. Behaving Badly is what happens when humor from audacious animated shows like Family Guy and South Park becomes the norm; by the time live action goes as surprising and raunchy, it’s passé. Behaving Badly might have been a cult film fifteen years ago, but in 2014, it’s utterly forgettable,

9. Listen Up Philip (reviewed here!) – The Academy and art house movie viewers usually love films about miserable people and writers at a point of crisis. Sadly, Listen Up Philip is just a collection of the worst stereotypes of writers and smart people. I never thought I’d see a year when Jonathan Pryce was in one of the worst movies of the year, but there it is . . .,

8. Expelled (reviewed here!) – While the major studios were duking it out during Oscar Pandering Season, one chose to dump one of its worst creations during the same time. Alas, hoping all the attention the big dogs would get vying for serious box office dollars might allow a concentrated fan effort to make an upset was not a marketing technique that worked. Instead, this droll comedy represents one of the year’s biggest conceptual failures: the entire premise is a slacker gets expelled from school and then has to apply himself to get back into school. The Herculean efforts made by the protagonist to get expelled make his ridiculous efforts to avoid boarding school all the more unrealistic, especially when he sees that the place he is threatened with ending up is incredibly easy to escape from! With no significant performers, performances, or ideas, Expelled is gut-wrenching to watch,

7. Horrible Bosses 2 (reviewed here!) – At the other end of the spectrum from Expelled is Horrible Bosses 2. Packed with talent, this limp sequel parades out as many of the stars from Horrible Bosses as it can to remind viewers what they liked about the original before degenerating into a disappointing and decidedly un-funny hostage caper movie that adds nothing worthwhile to the franchise. Seldom have so many truly funny and smart individuals been part of something that falls so short of humor and was so very dumb,

6. Authors Anonymous (reviewed here!) – I’m not sure if I should admire Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting for taking her time off as one of the highest paid actresses on television to appear in an indie film or lament that when she made the effort, she was put into essentially the same role. Either way, Authors Anonymous might be the best proof that when you’re at the top of the industry, it’s time to experiment and spread your wings (when there’s no risk to your finances or career for trying). Unfortunately, Authors Anonymous is neither ambitious, nor smart; it is not funny, nor does it allow any of the performers in it to truly showcase their talents – it is more a string of jokes that fail to land and missed opportunities than a film painfully bad to watch,

5. Vampire Academy (reviewed here!) – My only guess is that Vampire Academy was in production before Beautiful Creatures (reviewed here!) proved that not all supernatural teen lit translated into box office gold. Vampire Academy was so unmemorable that when I began assembling this list, I found I could not remember what was so bad about it. So, I picked up a copy, popped it in the Blu-Ray player and by the time the characters started talking to one another, I remembered! The dialogue is horrible, the acting is atrocious, the story is so familiar it has become an archetype - complete with the requisite and obvious reversals.  The only reason to pay to see this film would be if a Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of it was produced,

4. Bad Neighbors (reviewed here!) – I know I am in the minority of the world’s population on this one, but I did not find Neighbors funny. Dumb frat guys behaving badly, tormenting a working family . . . this is a horror movie disguised as a comedy and while Rose Byrne might have had a good year at the box office, it’s hard to imagine she or most of the rest of the cast is proud of this “comedy,”

3. Happy Christmas (reviewed here!) – Forgettable and neither complicated, nor entertaining, Happy Christmas was the last straw for me with actress Anna Kendrick. Kendrick either has one way to perform or she does not have the wherewithal to stand up to directors to challenge her to do more than appear on screen and keep her mouth partially open. Seriously; I know Anna Kendrick has a nice smile, but at some point, viewers need something more from her than reaction shots where she looks surprised, with her mouth slightly agape. Yet Happy Christmas seems to hinge on that one note of performance. As little as I ever root for the career death of anyone, as one who loathes how Lena Dunham has become the voice of fauxmanism (that’s "faux-feminism" or "a dumbing down of the fight for equality and civil rights," for which Dunham has become the poster woman), when Girls comes to its inevitable end, one hopes anyone who thinks of hiring Lena Dunham again might just check this film out and be assured that investing in her future is not worth it,

2. The Wait (reviewed here!) – Jena Malone did not have a good year in 2014. Her character in Mockingjay – Part 1 (reviewed here!) was virtually absent until the last few moments (and allowed her to show off none of her talent!) and Inherent Vice (reviewed here!), was delayed into 2015 in most markets, which meant that the most time she had on the big screen was in this lemon. The Wait is, as its name suggests, a ponderous film in which very little happens. At least Malone’s career will not suffer much from the film’s release . . . it did not get a wide-enough release, so most people will never see it to know how bad it was,

. . . and . . .

