Neil Sharpson's Blog, page 5

Into the Woods (2014)

Probably the most thankless job a director can set himself is trying to adapt a beloved stage musical to screen, as the people you most need to win over for your movie to be a success (fans of the stage version) are also the people most likely to tar and feather you in the streets over the slightest deviation from the source material. You may think comic fans get salty about adaptation changes, but they have nothing on musical theatre nerds.

That’s probably why, despite musicals still being a lucrative movie genre, stage musicals adapted to screen are a rare beast and only getting rarer. Of the 50 top grossing movie musicals, only six began life on stage. The rest are either originals like The Greatest Showman, animated musicals or jukebox musicals like Bohemian Rhapsody or (sigh) Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Of course, it wasn’t always thus. The middle decades of the 20th century were a golden age for adaptations for stage musicals as that was the point where theatre and cinema were most alike. Colour photography and improvements in sound tech meant that cinema could finally match the visual and audio splendour of theatre. But, cinema had yet to fully embrace the freedom inherent in the medium and movies of the first half of the century often closely resembled filmed plays with constructed sets and static cameras. As cinema became less and less indebted to its theatrical roots, adapting stage musical to screen became a lot more challenging. To put it simply: movies are not plays and plays are not movies. And trying to turn one into the other can result in some pretty radical changes. And all those challenges are right up on screen in Into the Woods, a movie based on one of the most inherently theatrical musicals of the modern era.

I suppose I should establish my bona fides (by which I mean my lack thereof) before we get into this. Am I a huge Sondheim fan?

I’m just not super au fait with his work. I’ve seen Sweeney Todd both onstage and onscreen (loved both times) and I’ve seen Assassins on stage (kinda crap, honestly). I feel about Sondheim’s song-writing a bit like I feel about Lin Manuel Miranda’s; really depends on my mood. Sometimes it’s “Oh how clever!” and other times it’s “ugh, shut up, nerd“. Anyway, I have not seen Into the Woods onstage so any heresies taken with the text I will remain blissfully unaware of but I’m sure there’ll be some theatre kids in the comments happy to pick up the slack. On we go.

The movie opens with a shot of an overcast grey sky.

As the 2010s decade recedes far enough into the past for us to get a good look at it, one of the things I really did not like about this whole era of movie-making was the drab, washed out colour palette and that’s very much an issue with Into the Woods. Call me basic, but I think musicals should be bright and colourful and vibrant if they’re happy or dark and gothic and vibrant if they’re tragic. It’s this middle of the road depression chic that I can’t stand. And given that this is the very first shot of the movie I have to assume it’s a deliberate stylistic choice. But I don’t like it. I live in Ireland, if I want to see a grey overcast sky I’ll go outside on the sunniest day of the year.

In the prologue song, Into the Woods, we meet our large ensemble cast. There’s Cinderella with her Evil Step Mother and Conventionally Attractive Step-Sisters, Jack, his mother, and their dry cow Milky White, Little Red Riding Hood and lastly the Baker and his Wife. All these characters want something: Cinderella wants to go to the ball, Jack doesn’t want to have to sell the cow, Little Red Riding Hood wants to visit her Granny in the wood and the Baker and his Wife want a chiiiiiiiiiiiii-hiiiiiiild! And here’s Sondheim’s little stroke of genius, I didn’t actually have to tell you any of that (except the Baker and his wife, because they’re original characters), the familiarity the audience already has with these stories means that there isn’t really an issue with having such a large cast and convoluted inter-connecting plot.

Anyway the baker and his wife get a visit from the local witch who tells the couple that they will never have a child because of a curse that she put on the baker’s father years ago when he raided her garden for vegetables. The Witch says that as punishment for letting the Baker’s father steal some magic beans, the witch’s mother cursed the witch making her old and ugly. Oh, and the witch also claimed the baker’s father’s child who wasn’t the baker (see, this is why names are useful) and raised her as her own.

Okay…salient points. The Witch will lift the curse on the Baker’s family, letting him have a child if the Baker and his Wife get her the things she needs to lift the curse her mother put on her; a cow as white as milk, a cape as red as blood, hair as yellow as corn and a slipper as pure as gold. The witch needs them to get them for her because if she herself touches any of the items they’ll be useless.

So, we have our quest. The Baker and his Wife have to find these four items which will mostly involve running around the same forest set, bumping into different people and singing ear-wormingly lyrically intricate songs. On we go.

Cinderella, forbidden to go to the ball, sorry “the festival” (I guess Sondheim really needed a three syllable word there) goes to a willow tree in the forest to commune with the spirit of her dead mother who grants her wish and gives a beautiful dress so that she can go to the ba…the festival.

I think, honestly, Anna Kendricks might be my favourite screen Cinderella (not that I have a tier list or anything). This is not the traditional smiling saint of older portrayals or the tough girlboss of later depictions. Kendricks’ Ella is coming apart from the abuse that’s been heaped on her and she finds a real sharp edge in Sondheim’s lyrics: “Never mind, Cinderella, Kind Cinderella, Nice good nice kind good nice!” that suggests she’s one bad hour away from from a complete nervous breakdown.

Meanwhile, Little Red Riding Hood encounters the Big Bad Wolf. My impression is that a lot of Sondheim fans think that Johnny Depp is the worst thing to happen to musicals since Covid but I never got that. I love him as Sweeney Todd and I think he’s really good as the wolf, giving the exact required mix of foppishness and predatory (in all meanings of the word) menace. But the scene does raise an interesting question about adaptation. Suspension of disbelief is just a given in a theatrical production but cinema tends to hew more to realism. Which can make it a bit jarring when a film that has an actual cow playing a cow shows you this:

And says “it’s a totally a wolf you guys, trust me. Look, he has pointy ears on his hat”

I’m not saying I wanted some ungodly CGI wolf singing with Depp’s voice but, I dunno, maybe a bit more effort? What did the original stage wolf costume look like?

