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Formulaic doesn't have to mean bad
Dec. 17th, 2015 07:19 amBut in the case of the movie we watched last night, it did.
A rom-com with all the usual tropes: washed-up professional forced into a fish-out-of-water role he despises, who eventually finds twue wuv and satisfaction/meaning in said role. It even starred Hugh Grant, so he didn't have to work very hard at character.
...Except that the character was so douchey that we didn't care. More, we actively didn't want him to succeed. And his conflict was superficial. The solutions were more patently telegraphed than usual for a formulaic piece. (And when it's about a screenwriter... maybe they should have tried a little harder to tweak the formula.) We turned it off half an hour in.
Well, that's what Netflix is for.
A rom-com with all the usual tropes: washed-up professional forced into a fish-out-of-water role he despises, who eventually finds twue wuv and satisfaction/meaning in said role. It even starred Hugh Grant, so he didn't have to work very hard at character.
...Except that the character was so douchey that we didn't care. More, we actively didn't want him to succeed. And his conflict was superficial. The solutions were more patently telegraphed than usual for a formulaic piece. (And when it's about a screenwriter... maybe they should have tried a little harder to tweak the formula.) We turned it off half an hour in.
Well, that's what Netflix is for.