. . .the worst movie of 2014 is . . .

1. Making The Rules (reviewed here!) – Robin Thicke acting vehicle. Need I say more? Given how few people witnessed this cinematic atrocity, I probably should. Frances Conroy appears in her worst supporting role since supporting in Catwoman, Jaime Pressly plays Abby a lonely housewife obsessed with former boyfriend played by Robin Thicke and what is supposed to be a steamy, sexy drama about temptation is just another stupid, escapist trashy romance novel that isn’t smart enough to acknowledge itself for what it is. At under 80 minutes, at least Making The Rules does not make us suffer watching its terribleness long, but when that is the best that can be said about a film, it is hardly a ringing endorsement!

For other lists, please check out my:
Worst Ten Episodes Of Star Trek: Enterprise
The Top Ten Episodes Of Frasier
The Top Ten Episodes Of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

To see how all movies I have reviewed have stacked up against each other check out my Film Review Index Page where the movies are organized from best to worst!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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One-Take Indie Film: Happy Christmas Is Mostly An Extended Babysitting Sequence!

The Good: Realistic
The Bad: Poor performances, Unremarkable direction, Virtually plotless
The Basics: Happy Christmas is an awkwardly-executed independent film that takes forever to get going . . . then goes nowhere.


Heard around my house: “I could go for the new Anna Kendrick movie.” “I have no interest in seeing Lena Dunham’s latest.” Today, a crisis of faith as the new Anna Kendrick movie features Lena Dunham! The truth is, while I stand by my assertion that far too often Kendrick is either typecast into a remarkably narrow role or she has limited acting abilities (I hope the former), my antipathy toward Girls (Season One is reviewed here!) makes me downright loathe watching anything new from Dunham. But, Kendrick and Dunham are together now in Happy Christmas and on a weekend where the box office is guaranteed to be dominated by Summer Blockbuster Season’s latest visual tripe, I figured I should take in something potentially more substantive.

Say what you will about Summer Blockbuster Season’s popcorn fare; at least the portions are good! At 82 minutes long, Happy Christmas is barely a feature film! While duration does not usually factor into my perceptions of films, in the case of Happy Christmas it did, almost from the beginning. The reason for this is simple: writer/director/actor Joe Swanberg starts out in Happy Christmas with lines or presentations of lines that strive for authenticity but are delivered in such a way that made me wonder if he was flubbing his own lines (specifically three and a half minutes in when his character Jeff arrives home and he informs his wife that Jenny’s plane has landed and she is in a cab). The net result of that style (which makes it sound like many of the lines are ad libs) is that the short film ends up feeling interminably long.

Jeff and his wife Kelly live in modern day Chicago with their baby boy, who Kelly is raising in such a way that she barely finds time in her day to day to write, which is her passion. Jeff’s younger sister, Jenny, has broken up with her latest boyfriend and decided to possibly move to Chicago, so she comes to stay with Jeff and Kelly. On her first night in the house, Jenny ducks out to hang out with her friend Carson. They go to a party where Jenny gets black-out drunk and falls asleep on the hostess’s bed, which leads Carson to call Jeff for help in getting Jenny home.

Convinced by Jeff to give Jenny a second chance, Kelly goes out for a day while Jenny watches Jude. When she returns home, she finds Carson hanging out in the house’s basement bar with Jenny and the three sit together for a drink and conversation. Over the course of the conversation, Kelly comes to realize how much she misses her writing and how little enthusiasm she has for being a stay at home mother. While Kelly works to change her relationship with Jeff to get more out of it for herself, Jenny hangs out with Jude’s babysitter, Kevin, and uses him for weed and whiskey. When Jeff gives Kelly some office space to use, Jenny pitches that she write a trashy romance novel in order to make money and they begin to bond.

