arfdawg-1

Full disclosure: I am reviewing episode One. I will watch two more episodes and if it's as bad as the initial episode I am planning to bail.

I was so looking forward to this and can't believe that it's so horribly boring and bad.

And it's bad on every level. The direction is completely atrocious. It's slow and keeps cutting from past to future to present and you wind up not knowing where you are or who the characters are.

The writing doesn't help either.

My lord, this was one huge disappointment. You are likely to fall asleep watching it. What a misfire.

The Plot: John Shaft is the "ultimate" in suave Black detectives. He first finds himself up against Bumpy, the leader of the Black crime mob, then against Black nationals, and finally working with both against the White Mafia who are trying to blackmail Bumpy by kidnapping his daughter.

Sounds like a bumpy ride, eh?

I suppose this is considered the King of blaxploitation movies, only that's not saying much. The story is silly. The dialog is horrible. The writer of this should never have worked again.

And the direction is amateurish. By todays standards, the music score is dated beyond belief and actually absurd.

Frankly I was bored right from the beginning.

The Plot In New York in 1910, wealthy spinster Victoria Van Brett controls with an iron hand both the family fortune and the lives of her younger sister Caroline and half brother Rip. When Rip marries Anne Darrow, a nurse who saved his life, Victoria does everything in her power to ruin the marriage. Victoria restricts Anne's use of the family's Fifth Avenue mansion and only addresses her indirectly as "that woman." I guess the was a hit on Broadway. The translation to silver screen is heavy-handed, clunky and downright boring. The two main actors, reprising their Broadway roles overact to the point that it's laughable.

Not really sure why this flick gets such high review numbers.