Entries in the Category "cheesiness"
Harper's Island: Sigh
I don't have a lot of time tonight for a real entry. I can say that this show never tires of becoming stupider, or more boring, and that, regardless, I have no intention of giving it up just yet.
So I'll just make a few observations:
Big band music at the rehearsal dinner? What the hell year is this?
Depressed girl continued her record of un-depressed clothing tonight, wearing a string bikini in the first scene. But what am I saying? The bikini was black. Depression-approved. She's also been hitting the abdominizer, from the looks of it.
The "the previous serial killer has come back from the dead and is our current serial killer!" thing? We all know that's a red herring, show, so please dispatch of this as quickly as you can. People watching these mystery shows are not novices, OK? We've read everything Agatha Christie has to offer. Better hope that your ending is half as clever as the ending she orchestrated for And Then There Were None (from which you have borrowed, liberally).
Two more observations, under spoiler alert.
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They're dropping like flies at Harper's Island
I was reading some Internet posts about this show, and one person commented something like, “If I had to go to a wedding that was going to last for a damn week, I would be killing people by the end of it.” For real, that’s a long time to be celebrating someone else’s relationship. Luckily, there are events! Tonight’s episode sent all the wedding guests (the ones who aren’t already dead—oh my!) off on a scavenger hunt of the most boring variety. Later, there was a bonfire. Also a character referred to the groom’s “wedding week,” heh. It’s like those people who spread their birthday out over a week. “You can’t say that to me today! It’s my birthday on Friday!”
But we already know that this show is not shaped for realism. The main indicator for me in this episode was the main girl, who, despite her haunted past and tortured present, apparently decided to get up in the morning and drape a scarf jauntily around her neck. “I’ve returned to the site of my mother’s murder for the first time in years and I’m receiving threatening messages, but my real problem is that this T-shirt and jeans seem so plain on their own… Oooh, a scarf! Perfect. Now to return to my personal problems already in progress.”
Who thinks that Hollywood doesn’t understand how depressed people dress, and who thinks that they know but don’t care?
The clothing in general, I’m afraid, will be joining the dialogue and the characterization as things this show does exceedingly not well. Either the outfit is not representative of the character, as in the main character and her perky neck wear, or the costumers have tried too hard to portray character through clothes. See: the English guy who WEARS AN ASCOT. Want to know what this guy’s about? Well, he has a foppish accent and he WEARS AN ASCOT. All right, character development done. How about the groom’s brother, with his black clothes and greasy hair and the sign around his neck that says “P.S. I am a screw-up! In case you didn’t get it from how I’m dressed, see also my extremely subtle acting choices like skulking around with a hunchback and looking shiftily at things!” Remember the brother from Wedding Crashers?
This guy’s like that guy without the fun. Follow the link for spoilery criticism.
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Harper's Island: My New Weekly Fix of Cheesy Horror
This show is gonna be some awesome cheese, people. Here’s the awesome. It’s cut and shot like a horror movie, a big fancy expensive one. In fact, the first few moments of the show—murdered people hanging from trees and whatnot—were genuinely creepy. Also in typical horror movie style, the first extra-gruesome death happened before the fifteen minute mark, and then the scenes where something actually happens began to be significantly outnumbered by the scenes where nothing of importance happens. Modest radio hits are playing in the background of every scene to trend things up a bit. Little droplets of mystery are being spread everywhere—someone’s getting mysterious phone calls! Someone else hints at a cloaked past! People “don’t want to talk about what happened”!
The dialogue is terrible, a determination I made two minutes in. “That’s why you’re my best friend!” one character chirps to another, to ensure that all of us at home are clear on the character’s relationships. “How do you not know that story?” one character says to another. “Let me tell it to you at length so the viewers at home have the benefit of hearing it as well!”
Characters? Also playing exactly to our expectations, every cliché accounted for. Otherworldly child? See below. Fat party guy with sideburns? Check! But he does know the word “debauched” so good on him. Mean girls? Absolutely, and they all talk like Paris Hilton and have the exact same hair. Earthy, ponytailed, denim-jacketed girl with the tragic past? And as soon as the director was sure we were rooting for her plain Jane charms, they hotted her up in a pink satin sheath dress! Pill-popping drunkle (drunk + uncle)? Harry Hamlin’s on the job. Sweet-faced groom who’s too good to be true? He’s there and I hope he’s the killer.
Unanswered questions: Why is everyone walking around the damn woods so much? Does the hotel not have indoor bathrooms? Also, why are people talking endlessly about the original murders (other than that they will definitely be somehow connected to this series of murders)? You’d think no one had ever been murdered in the history of the world except on this island. “People died here,” drones the requisite creepy girl who probably has the shinning. People die everywhere, moppet.
For the spoiler report (i.e., what the predictable huge twist at the end was), follow the jump!
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