The initial impression that Happy Christmas might not actually have had a script continues throughout the film. The party scene, the little moments between characters as they meet or react to their surroundings, virtually every incident in the film is presented in such a way that it feels like every member of the cast was given the script seconds before they shot the scene or that there was no script. The odd feeling that the film was shot in one take extends to the editing. When Kevin is playing with the baby, there is a line “. . . we should do that again” that sounds more like actor Mark Webber was requesting another take than it is an organic line from the babysitter asking the child to repeat an action!

Happy Christmas is further hampered in no small part by the film’s direction. Swanson seems to lack ambition for telling a story visually and while Happy Christmas might have worked fine as a stage play, on screen it is noticeably off-putting in its visual style. Early in the movie, Jenny, Kelly, and Jeff sit watching the baby struggle for an inordinate amount of time to use his fork to feed himself. The shot is framed with all four characters in frame at enough of a distance and at such an angle that the baby’s movements are virtually impossible to see. As a result, the viewer is stuck watching people watch a baby. Were I a parent who spent the money to see Happy Christmas in a theater and paid for a babysitter, I’d be pissed at how long Swanberg wasted my time and money with such a shot!

Much of Happy Christmas focuses on Jenny and Jenny might well be Anna Kendrick’s least likable character ever. Kendrick plays her with an unconvincing quality that makes the viewer instantly believe that she is a user and not taking refuge at her brother’s house because of how terrible Jenny’s last break-up actually was. In fact, Kendrick plays Jenny with so little emotion that had the dialogue not explained why Jenny was coming to stay with her brother, it would not have been clear at all. Perhaps as importantly, her relationship with Kevin is so forced and passionless that the connection they have seems more like a function of “this is how many people we cast and who we cast, so they were bound to hook up.”

Dreary and poorly presented, Happy Christmas is an independent film that I stopped caring about so long before it was over that it was hard to maintain interest in analyzing the movie. Swanberg’s direction is so off-putting and the performers are so awkward in their roles that the movie is unpleasant to watch. Most of the movie comes at such a distance – like the dice game Jenny and Kevin play has the pair referencing what is on the dice without it being seen or the toys they are discussing being kept out of frame – that Happy Christmas is hard to watch. Anna Kendrick uses the word “like” about a hundred times in the flick and whenever the film hits a fallow patch, Swanberg fills with footage of Jeff spending time watching Jude.

Perhaps the only redeeming moments of Happy Christmas come from Melanie Lynskey’s performance. Lynskey plays Kelly and she presents most of her lines convincingly enough. Lena Dunham is not horrible as Carson, though she and Kendrick play off each other so poorly that there is no clear emotional connection between their characters. But the redeeming moments are drowned out by a soundtrack that features works that are remarkably similar to one another and does little to lessen the agonizing experience that is watching Happy Christmas.

For other works with Anna Kendrick, be sure to check out my reviews of:
The Last Five Years
The Voices
Rapture-Palooza
Pitch Perfect
ParaNorman
What To Expect When You're Expecting
Breaking Dawn, Part 1
50/50
Eclipse
New Moon
Twilight

1.5/10

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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With This Is 40, Judd Apatow Returns To Smart Dramedy!

The Good: Funny, Decent character conflicts, Entertaining story
The Bad: Somewhat formulaic in its resolution, No performances that truly “wowed” me
The Basics: Smartly capturing the angst of adult life, This Is 40 is a rare instance where the sequel is vastly superior to the original work!


For a few days now, my wife has been on me to watch This Is 40 with her. I had, admittedly, no real interest in seeing what was buzzed as the “sort of sequel” to Knocked Up (reviewed here!). I was not exactly motivated to watch This Is 40 because Knocked Up did not thrill me (though, admittedly, it grew on me some by the time I had my third viewing of it), so I went into This Is 40 last night with ridiculously low expectations.

And I was very pleasantly surprised.

