C.J. Nestor

‘Girl Meets World’ Review: “Pilot” (1×01)

Girl Meets World is hard to review. I don’t mean that it’s particularly complicated, because it isn’t. I don’t mean that anything is difficult to discuss, because it’s not. But every time I try to talk about what I like and don’t like, I end up just curling up in a little fanboy ball and being happy seeing Cory and Topanga back on screen. So, with that in mind, let’s get to it.

For those of you who need to be brought up to date, Girl Meets World is a new series airing on the Disney Channel, and is a direct sequel to the 90’s sitcom classic, Boy Meets World. If you haven’t watched Boy Meets World, go watch it. No, like right now. Yes, all seven seasons. The review will still be here when you get back.

…You all caught up? Good, because if you weren’t a fan of Boy Meets World, then there’s probably not a lot worth watching in this pilot. It’s really reminiscent of early BMW, very earnest and hopeful. The pilot episode finds main character Riley Matthews (played by an eerily appropriate-looking Rowan Blanchard) being passed the torch by her father, Cory Matthews (a returning Ben Savage), picking up right where we left off at the end of Boy Meets World, with Cory figuring out what the title meant. She and her best friend, Shawn Hunter sound-alike Maya Hart, played by a stellar Sabrina Carpenter, pull a scheme straight out of early Boy Meets World and stage a revolution in Cory’s classroom, fighting against the unfairness of homework. Everything plays out exactly how you’d expect: mistakes are made, lessons are learned, everyone ends up better people.

It’s a children’s show. It’s about what I expected the plotline to be, especially for a pilot episode. What makes this special is how much love the creators clearly have for the source material. Everything from the paper airplane in the opening credits to the closing riff is lifted from Boy Meets World and used in a new way. We even have a statue in John Quincy Adams middle school in the same place that it was in Boy Meets World’s John Adams. The family dynamic is still there, as is the classroom dynamic, complete with a stable of (mostly) interesting characters, like Farkle Minkus, who watchers of Boy Meets World will recognize as the son of Cory Matthews’ childhood foe, Minkus, who is supposedly going to be making a cameo in an upcoming episode. We even get someone that might fulfill the neighborly Feeny role in Jackée Harry’s Evelyn Rand, delivering wisdom unexpectedly on the subway.

This is not to say that the show doesn’t have its flaws. Lucas Friar, Riley’s “love interest”, is flat and almost completely without any characterization in this pilot episode. Likewise for Cory’s intervention in Riley’s romantic life. Part of the charm of Boy Meets World is that the adults were never directly interfering. They would offer advice, maybe a little bit of nudging, but they never got directly involved in their children’s lives like Cory did in this episode. Maybe it’s a direct factor of him taking on both the father and the mentor role, but I would really like a return to form, where Cory offers advice and guidance, but doesn’t pull his daughter’s new love interest physically away from her. We also see Topanga and Auggie, Riley’s brother, but only for maybe a line or two, and they were criminally underused.

Finally, we have to talk about the cameo of Mr. Feeny. It’s nice that they signify the real passing of the torch, from Boy to Girl, from mentor to mentor, but I’ve got a lot of questions. Is Mr. Feeny dead? Is he famous? How’d he get on all those posters in the subway? These are only half-joking, but if they’re going to be serious about carrying over all of the canon from Boy Meets World, they’re going to have to be meticulous with it. This show is going to pull in half its audience in adults who really want to be brought back to the years that they watched Boy Meets World, and if they start messing with the original show, they’re going to alienate all those people.

This show has a lot of promise, but it’s got the weight of one of the best sitcoms ever hanging over its head. I really want this show to succeed, and I’m going to keep tuning in to watch. If it lives up to its promise, I’m going to be so happy, but it’s got a lot of fighting to do before it comes into its own. Here’s hoping.

June 28, 2014
Netflix Flick of the Week: “Jack Reacher”

out of 10

I’ve got a confession. I will watch anything with Tom Cruise in it. Anything, no matter how bad. I watched Rock of Ages just because Tom Cruise was in it. I watched Cocktail, a movie in which Tom Cruise flips bottles and sleeps with rich women in New York City for half an hour, in Jamaica for half an hour, and then in New York City for another half an hour, with only the barest hint of a plot holding it together, and enjoyed myself. The man’s one of the last true movie stars, carrying terrible scripts on nothing but raw charisma and swagger. So, when Jack Reacher popped up in my “Recommended Movies” list, I stopped my current TV marathon (Burn Notice, in case you were wondering) because, hey, Tom Cruise.

The first thing of note about Reacher (by director Christopher McQuarrie) is the length. When I saw the preview image, Tom Cruise standing in front of an American flag, vaguely glowing, I expected this movie to be a tight ninety minutes, moving from action setpiece to action setpiece with vague exposition in-between. Instead, the movie stretches out into two hours, most of which is filled with semi-obvious investigation and moderately cliche dialog. It’s an odd fusion of crime thriller and mystery film, where every time I thought something was a little loose, it turned out to serve a purpose in the greater whole of the plot.