Never mind, it’s fine. It’s fine.

Anyway, after singing the wonderfully creepy “Hello, Little Girl” the Wolf heads off to Granny’s house and the Baker finds Riding Hood and tries to steal her cloak but she screams until he gives it back. The Baker’s Wife then shows up and gives the Baker his father’s cloak which contains the magic beans that he stole from the witch all those years ago.

Just in time, Jack passes through with Milky White and the Baker and his Wife con the poor kid into giving them the cow in exchange for the beans. The Baker is having doubts that he’s cut out for fatherhood, but his wife begs him to continue for her sake. So he sends her home and continues looking for the other items. Just then, he hears a scream coming from the grandmother’s house and finds the wolf in a food coma after having eaten both Red Riding Hood and her grandmother. He cuts the wolf open and the girl thanks him and explains what happened:

When he said, “Come in!”
With that sickening grin
How could I know what was in store?
Once his teeth were bared
Though, I really got scared
Well, excited and scared

But he drew me close
And he swallowed me down
Down a dark slimy path
Where lie secrets that I never want to know

In gratitude for saving her, Riding Hood gives the baker her red cloak so now they’ve got two out of four.

On her way back to the house with Milky White, the Baker’s Wife runs into Cinderella who is fleeing the ba…the festival with Prince Charming in hot pursuit. The Baker’s Wife helps Cinderella hide but is obviously rather smitten with the Prince. After he leaves, she asks Cinderella about how wonderful it was to dance with the Prince and Cinderella is obviously upset because it wasn’t all that and she’s now realised that she never really wanted the one thing she thought she wanted so…what now?

The Baker’s Wife sees that Cinderella has the golden shoes but just as she tries to grab them the cow runs off. Meanwhile, Jack finds the Baker and offers to buy the cow back with five massive gold pieces that he got by climbing the magic beanstalk that appeared when you know all this, why am I recounting the story of Jack and the Beanstalk to you? Anyway, he sings Giants in the Sky, one of my favourite songs and excellently performed by Daniel Huttlestone. The Baker who is, as you might imagine, a bit surprised by Jack’s story doesn’t want to sell the cow so Jack runs off to get more money from the Giant. The Baker’s Wife then shows up and confesses to the Baker that she lost the cow so now they’re back to only having one of the items (the red cloak).

Meanwhile, Prince Charming runs into his brother, another Prince who’s been trying to find Rapunzel’s tower (Rapunzel’s in this too but her part’s been cut to buggery so I haven’t mentioned her yet). They sing Agony, another absolute banger and excellently performed by Chris Pine and Billy Magnusson and my personal pick for highpoint of the film.

The Baker’s Wife however, overhears them talking and learns that Rapunzel has hair as yellow as corn so sets off to scalp her. Now she’s got the hair and she runs into the Baker who’s found Milky White again.

Now they’ve only got one more item to find and the Baker at last agrees to let his wife stay in the woods and help him and they sing It Takes Two, a song that I imagine would work better onstage and possibly with different actors. Now, let me be clear, I actually think this is an excellent cast overall, especially considering a lot of these actors aren’t primarily known for musicals. Chris Pine in particular is an absolute revelation. And as for the Baker and his Wife, I think Emily Blunt is absolutely perfect and y’know what, James Corden’s not bad either. Ridiculously over-hated actor in general, frankly. But they don’t have romantic chemistry at all and this song, where the Wife starts seeing her man in a whole new light feels less like old love becoming young again and more like a woman trying to keep her spirits up as she she’s stalked through the woods by a man she doesn’t know.

Anyway, Jack arrives with a golden egg to buy Milky White, only for Milky White to suddenly drop dead because these people just cannot catch a fucking break. The Baker goes to market to try and buy a new cow with the money Jack gave him while the Wife manages at last to get the golden slipper from Cinderella by trading her own shoes. Oh, and in the process she drops the last of the magic beans.

The Baker returns with a white cow but when they bring it to the With it turns out it’s just a regular cow covered in flour. Fake moos. They tell the witch that they did have a white cow, honest, but that it’s now less cow and more…beef. But the witch tells them she can just bring Milky White back to life so now they have all four items!

They feed the other items to Milky White but the spell doesn’t work because the witch is Rapunzel’s kidnap mother which means she’s touched her hair which means it can’t be used to break her curse.

But! They realise that the reference corn they’ve been using to test the hair’s yellowness also has hair of its own…so they just feed that to the cow. And it works!

The witch is transformed into a beautiful woman, the Baker and his Wife can now have a child, Cinderella and the Prince are getting married, Jack and his mother are now rich and Little Red Riding Hood has a bitching new wolfskin coat. And they all lived happily ever after.

OR DID THEY?!?!?!

So. Into the Woods is (in)famous for its second act where all the happy endings are undone and just about everybody DIES HORRIBLY (this is why the second act is often omitted from school productions). Cinderella? Prince Charming’s cheating on her with Snow White. The Witch has lost her powers after regaining her youth and beauty. The Baker is freaking out that he’s not going to be a good father to his child and the Baker’s Wife is starting to think that Prince Charming lives up to his name.

And then, the Giant’s Wife climbs down the beanstalk that grew from the bean that the Baker’s Wife dropped and his going on a rampage to find Jack and kill him for killing her husband. Which, y’know. Fair?

After the Baker’s wife and Jack’s Mother are killed (along with half the kingdom), the Baker works with the other survivors trick the Giantess and kill her with a falling tree.

And the movie ends with the Baker, his infant son, Jack, Red Riding Hood and Cinderella returning home to the Baker’s house while singing Children Will Listen, a song about the power of the things we tell children, like, to pick an example at random, fairy tales.