Gone were the juvenile jokes that have plagued so many of Judd Apatow’s recent works and in its place was the Judd Apatow who originally got my attention with the magnificent Freaks And Geeks (reviewed here!). Despite its simple story and no real acting triumphs, This Is 40 is solidly entertaining and it explores well life in middle age when relationships take work and people get to the point where honesty trumps comfort and a couple has to find a way to live with the truths they expose to one another. This Is 40 has some wonderful lines – “J.J. Abrams is ruining our child!” – and a very modern understanding of the world and how it is to raise a child today.

As Pete and Debbie’s 40th birthdays approach, with Debbie insisting she is only turning 38 and going so far as to lie to her medical practitioners (and their billing departments), the couple experiences above average torsion associated with aging and the specific problems of their family. Pete has a record label that signs classic rock artists for new recordings and has been tragically unsuccessful. This comes at a time when Pete has loaned his father a lot of money and his current artist, Graham Parker, is dropping an album that all of Pete’s backers are convinced will not sell. With their money stretched for their joint 40th birthday party, financial problems overwhelming them and trying to help their children with bullies at school and their dependence upon technological devices, Pete and Debbie struggle to stay together and recall why they wanted to be together in the first place.

This Is 40 has a number of moments that any healthy couple who has had a dynamic relationship will recognize, from the moment where Debbie and Pete lovingly tell one another that they desperately never want to fight again to the moment they return from a retreat together to the first problem their children have and realize life never offers a full-time vacation. Judd Apatow, who wrote and directed This Is 40, is smart enough to include a multi-generational sense of conflict and comparison in this film. Debbie’s father is almost entirely absent and when he pops up for the birthday party, he mis-identifies Debbie’s employee, Desi, as one of his grandchildren. Conversely, Pete’s father is around more often than Debbie would like and his financial woes – the result of having three children very late in life – make his presence much more draining than enjoyable.

The presence of the parents to Pete and Debbie and their assorted issues – along with the comedy of adults now having siblings younger than their own children (Pete and Debbie’s children are older than the half-brothers and sisters both Pete and Debbie now have from their respective parents!) – puts the strained couple at a serious crossroad. In fact, one of the unfortunately dangling plotlines in This Is 40 is Debbie’s pregnancy. Debbie spends more time trying to track down who stole $12,000 from the boutique she runs than actually addressing what she and Pete will do about her unplanned pregnancy. Glossing over that is unfortunate given how straightforward This Is 40 is in tackling the other real world issues the movie takes on.

As for the acting, Judd Apatow uses his considerable cache to bring together some truly amazing talents for This Is 40. Despite oblique references to Ben and Kate (how the film gets around Kate missing her sister’s 40th birthday party is entirely dodged, though the presence of weed in the film is explained by the movie’s lone reference to the central protagonist from Knocked Up), the film employs remarkably few performers from Knocked Up. Apatow regulars Jason Segel and Charlyne Yi have supporting roles which are little more than cameos to service Debbie’s character (otherwise, Leslie Mann’s presence in the film would be entirely to react to relationship issues her character has with Pete). Graham Parker makes the most of his limited time on screen, though is oscillates between seeming like an advertisement for his new projects and making him seem like a bit of a dick (Pete is losing everything investing in the guy and he blithely notes, “I’ll be fine . . . they’re doing one of my songs on Glee.”). Sure, Apatow goes for some obvious eye candy – Megan Fox appears as Desi and is sure to show off most of her breasts – but he also goes with substance and quirky comedic deliveries with heavyweights like John Lithgow and Albert Brooks, respectively.

Much of the film hinges on Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann (Pete and Debbie) and they do a great job of taking two background characters who were closer to non-entities (Pete) and annoying (Debbie) in the prior outing to make them entirely interesting and viable characters worth spending two hours watching. Rudd is wonderful at playing a man with a quiet dream who is slowly watching it fail and slip away and his body language and deliveries – where almost everything comes out in quietly exasperated tones with only a hint of hope (which often borders on desperation) sneaking in at the end – are spot on. Mann makes Debbie sympathetic and not at all annoying, which is a nice step up from her portrayal of Debbie in Knocked Up. She is a fighter, fighting for her family and the “guard dog” mentality she presents is much less abrasive than in the first film.

In the end, This Is 40 does well what so many films try to do, but fail; it straddles the borders of comedy and drama to create a movie that explores serious, real-world issues and the consequences of relationships, while managing to be entirely entertaining (and not emotionally oppressive in any way). That makes This Is 40 one of the late-release gems of 2012 and a must-watch now that it has dropped on DVD and Blu-Ray.

