Just Forget This One

Dead Like Me: Life After Death (2009)

Director: Stephen Herek

Rated: R

Dead Like Me was a great Showtime series created by Bryan Fuller, creator of the new NBC series (which got picked up for a second season) Hannibal, the fantastic and woefully short-lived ABC series Pushing Daisies, and the even shorter lived Wonderfalls on FOX. Wonderfalls only lasted a couple of episodes, but the full series is available on DVD, and it's pretty good. Overall, Bryan Fuller's creations are unique and really fulfilling to watch. 

So, how could a straight-to-DVD movie about Reapers go wrong?

By having one of the worst stories ever, by ignoring two seasons worth of character development, by retconning established canon, by having a flimsy plot, and by focusing on George's family yet again. Overall, it's like watching someone's bad fanfiction put to film. 

The one beef I had with the TV series was the constant focus on George Lass's family. I was far more interested in how she coped with taking people's souls and seeing so much death on a daily basis. But the show insisted on going back and revisiting her family as her parents' marriage fell apart and her sister refused to accept George's untimely death. At first, it was a nice way to show how George was moving on and becoming a better Reaper, but the show continued to refocus on this family learning to accept their loss—to the point where it became a little repetitive. I mean, I understand how it was important to show how a family moves on, but they devoted a lot of screen time to them that just made me feel a little impatient.

But that's my gripe about the show. This blog entry is about the "movie."

It starts off poorly with a terrible motion comic recounting the story about the toad and the frog that George relates in the first episode, and moves on to a sudden change of venue. Der Waffle Haus, the daily meeting location of the main Reapers, has burnt down off screen. We also discover that Rube has received his lights and moved on. Off screen. The team is sent to a posh restaurant to meet up with their new head Reaper, Cameron, and find out that he's obscenely rich and prefers the hands-off approach to leading them in their daily assignments. Which he gives them digitally instead of through the old Post-It note method. 

Everything falls apart once this change in leadership happens. Roxy saves the life of her reap—something that is not supposed to be done because (as it is explained in the first episode of the series) once a person's number is up, their soul is liable to rot within their body if it is not reaped when it's supposed to be reaped. This is something that Roxy would never do in the show's canon. She becomes enamored with the attention she receives for saving the man's life, and it feels nothing like the Roxy we know. 

Daisy, played by a different actress than the one in the show, has lost all two seasons of her character development. We're back to watching the Daisy of the first few episodes of her introduction. She is selfish, opportunistic, loud, careless, and doesn't take her work seriously. She feels like a totally different character and it's insulting to watch after seeing Daisy's character as a broken, thoughtful, and (eventually) caring individual who sees George as something of a little sister. Daisy in the movie makes her reap on time, but shirks the responsibility of leading him to his lights in favor of selfish reasons. The result is the creation of a ghost—something that never happened in the show.

Mason's problem is that he allows himself to be recorded getting shot by a robber on a convenience store surveillance camera. In the incident, he gets right back up and ends up robbing the cash register (I don't remember exactly what happened, but I refuse to watch this movie again, so that's that). This does slightly reminded me of the episode where he spent the entire time telling a group of goth people about how he was a Reaper ("Rites of Passage"), or when he confessed the same to a hot record store employee ("Rest In Peace"). But, once again, this means that Mason's character development has just vanished.

I've seen reviews of this that claim that everyone is back to their old ways, but that seems like something that would only have worked if this movie happened before the second season. 

George gets fired from her job at Happy Time by Delores and throws herself into her reaping. We see that her mother, Joy, is now a grief counseling guru (disregarding her growing reputation as someone who is the best ever at organizing stuff) and her sister, Reggie, is in a secret relationship with the high school football star. The same high school football star that George has to reap. 

As with almost every reap in this movie, something goes wrong and George is forced to hang out at the hospital and try to reap this kid every once in a while. She ends up revealing herself to her sister to stop her from committing suicide and there is a lot of retconning nonsense that goes on in this A plot. 

In the B plot, Roxy and the others grow wise to Cameron's manipulations and try to kill him for good. In a sequence that goes on for far too long, they end up cutting him into little pieces (we don't see this happen, but it's implied when Mason goes and gets a chainsaw) and burning it all into a pile of ash that they shoot out into space along with the ashes of Delores's cat. And that's the end of that conflict. It would have been more satisfying if they had found a way to contact the higher ups about the problem and we could have seen how things are handled by upper management. 

Those questions we all had of where the lists come from, and what happened Betty when she jumped into that one guy's version of the afterlife ("Reaping Havoc") are all left unanswered. I wanted to know these things. I wanted to know what the "lights" were like for an evil person. I wanted to know why George could reap gravelings. I wanted to know if that meant she could reap other Reapers. I wanted to know who upper management was. I wanted to see more reaping divisions. In the show, Mason talks about how easy the plague division has it, but I want to know more. Is their quota as high as external influence? Or are they forced to stay on this plane of existence for even longer? 

None of my questions or your questions from the series are answered. 

Add to that the fact that canon was mostly ignored and you've got a terrible addition to the Dead Like Me universe. 

Sure, the sets are great and the dialogue is fine (except Daisy). But overall, this is one to avoid. All it did was make me disappointed in the worst way. I regret watching it. Skip this one, folks, even if you're a fan of Dead Like Me.

Narration Noir

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

Director: Shane Black

Rated: R

I love those old movies that have the main character doing voice overs on top of the whole thing. I love Val Kilmer and Robert Downey Jr. I love murder mysteries and characters that are much stronger than people think.

Ergo, I love this movie.