***

Into the Woods hews closely to the source material and that’s both a good thing and a bad thing. The good is that, hey, if you want a filmed version of Into the Woods, this is about as good as you’re going to get. Oh, we can quibble about this and that (I personally think that, star power be damned, Meryl Streep should have been axed and the part of the Witch given to Bernadette Peters to reprise as God intended).

The bad is…well, I just don’t think this play is suitable for the screen. Because it’s very much a play and its inherent theatricality becomes very noticeable when half of the runtime is people running into each other in a different part of the wood.

Still though, for all it’s flaws it’s a faithful, heartfelt adaptation of American classic and it could have been a helluva lot worse. That’s something to celebrate.

NEXT UPDATE: 06 March 2025

NEXT TIME: Okay, get your “how topical” comments out of your system now, folks.

Cover Reveal!

Hey folks! Delighted that I can reveal this terrifyingly gorgeous cover for my next novel, The Burial Tide!

It’s an Irish folklore influenced horror novel (if you liked Knock Knock you’ll dig it) set on a remote island on the west coast of Ireland where nothing is what it seems. Should be hitting shelves 9th of September!

Now That’s What I Call Gargoyles!

Hey folks, after an eon entombed in stone, Now That’s I Call Nostalgia has emerged with another episode, this time tackling the Coldstone classic (that’s a pun, that is) GARGOYLES!

Oh, and we’re also on Instagram. Come parasocialise us.

All hands on deck!

Avast me hearties and heartettes! Outland Publications have launched their Kickstarter for Rising Tides, an anthology of nineteen pirate stories by some of the best genre writers currently working and also me.

My short story The Devil’s Hoof Upon the Tile appears alongside entries from Kate Heartfield, Jason Fischer, Sarah Thérèse Pelletier and many more. Whether you like your buccaneers fantasy themed, horror themed, historically accurate or genre defying (nothing more dangerous than a genre defying pirate) there’s something for everyone.

So if that sounds fun, do head over to Kickstarter and give them whatever doubloons you can spare.

Tomorrowland (2015)

Hey remember that time Disney spent a load of money on a science fiction epic that was visually spectacular but also kinda inert, weirdly off-brand for them, with a load of tonal and pacing issues that ended up costing them a load of money?

I guess by this point it kinda IS on brand?

Anyway, Tomorrowland is the second (and to date last) live action feature directed by animation legend Brad Bird and it keeps alive the proud Disney tradition of sci-fi movies that I respect and want to like but are just fundamentally too dang flawed on the writing level to get anything other than a qualified endorsement.

Alright, so the movie begins with Frank Walker (George Clooney) and Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) narrating to an unseen audience about the future. Frank is all doom and gloom whereas Casey wants him to be more optimistic and upbeat. She asks Frank to talk about how the future was viewed when he was a child and he admits that, when he was growing up, the future was something bright and hopeful. This is the movie’s thesis statement; in the past we had bright optimistic science fiction but now the only stories we seem able to tell about the future are dark and dystopian.

It’s a nice, truthy little parable but unfortunately it’s hokum. People who grew up in the mid twentieth century remember the science fiction being brighter and more optimistic because the sci-fi they were consuming was aimed at…y’know, children. The adults of the time were watching this:

Hell, even Star Trek was a lot less utopian in the sixties than people think. Sixties Trek was less about a glorious harmonious future than racing to get medicine to some colony before they all die of space diptheria.

Anyway, we flash back to 1964 where Frank is nine years old and has run away from home to visit the New York World’s Fair and sell his prototype jet pack. He presents it to a man named Nix (Hugh Laurie) who is impressed but turns him down when Frank admits that there is a slight technical hiccup with the jet pack; it don’t bloody work. However, Nix’s daughter Athena (Raffey Cassidy) likes the cut of Frank’s jib and gives him a special pin with a “T” and tells him that all he needs to do to leave his old life behind is to go on the “It’s A Small World” ride.

“But beware…none have faced the terror of the Sherman Brothers at their most whimsical and lived to tell of it!”

Having survived this terrifying gauntlet, Frank is transported to a fantastic world full of robots, flying cars and where everyone travels in tubes!

THE D WAS RIGHT!!

So here’s the first big problem with this script. We spend fifteen whole minutes with Frank, following him on his journey to Tomorrowland and then the movie just drops him like Leonardo DiCaprio dropping a girlfriend who hits the big three oh. A quarter of a goddamn hour with this kid and then suddenly we have to get to know our actual protagonist, Casey, and the movie never recovers from this sudden, juddering loss of momentum. I will give credit where it’s due. The little we are allowed to see of Tomorrowland looks incredible. The CGI robot in particular is just flawless.

Okay, so with a grinding of gears the movie switches focus to Casey Newton, a teenage girl who lives near Cape Canaveral in Florida. Disillusioned with what she sees as a hopeless future, Casey does what many teenagers like her do and becomes a terrorist. I’m not even joking.

Casey’s Dad is an engineer at NASA, but NASA is shutting down apparently and her Dad is going to be out of a job soon. So Casey spends her nights breaking into Cape Canavaral and sabotaging the demolition machines. Her Dad suspects what she’s up to and tells her that nothing is going to stop the launchpad being taken down. She then tells him that there are two wolves battling inside everyone, one which is despair and the other hope, and that the one that wins is the one that you feed. This of course is a parable told by the ancient American tribe known as Facebook Users. Casey tries to sabotage the demolition again, but this time she gets arrested and her Dad has to bail her out. But, getting her bag back from the cops she finds a T pin and gets transported to Tomorrowland.

