shoobe01-1

It is just entirely about him, he's an almost every scene and is startlingly out of his depth.

He looks old even just standing there in a well-fitted uniform. Him probably old for the job he has been assigned, doesn't make a bit of sense within the first 20 seconds.

He is obviously, visibly incapable of doing the job. As a cavalry officer or as an actor in a western, you choose. He clearly and obviously gets assistance with steps and ramps mounting horses and doesn't move or turn around properly because he's injured and slow to recover.

He's also on perhaps his worst level of acting. He's often trite and kind of phones in a scene because he can cover it with toad and swagger but it's not working here at all. Not a bit of this is believable for a moment.

That would be a crisis if the rest of the movie wasn't vaguely unbelievable. Sure sure they spent some money on it, production design is pretty good, some of the sets and the set pieces are great but it's shockingly badly edited, often relative locations and movement is confusing. It's less horrifyingly Technicolor than it could be but it's a little too bright for their attempt to make a gritty counter to the spaghetti Western phenomenon. They're clearly trying to do that, but among other things the photography is not helping them at all.

And then there's the whole super villain problem. Until there's finally and uplifting pull one over on them and success for the cavalry and Wayne of course himself, the bad guys have absolutely perfect plans and even when it is transparent to the viewer and stated on screen that there is something to be suspicious of, the bad guys just go right ahead and do their improbable thing. It's got that annoying Hollywood anti-violence morality, where even during a war you can't just shoot the visibly bad bad guys and have to go to trickery and fist fights and all that stuff. It's boring. It's predictable and boring.

And that's if it wasn't the third time they'd made this movie. The same people. There are other ideas out there, try one.

Really. First two or so episodes have longish segments that are as good as anything on TV, and Seth Rogan - yes, of all people - has matured into a legit actor. Production design is excellent, I believed the studio HQ, all the studio branding (fake well-known companies often do not work on film) etc.

Then... it descends into Larry David style neuroticism for the sake of it. Whole episodes about Rogan being worried he isn't respected, won't get public recognition, isn't beloved by the talent, etc.

This is dumb. He can have internal fears, but there's no tension because - after the first few episodes where he can put on a powerful exec face or bend his morals to get work - he becomes 2 dimensional and is just openly fearful, questioning, unsure of everything. It is both boring and implausible; studio heads, senior execs of any level, do not act like this openly.