efragarcia59

It is often said that curiosity killed the cat, and it was indeed some sort of morbid curiosity over a forbidden romance story that lured me into the world of Miller's Girl.

Let's start by giving credit where it is due. As a first-time viewer of Jenna Ortega's work, I found her presence in the film compelling and believable for the first two thirds of the movie, and her chemistry with co-star Martin Freeman helps make up for the annoying subplot of her allegedly lesbian friend Winnie trying to seduce the school's male coach, with the writer making her cite a supposed belief in "equal opportunity" as an excuse to not just call her bisexual or admitting to other hidden motives (both would be far better explanations) in quite possibly the most pointless moment of the film.

Still, it is the tandem of Cairo and Jonathan that carries the weight of the film's drama, something blossoming there that only one of the sides is willing to admit, both explicitly with a kiss and implicitly with a torrid piece of autobiographical fiction.

And it is after said work is revealed that the film goes downhill, never to recover, in the third act, as the two characters cope with the fallout of said reveal by becoming villain caricatures that drastically clash both with each other and with their established selves to this point. The home stretch of the film is still entertaining thanks to, again, Ortega and Freeman trying their hardest to salvage something, anything, out of material unworthy of their commitment, but they just can't pull it off entirely.

So what we have here is a number of social media 'stars' who for some strange reason think they are famous enough to claim A-list status just for posting random stuff on TikTok and somehow, someway, getting paid for it enough to rent two mansions in California. I can personally confirm they are not A-listers. An A-lister is someone you can recognize even if you don't follow their work that closely (you don't need to be the world's most ardent cinephile to know who, say, Meryl Streep or Leonardo DiCaprio are, as such, they're in the A-list), and I can confirm I didn't know any of the Hype House residents prior to watching this show to see if it really was as bad as everyone was making it out to be.

Well, it's that bad, and then some. It's an overly dramatic, yet boring beyond belief, look behind the curtain of the machinations of these wannabe celebrities to keep their numbers up and the lights on, and exactly what lines are they willing to cross to keep the Hype House up and running (a stunt wedding for YouTube views? Seriously, what the hell, Alex?), sprinkling all of it with the great divide between House founders Chase and Thomas. The former, at least, does sound like he could have a half-decent music career ahead of him if he just cut ties with this lot. But he's basically the only one with anything resembling actual talent in here.

Seriously, don't bother. You're better off forcing Netflix to cancel Hype House by ignoring the daylights out of this thing.

Despite an interesting premise, 'Todo es mentira', a joint effort from La Fábrica de la Tele and Minoria Absoluta, doesn't really pack a punch. Minoria's signature caustic humor is nowhere to be found, and instead we get unfunny jokes, absurd debates and visitors from La Fábrica's true flagship show, 'Sálvame', which actually runs opposite this one and is (rightfully, if we look at the ratings) treated as a far bigger deal by Cuatro's parent group Mediaset. In the 'unfunny jokes' department, Itziar Catro's comments about her own overweight are the most glaring case in point. It's perfectly fine to be able to laugh at oneself, but she's abusing the resource. Miguel Lago's output has peaks and valleys, convincing when he pulls off his upper-class snob gimmick, but absolutely lost in the aforementioned debates with Castelo. And host Risto, no matter how hard he tries, simply isn't believable as the vitriolic juror we met at 'Operación Triunfo' anymore, which is good for his other show, 'Chester', but here contributes to most of the show's satire falling flat on its face.