She can’t interact with anything, but she can walk around and see all the hope and solar-punk optimism and our girl is down. Transported back home when the battery runs out, Casey goes online and finds a geek shop in Houston that’s offering money for the T pins run by married couple Hugo (Keegan-Michael Key) and Ursula (Catherine Hahn). Casey asks Hugo where the pin came from and he asks her:

“Have you ever wondered what would happen, if all the geniuses, the artists, the scientists, the smartest, most creative people in the world decided to actually change it? Where, where could they even do such a thing? They’d need a place free from politics and bureaucracy, distractions, greed – a secret place where they could build whatever they were crazy enough to imagine…“

You know…I actually have wondered that?

Okay, let’s go there. Tomorrowland is probably Exhibit A in the “Brad Bird is an Objectivist” argument. Personally, I don’t think he is. Or if he is, he’s an Objectivist who’s rejected so much of what makes objectivism morally abhorrent that it barely still counts. His movies are full of exceptionable people (and rats) rising above mediocrity, sure. But they’re also about altruism and kindness and using your gifts to help others which is not exactly the Rand Brand. He’s definitely not helping himself here with Hugo’s little John Galt speech but, as we’ll see, Tomorrowland turns out to be a rusting dystopian wreck largely responsible for nearly ending the world so probably not the adaptation of Atlas Shrugged some were hoping for.

Anyway, the two shop-keepers start getting real pushy, demanding to know who gave Casey the pin and where “the girl” is. Casey tries to leave but they pull out some Men in Black level weaponry. Suddenly, Casey is rescued by Athena, who still looks all of fourteen who blows up the shop and bundles her into a stolen car and drives off. Athena explains that the shop-keepers were advanced animatronics and that she is as well. Freaked out by this, Casey slams on the breaks and makes a run for it. Athena chases after her and…gets hit by a truck.

So let’s talk about that tone issue. Tomorrowland is supposed to be a paean to bright, optimistic science fiction but it often goes uncomfortably dark. There’s quite a lot of onscreen death and injury and then you have a scene like this where a fourteen year old girl gets bodied by a four-by-four. I mean sure, logically you know that she’s a robot and she’s fine but it’s still brutal. The driver, understandably traumatised, gets out to see if Athena is still alive and Casey uses this opportunity to steal his car.

Athena springs back to life, chases after Casey and leaps into the car through the back window and continues to explain the plot to Casey and us. Athena was built to recruit scientists and inventors to come away to Tomorrowland to work on their inventions and be entitled to the sweat of their brow and so on. And…the form that was chosen for her for that task was that of a 14 year old girl.

You know what? Given everything I’ve heard about the tech industry this is horrifyingly plausible.

Athena tells Casey that she needs her help to fix Tomorrowland but that they’ll also need the help of someone else to get there: Frank Walker, the kid from the start of the movie who is now all grown up and played by George Clooney.

We get a weird scene where Casey falls asleep in the car and wakes up by the side of the road outside Frank’s house with Athena driving off into the distance. Like…why did Athena do that? How did she carry Casey out of the car without waking her? It feels like they needed to stitch two different drafts of the movie together and couldn’t figure out a way to do it elegantly. Anyway, she goes to the house and asks Frank for help and he’s all…

See, Frank was banished from Tomorrowland years ago and now sits in his basement watching a timer counting down to the end of the world and obsessing about the one that got away.

That one being Athena.

Yeaaah.

This is where the movie gets real uncomfortable. The creators decided that it would be a perfectly okay plot point to have Frank (now played by fifty something George Clooney) still be heartbroken about a relationship that ended when he was still eligible for the Mickey Mouse Club. So you have all these scenes of Frank and Athena where they’re rehashing their relationship like Rick and Ilsa in Casablanca but it’s grown ass George Clooney and 14 year old Raffey Cassidy and it feels…

Who thought this was a good idea?

Anyway, setting all that aside. Frank shows Casey his big clock of Doom, showing that the world is going to end with 100% certainty. But she says “nuh uh” and that causes the counter to go down to 99% which is enough to convince Frank that she might be The Special. More robots attack Frank’s house but he and Casey fight them off, rejoin Athena and the three set off to find Tomorrowland.

Getting to Tomorrowland involves teleporting to the top of the Eiffel Tower and using a rocket hidden at the top to blast into another dimension. Frank reveals that Tomorrowland was actually built by Gustave Eiffel, Jules Verne, Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison who founded Tomorrowland together.

You just know he wanted to call it “Edisonland”.

They finally arrive at Tomorrowland and the place now looks like you could get tetanus just by looking at it. They’re captured by Nix, who is now the governor of Tomorrowland and out villain. But honestly, the dude built a perfectly convincing robotic facsimile of a 14 year old girl, you should not be surprised that he’s sketchy.

Nix asks Frank why he came back given that he was exiled and Frank tells him that he believes that Casey can fix the world. Nix takes them to the core of Tomorrowland, a machine called The Monitor that runs on tachyons. Frank built the machine and used it to see the future.

And now the wheels of heaven stop. You feel the Devil’s riding crop. Get ready for the future. It is murder.

Horrified by what she is shown, Casey is told by Nix that the end of the world is coming in 53 days and that it is inevitable. Casey angrily refuses to accept that and this causes a brief flicker of a better world to appear. Frank knows that Nix saw it but the governor knocks all three of them unconscious and has them locked up in a cell.

Casey is furious at Athena, telling her that she should never have given her the pin because the vision of Tomorrowland she showed her is a lie. Suddenly, she gets an idea. She asks Frank how he was able to build his own apocalypse predictor back on Earth and he admits that he just pirated Tomorrowland’s signal. The pair realise that The Monitor is not simply predicting the future, but blanketing Earth with doom and gloom thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

They confront Nix, who says that they intentionally broadcast the signal to Earth hoping to spur them into action, like a short sharp paddle to the buttocks. Instead, it turns out humans are really into that and just started wallowing in nihilism and dystopian fiction. So Nix was all “ew, weird” and decided that humanity was not worth saving (we all have days like that), and elected to just let the apocalypse happen and see whether the next species that arises does any better.