For other works Judd Apatow has been involved with, please visit my reviews of:
Girls - Season 1
The Five-Year Engagement
Wanderlust
Bridesmaids
Year One
Pineapple Express
Step Brothers
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby
The 40 Year-Old Virgin
Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy
The Critic

7.5/10

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

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Stupid Girls (Season One)

The Good: One or two lines, Most of the cast
The Bad: Not terribly funny, Utterly unlikable (and dumb!) characters, Predictable, Not stellar on the acting front
The Basics: The first season of Girls presents four vacuous, stupid, and/or spoiled twentysomethings living in New York City who utterly fail to engage the viewer.


When it comes to television trends, there are very few shows that I won’t give a try, especially of the stuff that is recognized and acknowledged at award’s season. Sometimes, I find myself very much against the grain and with Girls I know I am in the minority. But, having just sat through the ten-episode Girls Season 1 DVD set, I find myself utterly uninterested in the series and the characters. In fact, with my issues with Girls leave me absolutely baffled as to how and why anyone who would nominate shows, actors, writers and/or directors for awards would give this show any attention.

Girls is yet another HBO show that tries to promote the idea that New York City is the center of the known universe and that everyone there does virtually every known form of drugs and indiscriminate sex. And, unlike the youth culture who continue to watch this show or HBO executives, I’m so over that. How the people who want to honor television’s best are not over the obvious, predictable, and repetitive HBO conceits gave Girls any notice leaves me, at best, disappointed. Girls is essentially the newer, younger, version of Sex And The City (season 1 reviewed here!), but unlike that show where the first season left me on the fence, Girls Season 1 left me disappointed, at best, and annoyed and bored most of the time.

Over ten episodes, Girls Season 1 presents half-hour episodes of “comedy” that do not rise to the level of intelligence that Judd Apatow’s prior television series, Freaks & Geeks (reviewed here!) rose to. Judd Apatow is the co-executive producer of Girls, but Lena Dunham who wrote, executive produced, and directed most of the episode and stars in the show as Hannah is the driving force behind the series.

Starting with Hannah having dinner with her professor parents, who decide it is time (two years after she graduated college) to cut her off from their financial support, Hannah realizes she is on her own in life. She goes to her internship and asks the boss to take her on full-time and is let go instead. While Jessa returns from her travels abroad, Hannah hooks up with Adam, who is mean to her pretty constantly. Hannah’s roommate, the working professional Marnie, and the innocent student Shoshanna try to be emotionally supportive as Hannah lists from interview to interview and crappy jobs under the pretense of being a writer who is working on a novel.

As Jessa gets a job as a nanny, Hannah blows an interview by making a terrible rape joke to the interviewer and then quitting her job at a law firm after threatening to sue her boss who might be touchy-feely, but is not interested in having an affair with her. Meanwhile, Shoshanna moves to her first sexual experience and Marnie struggles not to dump the boyfriend she is not interested in at all. When her boyfriend Charlie finds Hannah’s diary and realizes Marnie is just waiting it out, he dumps her and she pines for him.

There are so so so many things wrong with Girls Season 1. Immediately, Hannah is utterly unlikable. She is spoiled and boring and I have no idea what the hook is for her character or the series as a result. While I think it is wonderful to see a plus-sized protagonist (though Hannah is the Hollywood version of plus-size, not the real-world version of plus-size), Hannah is hardly a compelling character to make one want to watch her. As my wife was quick to point out, what is utterly inexplicable about Hannah is how she looks more or less normal, but every one of her friends and associates (from when she returns to Michigan) is a stick-figure who could be a model. Seriously, every one of the people in Hannah’s life could be a model, she is the only non-model person who exists in her world and yet they all have interest in being around her. I call bullshit.

