vbertola

I rated this 5/10 but it should be at most a 4 - the extra point is only because Hong Kong is a magical city and it deserves to be seen (though, at least in some episodes, it's not seen much).

The first episode is quite enjoyable, the second a little less, then the rhythm goes down the drain and you can really imagine the authors thinking "hey, we still need to complete four more episodes, what the hell can we do now?" So there's an entire episode devoted to waiting for something that was introduced as imminent at the end of the episode before: 60 minutes of extended wait, because that was the only tension-creating idea the authors could think of, amidst endless contemplative scenes and dialogues that would like to be deep, but most often are not.

The more the series proceeds, the more the authors become so desperate that they throw in new characters out of the blue, without justification. The entire part devoted to 2014 protests (doubling the length of episode 5!) is gratuitous, it is just meant to fill up screen time and to tell viewers how bold and caring the authors are in reminding us of that protest, but its protagonists come and go and nothing really happens. The authors also add a black character and some LGBT scenes because, I guess, those boxes need to be ticked, or at least that's the only reason one can think of.

I think that this story could have been made into a great feature-length movie, but developed like this, it's just too long and boring, and there is never enough tension to keep you awake, even with some pretty decent acting. The characters just go here and there, plot lines appear and disappear without a cause, and we sleep a lot, save for the nice HK shots.

Watch at your own risk and bring a pillow.

Don't be fooled - this is not a great movie like Coco. This is not even a good movie like Luca. This is a horrible, trite, annoying compilation of shallow commonplaces about what it takes to be a "good" family, which apparently is "be yourself, love each other and all will be good" (so any families having any kind of trouble in life, according to Disney, just don't love each other enough). Yes, this is a movie with a moral message and makes much effort to deliver it with all the lightness and sensitivity of a derailed 20-car train - and on top of that, it also is a dumb moral message.

Notably - and opposite to Coco, which was entirely built around Mexican popular culture - the movie is set in Colombia but apart from the music for the (very boring) musical numbers there is nothing really Colombian in it, e.g. In the characters or in the story. It could have been set in California just with different garments and backgrounds, but it's cynically set in Colombia because it scores extra points in "inclusiveness" and has more appeal for the Latino market.

Ok, the computer animation is visually great, that's undeniable. But in the end, if you like the dumb teen movies and series from Disney like High School Musical, and that's the biggest depth that you can bear in a movie, then this is for you. Otherwise, move down a bit in Disney+'s menu and watch The Owl House, at least the living house there is funny.

Lured by all the hype, and by my appreciation for Frances McDormand, I watched this movie with good expectations. I was utterly wrong.

I realized that this would have been a trainwreck when, after ten minutes of super-slow nothingness, I was treated with a piano ding-ding in Ludovico Einaudi's style (actually, I later discovered that it's really by Ludovico Einaudi - good for him, but another sign of unimaginativeness by the filmmakers). After half an hour of random (gorgeous) landscapes, "Moviemaking 101" close shots and no signs of a plot whatsoever, with a supposedly deep line haphazardly thrown in every now and then, I had already checked three or four times how much screen time I still had to endure.

At that point I fully realized what kind of movie this is: a sly, insincere film, built on purpose to please the American critics. A very boring movie that takes two hours to tell you that maybe you should drop everything you have and live in a van, mostly to forget a random stroke of bad luck that somehow hit you in life. How poetic!

Someone must have thought: hey, why don't we remake "Into the Wild", but with a fashionable actress (undoubtedly very good, I don't challenge that), in the American West, and with even more shots of wonderful landscapes under a color-pumped sunset? It will certainly win the Awards. And so it was.