Trust me, their day is coming.

Our heroes try to destroy the Monitor and Nix takes a shot at Frank. Athena jumps in front of the shot and gets hit. Frank tries to repair her but it’s too late and Athena tells him that she’s activated her self-destruct and he has to use her body to take out the Monitor. And Frank bids her a tearful farewell as he cradles the body of the only girl he’s ever loved, and I do mean the word “girl” quite literally.

The scene is intercut with flashbacks to them together when they were both children. My skin was literally crawling off my skeleton.

The Monitor is destroyed and we cycle back tot he opening scene and learn who Casey and Frank are addressing; a new generation of androids whose job it is to recruit the greatest minds in the world to come to Tomorrowland. And yes, they are all perfectly lifelike android children, how did you know?

I like to think this is the moment where George Clooney realised the implications of this.

***

Weird ass film. Weird ass goddamn film.

Not terrible. And I’ll be the first to applaud a big-budget film that actually has the balls to be an original concept and not just a rehashed older IP. But there are problems. Even overlooking…all that…this is a bloated mess of a screenplay that really needed to be trimmed, re-ordered and strapped to a bed until it agreed to settle on a consistent tone.

SCORE: 49%

NEXT UPDATE: 20 February 2025

NEXT TIME: Theatre kids, to me!

Daria (1997-2002)

The nineties were awesome.

Look, I know everybody idolises the first decade they can properly remember but this is different. The nineties really were awesome. The Cold War was over, the War on Terror hadn’t started, we’d fixed acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer (and that whole global warming thing would probably sort itself out) and the only threats to world peace were goobs like Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic who would occasionally show up to cause trouble before being punted into the air like Team Rocket.

Meowth is Gaddafi fyi.

Plus, the movies, the TV shows, the music. I love this whole era. So I was overjoyed when I finally got my hands on a boxset of the complete Daria, an animated sitcom that ran from 1997 to 2002. Not merely a nineties show, but probably the most nineties show.

And imagine my disappointment on discovering that, like so much nostalgia, it doesn’t actually hold up all that well.

So, some background.

Back before it popularised the reality TV genre and doomed mankind, MTV was a force for good in the world if you can believe it. As well as playing music videos, MTV was a welcoming home for niche animation aimed at adults, including Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butthead, a show about the two stupidest characters in all of fiction.

One supporting character in this show was a classmate of Beavis (and also Butthead), Daria Morgendorfer, a bright, nerdy girl who acted as straight woman to the titular idiots’ antics. When two of the producers of Beavis and Butthead, Glenn Eichler and Susie Lewis Lynn, were approached by MTV to create a show for girls, they asked Mike Judge if they could use Daria and he gave them permission. So, even though Mike Judge is technically Daria’s creator he had nothing to do with the series she is most famous for. Got all that? Okay.

The series opens with Daria moving with her family from Highland (where Beavis and Butthead is set) to Lawndale, Texas where the water is less irradiated and the animation is of slightly higher quality. Attending the local highschool with her vapid, far more popular younger sister Quinn, Daria navigates teen life in the nineties with the help of her sole friend Jane and the cynical outlook of a German existential philopsopher.

I never watched the show religiously, but I remember catching a few episodes here and there and really enjoying it. So why was I so unimpressed this time around, when I’m as easy a mark for nineties nostalgia as its possible to find? Well, let’s start with the animation. Because, no disrespect…

It’s definitely better than Beavis and Butthead, no question. But honestly, I’m not sure Beavis and Butthead wasn’t trolling the audience. I can see why Daria’s animation might be seen as charmingly lo-fi but coming back to it with fresh eyes it hits more like laziness. There’s also weird issues with perspective and scale. Massive doors, rooms the size of tennis courts.

“Hellooooooooo…”

But really I think the biggest issue is that it’s just not a particularly well written show. Every episode has at least one really good line but there’s also a lot of duds. Plenty of episodes feel like they don’t have enough plot. Scenes just end with a half-joke or sometimes nothing at all. It feels really….slack, is I think the word.

As for the characters, it breaks two very important rule of a good comedic ensemble.

Everyone should be distinct.No one should be redundant.

There is a LOT of overlap here. Brittany the cheerleader sounds and acts more or less identically to Quinn. And even Daria and Jane’s scenes can sometimes sound like a schizophrenic having a conversation with her alter ego who is also exactly like her.

When I asked her, Spouse of Mouse made the point that a lot of shows from this era were never meant to be binged and I think that’s definitely a factor here. Put an episode of this in between Total Request Life and Pimp My Ride and I could definitely see it being a welcome reprieve. But watching one episode one after the other and you start to see that outside of good vibes there isn’t a lot of meat in the sandwich.

Okay, but there’s still good points, right? Sure there is! Overall, it’s a very good voice cast. Tracy Grandstaff’s dry, inflectionless “Wednesday Addams in suburbia” performance is justly iconic. And I have to factor in that I’m watching the DVD release which has none of the licenced music that the original broadcasts used (this is why this series took an absolute dog’s age to come to home media). The replacement music sounds fine to me (especially since I’d only seen one or two episodes of the original broadcast) but I have to imagine that it hurts the cool nineties vibe somewhat.

So why was Daria such a cultural touchstone for my generation? Well, this was a time when animation aimed at adults was still something of a rarity and female led animation aimed at adults was practically unheard of. The only other example I can think of is Aeon Flux and…how can I put this?

I think that might have been catering more to the male demographic.

Daria was just a show about women hanging out, bitching about life and living a normal day to day existence. For its time, it was genuinely one of a kind.

So I don’t know if it holds up as a TV show in 2024. But that’s not really the point of nostalgia. I know, objectively, that for most of the nineties I was miserable and anxious and wanting to be anywhere else but school. But that’s not how the memories feel now.