It’s also important to note that I am not entirely unsympathetic to Hannah or her plight. One of the huge problems with Girls is that it exists without consequences. Hannah has had everything in her life handed to her until the first five minutes of the pilot episode. Okay. So, of course, she would be entirely unable to exist in the real world as it exists when she is forced to take care of herself. But the fundamental problem with this approach to television storytelling is that neglects the realism of the situation it sets up. Hannah Horvath is cut off from her parents and has no money survive on. But, just because she has a huge change in her life, the world she lives in does not change . . . except that in Girls the world completely changes around her. What I mean by this is that when Hannah loses her financial backing from her parents, her world should be thrown into utter chaos. But, it is not. Hannah does not starve, she does not get evicted, her friendships do not suffer when she cannot make her half of the rent. In fact, nothing happens to Hannah when she has no money living in New York City. She doesn’t even have to trudge miles a day to try to get to her job interviews or get frustrated because the cell phone she obsessively texts Adam on gets shut off because she can’t afford the bill any longer.

Damn, this show just pisses me off.

Like every HBO show, Girls hinges on having characters the writers and producers hope will engage the viewers. They do not. Still, the main characters in the first season are:

Hannah Horvath – A twentysomething woman who keeps a diary, but otherwise is never shown writing (she never, for example, misses a job interview because she gets lost in writing her novel and loses track of time), but seems to have plenty of time to text, tweet, and go visit her boyfriend who is not actually interested in her. She is self-centered, boring, and awkward,

Marnie – In a relationship with Charlie, a guy she does not love, but who does not dump because she acknowledges his love for her, she has a steady job and is Hannah’s best friend. She jerks Charlie around after he breaks up with her and almost ends up in a threesome with Jessa when they are hit on at a bar. For a woman who looks the way she does, has an amazing job, and double-digit friend requests waiting on Facebook, she unrealistically is unwilling to move on to any number of the other guys who must be expressing interest in her,

Jessa – Self-centered and self-absorbed, she loses her charges while trying to unionize the local nannies. She has a lot of sex, skips out on her abortion and comes close to seducing the guy she babysits for (only surprise of the season was that she does not actually have sex with him). Otherwise, she is a partier who is not sure what she wants,

Shoshanna – Jessa’s cousin who is still a student. She shows up, says delightfully naïve things until she goes on a date and the viewer has no investment in her,

and Adam - Hannah’s boyfriend who is utterly indifferent to her and might well be a creepy pedophile. Gross and not terribly smart, he makes one want to smack Hannah upside the head and say, “You can do better!”

Unfortunately, the longer the first season of Girls goes on, the more the viewer realizes that Hannah is not necessarily smart enough to do better than Adam. Adam is an idiot and creepy, but Hannah is self-centered, boring, and not terribly smart, so maybe they actually do deserve each other.  Moreover, none of her friends are particularly smart.  For example, Shoshanna makes a reference to <em>Sex And The City</em> to Jessa, who tells her she has never seen an episode or movie from that series.  Shoshanna then proceeds to go through the list of what character combinations of <em>Sex And The City</em> characters she is, apparently oblivious to the idea that that would mean absolutely nothing (listing what percentage of which character's name she is) to someone who had never seen the show.

On the acting front, Girls left me unimpressed as well. Lena Dunham’s performance style seems to be looking blankly and opening her mouth. Similarly, Jemima Kirke’s big acting moment as Jessa comes when she stares emotionlessly at the camera and slowly lets her jaw drop. Her ability to emote is limited with her voice and her presentation style is not particularly interesting or enough to get the viewer invested in her character. Allison Williams is the most dynamic of the performers and one has to hope Zosia Mamet is smarter than her character Shoshanna, making her a wonderful actress.

In its first season, Girls is an awkward, dull season of television with characters who are some range of emotionally or cognitively stupid. This might be a great point from which the characters can grow and develop, but the show is not engaging enough for me to care where any of the characters go from here. Like some lesser HBO works, Girls immediately strikes me as a show that may be a phenomenon now, but will be utterly forgotten when it is off the air.

For other shows from the 2011 – 2012 television season, please check out:
Parenthood - Season 3
True Blood - Season 5
Two Broke Girls - Season 1
Suburgatory - Season 1
Modern Family - Season 3
The Walking Dead - Season 2
30 Rock - Season 6
The Big Bang Theory - Season 5
Happy Endings - Season 2
New Girl - Season 1
Once Upon A Time - Season 1
Weeds - Season 7

2/10

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

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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