ajm64

I watched this as one of the pilots on Amazon Prime. I get that the yoga "scene", particularly as it exists in LA, is ripe for satire. This attempt at skewering the ersatz enlightened is, however, too broad. The characters, other than the lead actor, are all stock sitcom cutouts. There is the wacky, slutty instructor who lives in a drug rehab halfway house. There is the guy buddy who is a therapist, you know the wacky kind of therapist friend. There is the Topanga Canyon hippie father, played by Kris Kristofferson, (who really looks bad by the way) who used to grow pot but has been run out of business by Medical Marijuana. There is the "totes" cool dude actor/yoga instructor and the whiny yoga instructor. You get the picture.

It's too bad, because it could be a decent show.

The scenery on a big HD TV rates a "7", but the horrendous talking heads and the complete one-sidedness (John Muir is a God, Pinchot is the Devil) viewpoint of the program rates a "1".

The pacing was just awful. Realizing that Yosemite and Yellowstone are, arguably, the most important National Parks, way too much time and footage was spent on these two spots and far too little was spent on parks such as Isle Royale and the Florida Everglades, to name two of many parks that were given the short shrift.

Further, it was jarring to switch from the beautiful scenery to the awful, pedantic and hard to watch commentators. Particularly annoying was talking bobble head William Cronon, who's constant head shaking was reminiscent of the girl in the clip from Gumnaam that's at the beginning of Ghost World (check it out on youtube). Carl Pope of the Sierra Club, with his grating voice, did nothing to further his organization's cause. Revenge of the Nerds came to mind in watching these commentators.

Also, the overly dramatic, painfully slow reading of many boring letters did little to help the narrative.

I really wanted to like this. I believe that the National Parks are very important, but this dreadful waste of 12 hours did nothing for this viewer.

Based on all of the acclaim and awards bestowed upon AIA, I spent $25 for the DVD. WHAT A WASTE!!

Angels in America is 6 long hours of pretentious drivel. Some of the performances are good, but the pseudo-intellectual babble that goes on and on and on is, in a word, bad.

Mary Louise Parker plays the same needy, dirty character she plays in Grand Canyon and Fried Green Tomatoes.

Al Pacino chews the scenery with gusto as Roy Cohn on speed.

Don't waste your money on this crap. If you really want to see it, wait until the hype dies down. Then, used copies of the DVD, like mine, will be available on Ebay and Amazon for $5 a pop.

I hate to be rude, but did anyone else think that the actor who played Louis could have been a trifle more attractive and therefore more believable as the object of affection from hotties Justin Kirk and Patrick Wilson? I mean, the guy's a total babbling nebbish and these hotties are all over him??? That ain't real life.