Nostalgia isn’t about how things really were.

It’s about how things are now.

NEXT UPDATE: 06 February 2024

NEXT TIME: Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I’ll love ya! Tomorrow!

Two New Reviews!

Hello hello hello!

Two new reviews have dropped for Don’t Trust Fish!

In a starred review, Kirkus says: “Sharpson offers so-fish-ticated readers a heads up about the true terror of the seas. His delightful text, filled to the brim with jokes that read aloud brilliantly, pairs perfectly with Santat’s art, which shifts between extreme realism and goofy hilarity.”

And Betsy Bird has written an absolute sweetheart of a review at the School Library Journal: “There are some picture books that you read that make you chuckle when you see the cover. There are some picture books where they might get one legitimate laugh out of the adult reader. There are some picture books that are funny to young readers. Now consider a book that makes everybody, and I do mean everybody, laugh from the cover onwards. THAT, my friends, is a picture book worth celebrating! That is a rarity! That… is Don’t Trust Fish.”

I guess this makes it a star fish?

Well, we’re off to a great start!

Don’t Trust Fish just got its first trade publication review in Publisher’s Weekly and it’s a starred review!

“Cowabunga.”

In 1984, two broke young illustrators named Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird were trying to break into comics. Eastman randomly doodled a turtle in ninja attire and the pair decided that it was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, essentially a madlib of everything that was popular in comics at the time (except for turtles).

They then wrote a silly little issue parodying Frank Miller’s Daredevil run and that, of course, was that.

This one weird joke concept riffing on an incredibly specific moment in comic book history in a black and white indie vanished without a trace, the very definition of a flash in the pan.

Wait, no. *checks notes*

It went on to conquer the goddamn world. To this day, TMNT is quite possibly the most lucrative Western comic book property not published by either DC or Marvel. Third most successful toyline of all time. Seven TV series, seven films, multiple videogames, hundreds and hundreds of comic issues and a metric shit-ton of merch. Which, on the one hand, is crazy.

How did a concept so ridiculous, and so seemingly instantly dated become one of the most successful and enduring pop culture phenomena of the past half century? Well, success has many fathers. Firstly, I think the franchise’s longevity was sealed with this:

A theme tune that catchy only comes around once in a blue moon. Play it over NINE SEASONS and it’s practically brainwashing.

Then there’s the fact that TMNT relies on a template that has proven to be amazingly durable over the last 180 years.

Hothead. Stoic Leader. Smart Guy. Big fun doofus.

The Musketeer Archetypes are like the Four Chords of character writing. They’re bloody everywhere, but they’re there for a reason. They work, dammit. And these character traits (Leads, Does Machines, Cool but Rude, Party Dude) hold true across virtually all interpretations of the characters which gives continuity across the franchise. But, and this is crucial, with that stability and continuity there also comes incredible plasticity. The Turtles fandom is fantastically diverse in terms of its age range and that’s because TMNT can be this:

Or it can be THIS:

Once you get past the initially (very, very, very) silly premise, the Brothers Turtle can grow with their audience. There’s stuff for kids and there’s also stuff for adults. So, class, where have we heard that before? A character that has a rock solid core that’s also surprisingly adaptable and can tell stories for any and all ages?

So before we go any further, I owe you all an apology. I know I said I’d be reviewing Turtles Forever but you need to know three things:

My DVD of Turtles Forever didn’t arrive in time (that’ll teach me to support physical media).There’s a Turtles movie with Batman in it, how am I NOT going to review that?It is SHOCKINGLY good.

The movie opens with Barbara Gordon visiting a laboratory to study a newly developed power generator for a research assignment. Suddenly the lights go out and the lab is attacked by mysterious ninjas.

So the first thing that jumped out at me about this movie is how fantastic it is at revealing character through movement and physicality. Take this scene. Barbara is introduced to us as a perfectly normal seeming, nerdy college student. Suddenly, she senses something wrong and her entire body language changes and she saves one of the scientists by blocking some thrown ninja stars in mid-air.

It’s all done wordlessly, but you see Barbara Gordon transforming into Batgirl before your eyes. And this holds through the entire movie. This film has genuinely some of the best animated hand to hand fight scenes I have ever seen. The bodies feel weighty and real, the action is thrilling (and often shockingly violent but never in a gross or gratuitous way), it is mightily impressive stuff.

The ninjas attack under cover of smoke and in the haze Barbara thinks she sees four reptilian figures, but the whole assault is so quick she doesn’t have time to realise that one group of ninjas is fighting the other.

Later, she makes her report to Batman who declares that one mutant reptile freak in Gotham is plenty. Bruce goes back to the Batcave to research while Alfred brings him some coffee in the most trollish way possible.

We’re in good hands. You can sense that, can’t you?

Bruce discovers that high-tech labs all over Gotham are being robbed of advanced tech and deduces that Wayne Industries is next on the hit list. Meanwhile, the turtles have also realised the same thing and on top of that the Penguin has also decided to rob Wayne Industries and sell the tech to whoever this new player in town is.

While the turtles battle Penguin’s hoods on the rooftops, the Foot Clan break in to Wayne Industries only to discover that it’s abandoned and they’ve walked right into Batman’s trap. Okay, so a little explanation on the Foot. If you only saw the eighties cartoon you might remember them as Krang’s robot henchmen but in the comics they’re a ninja clan and a parody of Frank Miller’s The Hand (remember, this whole thing started as a piss-take of Daredevil.)

Batman battles the foot, with the law of Ninjitsu Conservation in full effect. He tries to shake down one of the ninjas for information only for said ninja to get a throwing star straight through the head from a mysterious figure watching from the shadows.

And I kinda don’t want to admit that this battle between Batman and frickin’ Shredder of all people may be my favourite fight in any Bat film but…this thing kinda has me over a barrel.

