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sullivan28210
Reviews
Chris Rock: Tamborine (2018)
Dude just mailed it in
Netflix paid Chris Rock $40 million for two specials. I guess Netflix thought he might be like Dave Chappelle and put the time and effort into producing something worthwhile, but this was a low-effort set. Here are some of the issues with it:
(1) Dated references....Dude, Circuit City went out of business a decade ago.
(2) Just screaming a bunch of curse words is not comedy
(3) It wasn't very genuine. Rock tries to play himself off as having a tough life because of his skin color. Worse, he make it sound like his kids have it super tough because of their skin color. He's rich. His kids are super privileged. They will be just fine. Rich and black is not the same as poor and black, and don't pretend that it is.
(4) Out of touch. I guess he's been rich so long that he doesn't understand the lives of normal people. He talked an all-day parent-student day for his freshman high school daughter like every parent does that when their kid starts high school. NO, DEFINITELY NOT. That's rich kid private-school bs. Normal kids get on the bus while their parents go to WORK.
(5) It all just reeked of low-effort. He's got the mannerisms down, but the writing/content was just so, so weak. His big relationship point makes no sense. He's just saying nonsense for shock value. I would put this on part with Carrot Top or some other gimmicky comic. I'm usually a lush for these comedy specials, but I couldn't even make it all the way through the first time (I did make myself finish it later, but it didn't get better).
This is one of the worst comedy specials on Netflix, and it's currently grossly overrated. Yes, it was nice to hear Chris Rock's voice again. Too bad he wasted it on this garbage set. I wish Netflix could get a refund. That was a lot of money to waste on someone who did the bare minimum to collect his giant paycheck.Dude just mailed it in.
Edit: Not sure why my review was deleted--here it is again.
Schooled: The Price of College Sports (2013)
Just plain crazy
Lame.
This movie pretends that athletes receive no compensation other that a free education, completely ignoring the value of publicity, the best fitness equipment, psychologists, tutors, trainers, coaches, elite contacts, promotional campaigns, education, medical care, and other special privileges has on these athlete's future earnings potential.
That's payment, and it equals $100,000 plus per year, maybe millions for top athletes.
At my D1 school, athletes aren't even required to type their own papers. The tutors are essential prostitutes. They don't attend class, but their names show up on the attendance sheets. They're treated like celebrities.
This is the dumbest movie I've EVER seen.
Under the Dome (2013)
So overrated.
I watched the two first episodes of this series, given that it's tied to (1) Stephen King and (2) Steven Spielberg, which is also why it probably has such a high rating on IMDb. The high rating certainly can't be because of the quality of the show--it's just not well-acted, or plotted. I could handle the mediocre acting and dialog if the actors were making semi-logical decisions given their circumstances.
Here's the basic plot, which unfolds quite quickly. A clear dome descends over the town (image God dropped his huge contact lens over a town, because apparently this thing is semi-permeable--except it's also bulletproof and tough as a the hoover dam--yet transparent).
What gets me is the lack of effort to escape the dome; there's an odd acceptance that implies, "Oh, there's a dome over us. Guess we'll just wait around for someone to rescue us." By the end of episode two, the escape attempts have involved spraying the dome with water from the outside ... and nothing else. The military is keenly observing. No one has tried the most logical solution--digging under the dome--even though the series opens with a guy with a shovel digging a deep grave to to hide a body, so we know that this is a society that has shovels and knows that the earth is, in fact, able to be dug.
But no one tries to dig. No one tries anything. They just wait, and somehow the waiting amplifies their personal drama, though realistically at times of dire straits people generally band together. Seriously ... even dogs can figure out how to dig under a fence.