It is a pleasant thing to spend an hour or two in consuming TV mass media with relations and friends; and obviously this is best when the quality of the movie or television is high.
For example; lastnight I re-re-watched with the family, that really excellent movie from 2023: Dungeons and dragons: honour among thieves. This is close to perfect light entertainment: continuously-engaging, funny, clever, and moving; based on a masterful script and editing.
But that is not always possible, because there just are not many high quality things; and the mood has to be right as well!
Sometimes it is "light entertainment" that is wanted - and even "3 star quality" will suffice; which means three stars out of a possible five, which translates to "worth watching, but only once".
We therefore end-up by mostly-watching mostly-OK things, where compromises are required; and I enjoy some aspects, but not others.
With three star movies and TV I need to feel that the makers were doing their best, from their perspective - which I very seldom share, to try and make something good: to put-on a Good Show.
A Good Show is always difficult to produce, therefore those engaged must be trying their best; quality does not happen as a by-product of some other agenda. Those engaged must be doing their best to serve the needs of the medium.
This is why I don't bother even trying anything that has an obvious and evil (IMO) agenda as its main priority; because these are invariably of low quality as programmes or films.
An author or production team who are prepared to interrupt the action, pervert character, or damage the structure and pacing; in order to deliver a politically correct lecture - will not make even an acceptable product.
So I often watch things like the TV series Foyle's War (or, at least, the first five series); which overall has much to enjoy as light entertainment; I think because its (main) author Anthony Horowitz is a skilful writer, who here seems to have been doing his best to write good television drama.
There is much to appreciate in the acting of the main protagonists, the characters, the settings, clever plotting. And this mostly offsets the author's biases concerning what the war was "about", who it was fought-for (from the British people's perspective) and why - Horowitz, unsurprizingly, sharing the usual mainstream official/ mass-media false persepctive that has been typical of WWII movies since the 1970s.
In other words; in what I regard as ranking as a 3 star product, the false-to-history agenda needs generally to be subordinated to dramatic needs; which means the agenda can be noticed, recognized and filtered; and without spoiling the overall effect.
Given the pervasiveness of Leftist and/or alien agendas in the arts, literature and media generally; this is the only way that one can enjoy light entertainment nowadays. But it is noticeable that most of the works that fall into this category come from fifteen-plus years ago, so the supply is drying-up!
I have a lot of fondness for art experiences that come at the right time and place, including “wanting to watch a movie” for whatever superficial reason (“it’s hot and the theater is air conditioned” was a common one during college). For many years, it was fairly reliable to just show up at the theater and there would be “something to watch” in that 3-star category. The last one I distinctly remember was called Matador which had Pierce Brosnon as a semi-retired assassin. After that I remember solid 3s being far less common and gravitated more toward the “fun bc so bad” (a favorite here was Splice) and “intentionally cheesy but with quality actors having fun” (Snakes on a Plane, Premium Rush). There was a good run of “fun with tropes” movies in the horror genre (Cabin in the Woods, Tucker & Dale vs Evil) but that sort of thing plays out quickly. That left little in its wake but a few utterly indulgent definitely not family-friends shows like Penny Dreadful before I checked out of current media entirely.
ReplyDeleteRewatching would be the order of the day for us anyway with young children. If you’ve never seen the 50s Zorro television show by Disney, I can hardly recommend it enough.
@Mia - Of those you mention, I have only seen Tucker & Dale vs Evil; and it certainly yielded a few belly laughs. I also saw a few of those Zorro programmes when I was a kid, and played Zorro in the playground at school. My Dad had enjoyed Zorro movies back in the 1930s.
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