This is a straight to video movie where Batman teams up with some talking cartoon reptiles. Who told these guys they could cook this hard? What happened here and can we make it happen all the time?!

The fight takes a huge toll on both men and Shredder actually wins but is too drained to finish Batman off so he simply warns him to stay out of his way and vanishes.

Outside, the turtles let Penguin escape and realise that they’ve lost their best chance of stopping Shredder. Michelangelo, who adores Gotham and its themed villains, gargoyles and seemingly pointless zeppelins, stumbles across the Batmobile and instantly falls into the kind of love of which medieval poets used to sing.

Batman arrives, in no mood for ninja bullshit, and Raphael decides to attack first and ask questions later. No, you know what, that’s just rude. And I will not give him a break.

We get another fight scene, this one much more comedic but still kickass. The turtles quickly realise they’re outmatched and am-scray, leaving a puzzled Batman holding one of Raphael’s sais. Oh, he won’t like that.

Meanwhile, Shredder returns to his base and meets his new partner in crime: Ra’s Al Ghul. The Foot and the League of Assasins are allying. Shredder wants the secret of immortality from the Lazarus pits, and Ra’s wants mutagen to turn all of Gotham into muscular wolf mutants.

“It’s for world domination. It’s not a sex thing.”
“I…didn’t think that it was.”
“Good. ‘Cos it’s not.”

Meanwhile, Donatello researches Batman and is able to actually pinpoint the Batcave’s location, which the turtles reach by swimming through the sewers in a shot that is just casually gorgeous.

After a brief tussle with Robin, the turtles come face to face with Batman and Batgirl and the two sides finally realise that they’re all white hats and decide to work together.

But Ra’s and Shredder have also realised that team work makes the dream work and decide to distract Batman by invading Arkham and striking a deal with the Joker, who gets a deliciously unsettling reveal.

In order to distract Batman while he acquires the final pieces of tech to spray all of Gotham in mutagen, Shredder doses the entire rogue’s gallery and leaves Joker to run the asylum, now transformed into a massive cobra.

Back in the Batcave, the turtles and the Bat family get some really nice scenes together. Michelangelo gets to bounce of Alfred, Raphael and Robin brood, Batgirl and Donatello create an anti-mutagen and Leonardo and Batman spar. Suddenly, the bat signal activates and the gang meet Commissioner Gordon who tells them that Arkham has been taken over.

We now get a sequence where the turtles and the bat-family make their way through the asylum, battling mutated bat-freaks until coming face to face with Joker and Harley Quinn. Batman is overpowered and Joker injects him with a mixture of ooze and Joker venom which turns Batman into a Man Bat.

It’s Manbatmanbat!

The turtles, Batgirl and Robin manage to de-mutate Batman and they take out the rest of the rogues. Back at the Batcave, they realise that the attack on Arkham was just a distraction as Shredder and Ra’s now have all the parts they need to build a machine that will mutate all of Gotham. The gang deduce that the bad guys are at Ace Chemicals but Batman angrily tells the turtles that they’re benched.

This scene, honestly, is the only real gripe I have with the film. Batman calls the turtles reckless and impulsive and says that it’s their fault Joker was able to get close to him to mutate him. Which, frankly, is bananas. There’s maybe one moment where the turtles act recklessly (trying to rescue hostages that turn out to be decoys) but it was a perfectly forgivable mistake and, more to the point, had nothing to do with Batman getting Manbatmanbatted. It reeks of forced conflict and also makes Batman look really petty and seem like he’s trying to shift blame away from himself. Damian speaks up on the turtles behalf and Batman decides that the turtles are good, actually. Waste of a scene. Moving on.

So the alliance of bats and turtles launches a full scale assaalt on Ace Chemicals battling the Foot, the League of Assassins and battling scores of animal mutants including one very large-assed T-Rex.

“God that is so hot…”
“Ew! I knew it!”

The villains launch the drone to douse Gotham in mutagen and Donatello and Michelangelo climb aboard to stop it. Meanwhile, Leonardo battles Ra’s Al Ghul while Batman and Shredder settle their grudge.

Leonardo is almost defeated by by Ra’s, who mocks him for his inexperience, saying:

“Foolish child. I’m hundreds of years old and have trained with the greatest teachers in history. How could you possibly…”

Only for Leonardo to knee him in the balls and reply:

“Oh, yeah? Well, I’m 16, and I learned this from a rat.”

And proceeds to kick his ass.

To everyone who ever made fun of me as a kid for having Leonardo as my favourite turtle? VINDICATION.

Batman defeats Shredder with an assist from Raphael and Mikey and Donny send the drone crashing into the factory. Shredder gets knocked into a vat of chemicals (oh yeah, he’s definitely dead) and the good guys flee the exploding factory, taking time to rescue the unconscious mooks in the process.

The day won, they return to the Batcave to say their goodbyes, and Batman treats his new allies to a pizza party.

Alfred. C’mon. A knife and fork?

***

I am flabbergasted by how good this thing is. It’s definitely my favourite piece of Turtles media (not that I’ve seen a huge amount). And it’s pretty darn high in the ranking for Batman media too. Kudos all round.

The Dark Knight Detective

First of all, the highest of praise that I can bestow on Troy Baker’s Batman voice: I thought he was Kevin Conroy. Points in this Batman’s favour; great voice, brilliant thinker and an absolute beast of a hand to hand fighter. Batman should always be this damned cool. I don’t even mind the blue costume, and I’m normally firmly Team Black. One criticism, this Batman has a touch of the “paranoid asshole” characterisation that was so prevalent in the early 2000s but it’s not a deal-breaker.