While otherwise this movie wouldn’t hold together, the cast keeps the movie running. The secondary cast alone is full of big names. Werner Herzog, director/writer/actor, plays our villain, giving the caricature Russian crime boss some real life, and Robert Duvall brings some real pedigree to the movie as Cash, our grizzled old soldier. Also notable are Richard Jenkins, recognizable from the recent hit Cabin in the Woods, and Michael Raymond James of Terriers, gone too soon, just like his television show. However, in a two-hour movie, none of these side characters is given much to do, and most don’t get more than twenty minutes of screen time, total.

Instead, the show is owned by Cruise and his co-star, Rosamund Pike, here showing off an American accent and an impressive range. However, she doesn’t get much to do next to Cruise’s Jack Reacher, who is always one step ahead of everyone else, no matter what’s happening. He’s a man with a mysterious unknown past, murky morals, and the skills you need to get the job done, and if that sounds cliche to you, it pales in comparison to some of the dialog written for the character. He actually speaks the sentence “I’m not a hero”, which alone should be cause for alarm, but when combined with the skills to shoot every gun, drive any car, fight any gang, and a photographic memory to boot, he’s almost superhuman.

And you know what? The fact that he was almost borrowed from a straight-to-VHS action movie from the 1980’s didn’t matter as much as it should have. This is the kind of role that Cruise excels in, taking a larger then life character and making him at least seem believable. He’s cool and confident, and that sells the fact that the audience should at least attempt to take Jack Reacher seriously as a character. I dug it, but then again, I’m not the most objective viewer of that (remember, Cocktail).

If you’re like me, and you’ll watch anything with Tom Cruise in it, then this is a must-include in your queue. Ditto if you’re into superhuman witticism machines. If you’re looking for a way to kill some time, this isn’t a bad one, but if I’m being totally honest, and I am, you could probably do better. The two-hour run time hurts, and if you’re not into the Tom Cruise variety show, guest-starring the rest of the cast, you’re not going to have too good of a time.

June 27, 2014
‘Taxi Brooklyn’ Review: “Pilot” (1×01)

out of 10
NBC, come on. I want to like you, I really do. You air smart comedies and shows that I really want to see succeed, like Community and The Cape (and yes, I’m serious about The Cape). But then you do things like Taxi Brooklyn.

Taxi Brooklyn, for those not in the know, is a new “action comedy” police procedural airing on NBC. It’s based on the French movie Taxi, which had three sequels and an ill-advised American remake starring Jimmy Fallon and Queen Latifah, and it shares the same basic plot, a police officer who is a bad driver is forced to be ferried around by a taxi driver who has skills that the police officer doesn’t expect. Wacky hijinks result.

Or, they should, which is why I put quotes around “action comedy”. The police procedural part is most definitely there, but aside from a car chase in the very beginning of the episode, there is little-to-no action. Every time that we would get a chance to see the taxi driver, Leo Romba, played by Jacky Ido, cut a drive somewhere down by half the time, we cut straight to the arrival. I would think that, in a show with Taxi in the name, the audience might want to actually see some of the Taxi part. Instead, what the writers think we’d rather see is the taxi driver use his tablet (in a very subtle and not at all obtrusive act of product placement) to access taxi maps or call his son on Skype.

The comedy, meanwhile, is…okay, there’s a scene in which the MD, leaving a crime scene, tells Leo and police detective Cat Sullivan, played by Chyler Leigh, that people around town are just dying to meet her, and is met by blank stares from both lead actors. “It was a joke, guys,” she says, and then walks away, leaving the stars to figure out that it was, indeed, a joke, and I could not even attempt to sum up the efforts of Taxi Brooklyn to be comedic better then that. Instead, the show is full up on drama. Cat’s father was killed under mysterious circumstances and her ex-husband is also the FBI agent called in to consult on her cases. Leo’s son is a country away and he is hunted by criminals, looking to kill him to eliminate the evidence he has tying them to a bank robbery. Even the preview of the rest of the season is filled with shots of predictably dramatic moments, interspersed with police work.

That said, I was afraid this was going to be another case of NBC remaking something that did not need to be remade and butchering it (like Ironside. Remember Ironside? No? Good). But all the elements of a good show are there. The lead actors have chemistry with each other, demonstrated early on in the episode, when there’s time for banter and it’s not all about catching the crook and getting the job done. The source material is interesting, and they do a good job of adapting it to something that someone might want to watch (bonus points for sticking to their roots and hiring a French actor to play Leo). They’ve even got a varied supporting cast, showing the wide variety of those living in Brooklyn, and including people I’m hoping to see more of, like Leo’s friend/roommate and Cat’s mother, both of whom seem like they could inject the comedy I’m looking to see in a show like this. I’m going to keep my eye on Taxi Brooklyn. It has the potential to be a really good action comedy, not just another police procedural.

Just, you know, not in the pilot episode.

June 26, 2014