John Hart

A Pile of China Can Do Stories INSTEAD OF One Compelling Feature

I was tricked by the description of this film. On this site it says, "It tells about the Chinese people's blood connection and spiritual inheritance." I knew it was four short films and presumed it was a generational story, meaning a character that was, say, a boy in the first film would be a man in the second one... and... perhaps that man's daughter would be a woman in the next film. A 'blood connection' that would have made these four films a coherent whole.

Instead what we get is a 'pile' of 4 stories, moving forward in time but really with no relation to each other. No, there's no 'spiritual inheritance' to speak of. It's simply 4 stories about what China CAN DO when they set their minds to things, and in this way is like a cultural victory walk.

I'd say the first two segments (war, space research) were excellent dramatic pieces. But the second two segments change to comedy and sort of silly sci-fi, which is a little jarring. It leaves the viewer with the feeling these four films were part of some contest and were never intended to be shown together.

I gave the overall story rating a 6 out of 10 for this reason. Please understand each individual story was better than that, say about an 8 on average. But the feeling these were all originally different projects just stapled together really hurts this otherwise well made, well acted and well intended film.

By the way -- Zhang Zi Yi stars in another film just like this, RUN FOR LOVE, except the theme tying it all together is love. It feels even more disjointed than this and I'm convinced it's simply some short films by graduate school students. Zhang's "So Long My Love" is rather excellent. Better than her segment 'Poem' in this film that is also rather amazing. I must confess I'd love Zhang to create another short or two and tie them all together as a Zhang Zi Yi collection of stories.

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I knew DREAM was garbage but had to be fair and give it a try...

So I noticed here and on Reddit this series was so RAVED about I could smell the social media campaign from a mile away. I knew it was yet another one of those shows that's mostly hype and little else.

I've only watched the pilot. Episode One. But before you roll your eyes and tell me "it starts slow" or "that's not a fair way to judge a show" you have to remember what a pilot of a TV show is supposed to do: make you watch the next episode at least, and consider watching the entire series at best. The pilot failed on both fronts.

By the way, I recognize no one in this cast, and so I'm not bringing 'Idol' worship to this series. Seeing it objectively. The lead lady is definitely cute, the male lead is little pointy looking.

1. I'm getting up in years and I find these days that when something is childish and suspect, the trick to make it 'okay' is to simply give it a name.

Halloween is supposed to end around puberty. But now it's okay for adults to show up as Pokemon at Comic-Con because it's 'cosplay'. See? Just giving it a name erases the childishness of it all. "I'm giving my inner child a night out!"

Maybe. Or maybe you need to grow up a little more.

I know, I know, I sound like some grumpy old man telling kids to get off my lawn. I hear you. I don't mind childish fun. I fully enjoyed MAKE A WISH which was basically a feline rewrite of I DREAM OF JEANNIE. It wasn't perfect, but so much fun.

Anyway --

A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM is about an actress who falls into her TV show screenplay and becomes her character in a sense. That is she's aware she doesn't belong in the story she's in. And this one fact ruins all dramatic tension. Not an opinion, but fact.

WIZARD OF OZ wouldn't have worked if Dorothy was aware she was dreaming. GROUNDHOG'S DAY wouldn't have worked if we knew his character was in a screenplay.

So how can DREAM WITHIN A DREAM exist and be so popular? Because this kind of series has a name, don't you know? TRANSMIGRATION. See, that makes everything better, doesn't it?

No. It doesn't. Sorry. The real name for this genre is BAD WRITING.

2. Thanks to suffering thru JOY OF LIFE and MEET YOURSELF, I now give every series a litmus test now before I proceed past episode one. This series left a sourer taste in every way.

a. Are the opening titles and songs engaging or generic? Both the animation and the song were nothing special, leaving me disinterested. That's fair, right? If I see care and love put into such a sequence, it tells me the show has been carefully crafted.

b. Does the show deploy CRASH ZOOMS with 'wooshing' sounds or feel like a video game? Yup.

c. Do we have cutey cartoon sound effects to indicate humor, like a laugh track? Yup.

OZ had a great opening, followed by a song soon after the opening that is one of the best songs on the planet. OZ had no CRASH ZOOMS, no cartoon sound effects.

3. I appreciate that this series wants to be funny. I'm not opposed to the idea. But better writing suggests the following. Keep our lead in her world, make the world real, and have her fight for what she wants.

Suppose she had a Mom or a Grandmother giving her advice on how to deal with the male lead. 'Modern' advice, right? Kinda like a hyper feminist in ancient times. And the girl struggles to do what she says because it sounds like sage advice. But the girl ends up worse for following the advice, but then the world resets itself each day and only the girl remembers this, a la GROUNDHOGS DAY.

No screenplay. No present. No stupid TRANSMIGRATION excuse. Make it real, and that of course means a lovely opening song instead of pop drivel, no Crash Zooms, and no cartoon sound effects.

To overlook all this is YOUR choice.

But why this harsh review is here is that I don't think the young even understand what TV is any longer. I think they've spent so much time gaming or watching sped up TikTok super short vids that the very idea of actually watching a show with proper pacing is completely foreign. That attention spans aren't just shorter but outright GONE.

Don't believe me? There's a review one or two above mine about how someone felt the show started great but then got bland and they dropped it. That's my definition of 'crap' -- so bad you can't keep watching it. But then they skipped a bunch of episodes, came back -- and really liked it. If you can skip ten episodes of a show, it should have never been offered that way.

Real criticism is recognizing crap when you see it and telling others -- it's crap!

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