Secret Cinema

We start out with Jane talking to her psychiatrist. She is a mess. She can't walk by a lamp without breaking it or sit on a chair without ending in a pile of rubble. She tells the shrink (Shreck the shrink) that the engagement to her boyfriend is off. What follows are a series of weird events, including her realizing she is part of a movie. Or is she? One need only think for a couple minutes to realize that this is really out there. The psychiatrists tells her that her clothes and her look are at the center of her problems, so she ends up with kind of Cyndi Lauper 1970's look. She goes to a movie theater where her movie is showing but she isn't allowed in. Does this sound like someone's nightmare. It also has an element of Fellini to it but that is too much of a compliment. Don't bother.

I wish i could have rated this highly awaited Tv show with 7 (good) but after watching the 1st season, i can only give 4 (poor) as the facts are terrible: only 11 episodes were great and so 13 were just boring!

Maybe it would change during 2nd season, but i don't really understand the editorial choice for this 1st one. I expected a show inspired by Twilight Zone set in the 80s and what i got is a tearful, nostalgic fantasy stories with the 30s-40s atmosphere! In a way, it's like the targeted audience was the 50+ years old!

So everything looks old, forgotten, out of time! Even the cast looks like a retirement home! So it's not a surprise that the show bombed! It's not a modern Twilight Zone and the future X-files would be more gripping and amazing.

And like XF, AS alternates fun and dramatic episodes. In the dramatic, Scorcèse (Mirror) and Hyams (Falworth) are outstanding thriller! In the funny ones, there are 2 particularly stupid episodes (Tuning, Toupee) but the content is indeed good: Mummy, Dante Boo, Santa, Control Man but i picked this Secret Cinema as my best episode: it has a really original story and very great acting from "young" people!

"Secret Cinema" SHOULD have been great. After all, it was directed by odd-ball filmmaker Paul Bartel and Bartel and Mary Woronov are major characters in the show. Who are Bartel and Woronov? These are the folks who specialized in weirdo roles and starred in "Eating Raoul"! Yet, despite me being a big fan, I thoroughly hated this particular episode.

"Secret Cinema" is perhaps the perfect example of why "Amazing Stories" never really succeeded as an anthology series while shows like "The Twilight Zone" clearly did. It's the writing!! A very similar idea appeared in the older series and was quite good. Here, however, not only is the original idea copied but everything about the copy sucks!

In the old "Twilight Zone" episode, a guy at work suddenly hears 'cut' and it turns out his life is all on film! The show was spooking and a bit disturbing. Here in "Secret Cinema", however, it's all played for laughs...very, very, VERY bad laughs. Pie in the face laughs (this is done repeatedly)...painful, terribly unfunny laughs. Additionally, WHY this all occurs is vague and the message is a muddled mess.

The bottom line is that I think this one was written by a chimp...and a very dumb one at that. Given the lack of originality and dullness of it, this can be the only explanation for the bad writing.