The cast and characters are terrific. Our main characters are Harry Lockhart, Perry Van Shrike (given the nickname Gay Perry—because he's gay) and Harmony Faith Lane. Just look at those names and tell me you don't think this movie's already awesome. I triple dog dare you.

It even starts out with an adorable scene starring Indio Downey, Robert Downey Jr's son, as a young Harry Lockhart. He's performing as "Harold the Great" to the crowd at the fair with Harmony Faith Lane as his assistant. It's going all normal until Harmony starts screaming like... Well, like the chainsaw is actually cutting her in half. Freaked out, Harry starts working on the padlock that closes the box. When Harmony's father get's up to the stage and the box is opened, we all find out that Harmony just had her legs safely tucked up as high as they would go. And what does this precocious and undeniably adorable little girl have to say about this to her freaked out dad and magician best friend?

"I'm going to be an actress."

Dad raises his hand to backhand her and the credits start with some gorgeous jazzy music by John Ottman. He also did the music for The Usual Suspects, another one of my all-time favorite crime mystery movies.

In all honestly, I consider the opening credits to be one of the other highlights of this movie. They remind me of some old Saul Bass title sequences.

As soon as the credits finish we're introduced to adult Harry. In Los Angeles. He tells us he'll be our narrator for the duration of the movie. It's Christmas time* and he's at a party where he doesn't know a single person other than his agent, Dabney Shaw (played by the hi-larious Larry Miller). He barely knows Dabney in the first place. Why?

Because the entire reason Harry is in LA with Dabney Shaw as his agent was due to a stroke of luck (sort of). He was originally robbing a closed toy store with a friend whilst on the phone with his neice, Chloe, who was trying to describe a Cyberman doll she wanted for Christmas. Which makes me wonder, to this day, if Harry has a sister (or brother) still back in Indiana... But that's not really important. What's important is the alarm hack slips and he and his partner in crime go running.

In escaping the police, Harry quite literally bursts into an audition for some sort of cop drama. He gets wound up during his cold read, delivers an outstanding performance, and gets flown to LA to get detective lessons from "Gay Perry."

Cut back to the party.

"Uh, I'm retired. I invented dice when I was a kid."

I'm jumping the gun here, but Harmony is at the same party.

She finds out that the host of the party has a collection of all the Johnny Gossamer pulp novels she used to read as a kid.

And Harry is introduced to Perry after getting his ass kicked by a sleazy guy all in the name of Harmony's honor (it just so happens that Harry didn't recognize her). I love how this short conversation between Harry and Perry sets the tone between them for the rest of the movie. Meaning, Perry sounds smart and witty and Harry sounds like an idiot in comparison. 

"One of these days I'm gonna learn how to fight."

Perry helps patch up our hapless hero in the kitchen of the main house and explains the reason why there's a party at Harlan Dexter's home in the first place. We soon learn that, in no uncertain terms, Perry is Awesome®.

After leaving the party and getting a lead from Perry on where Harmony might be, Harry comes across a club. He immediately runs into this chick named Flicka who plays a vital role in a tiny scene later on. She, like every other LA girl, asks Harry what he does.

"I'm a private detective."

Flicka politely leaves him and Harry scans the crowd for that more-than-familiar dark blonde "gal." Yes, he calls her a "gal," and I find that incredibly endearing. The way he speaks, in general, is adorable. For example:

"Wow, I feel sore. I mean physically, not like a guy who's angry in a movie in the 1950's."

Harry finds Harmony at the bar and, after some humorous back-and-forth that's interrupted by Harmony's "scary friend," Harmony pulls some impressive faces and tells Harry who she is and how she totally remembers him.

Herp derp.

Those are the three main characters right there. The important ones. And Flicka.

Here's the thing: if they re-released this movie this year, Shane Black and Warner Brothers would make a mint. Robert Downey Jr is such a huge star right now, and all of us who love this movie would definitely go see it in the theater. 

Everything in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang just gels. The snappy dialogue, the glittering visuals, the characters that these actors play... I already have this soft-spot for Val Kilmer (I loved Willow) but his no-nonsense, hard ass, snarky Gay Perry is probably the best thing he's ever done. It's also refreshing to have a gay character who is not made up entirely of stereotypes (though he does end up perpetuating a couple, his character is not one-dimensional). Perry is a badass. He is the smartest character in the movie, and at the end of it all you want to see more of him. Especially after the scene where he confronts Harmony's father.

"Yeah, that's right. Big tough guy."

The story is not so much about the mystery of the murder as it is about Harry Lockhart's journey through the detective story. It's about him finishing something. He mentions to Harmony how he cuts out before the finish to avoid conflict, and this is his journey to see the conflict through to the bitter end. 

This is about Harry leaving his comfort zone. 

The DVD is great. Though it lacks any behind the scenes stuff, there's a hilarious (and long) gag reel and a commentary track with Robert, Val, and Shane. I wish every movie made came with these two special features. When Tropic Thunder came with the same kind of extras (including Robert taking his line "man, I don't drop character 'til I done the DVD commentary" literally), I immediately bought a copy just for the extras. Really, it's these extras that make me buy the DVD—if a movie I watched comes out on DVD, but doesn't have special features, I will end up not buying the DVD. Because, to me, it isn't worth it. 

The point of this post is this: buy the DVD. See the movie. It's charming and smart and worth multiple watches. There are things you'll notice on repeated viewings. Take a shot with it. It's one of my top five all-time favorite movies. 

Maybe even number one. 

But that's another post entirely.

*As this movie is set during Christmas (something Shane Black seems to like doing), it gets added to that list of movies that I watch every year. So: Rudolph, Die Hard, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.