The Boy Wonder

Not Dick Grayson or Jason Todd, this movie’s Robin is actually Damian Wayne, Batman’s biological son and grandson of Ra’s Al Ghul. Always a somewhat divisive character I like him when he’s written well and for the most part, he is here. Less of a brat, more of a strait-laced little fusspot. Gets some nice moments with Raphael.

The Dominoed Daredoll

Hurray! The first movie I’ve reviewed where Barbara Gordon appears and she doesn’t get done dirty! Batgirl is only a minor character in this and yet this is a miles better portrayal than Batman and Robin or, (shudder) The Killing Joke. Like just about every character in this she gets funny moments and badass moments. She even gets a sort of flirtation with Donatello and it…kinda works? Oh, and the part where she punches the Joker’s teeth out, takes a selfie with him and says “Smile”? Oh that felt good.

His Faithful Manservant

All these tough ex-military working class Alfreds are all very well, but my heart will always belong to posh sassy Alfred and this is a great one. Pairing Alfred with Michelangelo is an inspired choice and I love Mikey gifting Alfred his skateboard at the end.

The Comish

Gordon is only featured in one scene, but it’s a good one. He explains the plot to Bat-family and the Turtles, turns around to find them all gone and then gets a heart attack because Mikey is still there because the others all left him behind. Gordon promises himself that he’ll retire to somewhere where the turtles don’t talk and the clowns are funny. We wish him well.

The Clown Prince of Crime

Fun fact, with this movie Troy Baker became the first actor to play both Batman AND the Joker. And, just as his Batman is hewing very close to Kevin Conroy, he apes the best and makes his Joker an ersatz Mark Hamill. It’s fine. But I don’t really like the Joker design. He has these massive bags under his eyes that make him look like he’s got a two month old baby.

Snake Joker on the other hand…?

“Come on Puddin! Don’t you wanna rev up your Harley?”

I really feel like the creators just looked at Batman: The Animated Series and said “Let’s do that”. They were, of course, correct. This is pure, batshit, Mistah Jay lovin’ Joisey Harley Quinn. Oh, and she gets turned into a hyena. God, the fan-art must stretch beyond the horizon.

That pompous, waddling maestro of fowl play, master of a million criminal umbrellas!

To quote Michelangelo: “I think I love this little guy!”. No, seriously, this may be one of my favourite Penguins of all time. Cunning. Devious. Dangerous. Funny. Able to go toe to toe with Leonardo armed with a frickin’ sword umbrella. And smart enough to know when he’s outmatched. After meeting him Michelangelo becomes a huge fan of Gotham and you totally buy it. This guy kinda rules!

Trouble between the dynamic duo! Is SHE the cause?

I didn’t expect the biggest laugh out loud moment of this movie to be a gag involving Poison Ivy. She’s normally never the butt of the joke so when she’s mutated into a giant Venus flytrap…and can’t reach the turtles because she’s now rooted to the ground and they can just walk around her it hits like a freight train.

A cunning mind had devised a fantastic method to utilise cold for crime

Mr Freeze turns into a giant polar bear armed with a freeze gun. This is why comics are awesome.

Instead, I will simply BREAK YOU!

Bane gets turned into a giant jaguar. This is why comics etc etc.

“Perhaps, Detective, it is time that you and I finally settled this!”

I realise there will never be a Ra’s who will match up to David Warner. Cas Anvar is not terrible, but his vocal performance lacks the majesty and menace demanded of the Demon’s Head. Fortunately, the animators are here to pick up the slack. Ra’s has never looked this dangerous in combat in live action or animation and his dual against Leonardo is a highpoint.

Fear Incarnate, Fear Walking the streets of Gotham…

Uh…Scarecrow’s here. He gets turned into a crow. That’s about it.

Meet the most bizarre criminal of all time, a twentieth century Jekyll-Hyde!

Two-Face gets turned into a two headed cat. Why a cat? Because they’re SIAMESE cats? Get it? I love this film.

Batman NEVER kills, except: 

It is strongly implied that Man-Bat-Batman killed Bear Mr Freeze.

Where does he get those wonderful toys?: 

Batman is able to equip the abandoned Wayne Industries building with holographic staff just to lure the Foot into his trap.

It’s the car, right? Chicks dig the car:

This Batmobile is armed more for a small land war than policing a city, armed with machine guns, missile launchers and a flare gun. Also, the sight of this riding into battle beside the Turtle Van made my inner eight year old jump on the sofa.

Animation: 15/20

Deceptively simple, but when the fight scenes kick in? Hoo boy.

Leads: 16/20

A really great depiction of the Turtles and their brotherly dynamic.

Villain: 15/20

Forget the 1987 version voiced by Uncle Phil. This Shredder is bloody terrifying.

Supporting Characters: 16/20

A really great ensemble. All the supporting characters get moments to shine. Oh, and I didn’t get to mention him earlier but Baxter Stockman is in this and he’s voiced like Jeff Goldblum. Because he’s a fly. I love this movie so goddamned much.

Music: 13/20

Kevin Riepl’s score is a decent, workmanlike channeling of both franchise’s vibe.

The Stinger

After a montage of classic comic book covers (of both TMNT and Batman) reimagined to include elements from both franchises we cut to the smouldering ruins of Ace Chemicals. A bleached hand emerges from the wreckage and we see:

JOKER SHREDDER

And the audience went…

A simultaneous reference to Jack Nicholson’s Joker AND the 1991 masterpiece Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Secret of the Ooze? Who told these guys they could cook this hard?!

FINAL SCORE: 75%

NEXT UPDATE: 23 January 2025

NEXT TIME: Hey, did you know I now have a podcast talking about millennial nostalgia bait? What synergy!

Lalalala…

New Episode

Hey folks, the latest episode of Now That’s What I Call Nostalgia is live and ready for your ears. Join us as we discuss The Bots Master, a nineties toy commercial that may be the single worst cartoon show I have ever seen.