lavarian

Poorly written, retrograde, and overblown. While those three descriptors can sometimes make a telenovela entertaining, in this case the effect is tedious unimaginative, and grating. I'm loath to spend more time writing a review of such a simplistic, dull endeavor. Barely a handful of episodes in, and I'm convinced that the director is an inveterate sadist which is the only excuse I can imagine for inflicting such misery upon the viewers of this dismal enterprise. If you enjoy watching characters committed to repeated stupidity, zero self-awareness, and with communication skills easily surpassed by those of toddlers, then Las Hijas de la Señora García is for you.

Absolutely lacking in character, DI Ray is a complete snooze. The canned dialogue and uninventive plots could have been lifted from any number of police procedurals. Its handling of color, gender, and cultural issues is obvious and clunky. None of the characters display any psychological depth. Even the soundtrack and cinematography add to the overall generic and flavorless tone of the entire production. If nothing else, the performances are fine. Not everything can be Happy Valley and Vera has become a parody of itself at this point. Normalizing inclusivity is important. Normalizing mediocrity isn't.

A truly frightening film. Feels as if it were made in the early '90s by a straight person who wanted to show that gays are good, normal, mainstream-aspiring people. Retrograde to the point of being offensive, LTR suggests that monogamy and marriage are the preferred path to salvation for sad, lonely, sex-crazed gays. Wow! Who knew? The supporting characters are caricatures of gay stereotypes (the effeminate buffoon, the bitter, lonely queen, the fag hag, etc.) and the main characters are milquetoast, middle-class, middlebrow clones, of little interest.

As far as the romantic & ideological struggles of the main couple are concerned, there's not much to say: we've seen it all before, and done much better.