"Onward": Not Your Grandfather's Teen Nerd Movie

I've seen any number of teen nerd movies, where the nerd gets mystical powers or goes on a quest for the sole purpose of wrestling the Girl of His Dreams from the obnoxious jock she's dating.  On the way, he is terrorized by bullies and sadistic big brothers, and savagely rejected by the "it" kids.

So I wasn't interested in seeing the new Disney-Pixar Onward  (dumb title). But Netflix is a desert and Vudu is getting slim...

The Premise:  A world populated by beings from folklore and mythology: elves, dwarves, pixies, centaurs, and so on.  They used magic until they discovered that technology is easier, so now they live in urban-sprawl cities with rush-hour traffic (this is better?), identical to our world except for some clever touches, like houses are shaped like mushrooms and they keep tiny dragons as pets.  Magic still exists, as a weird hobby pursued by a few eccentrics.

The Players:
1. Shy, socially-awkward, anxiety-ridden elf Ian (Tom Holland, top photo).
2. His widowed Mom (Julia-Louis Dreyfuss), apparently a troll or an orc.
3. His big, brash older brother Barley (Chris Pratt), also a troll or an orc.
4. Mom's new husband, by-the-books cop Colt Bronco (Mel Rodriguez), a centaur (insert joke about being hung like a horse).

The Set-Up:
It's Ian's sixteenth birthday.  He's agonizing over the prospect of inviting kids from school to his party, when Big Brother bounds down the stairs.

Uh, oh. Time for insults and name-calling.

Nope: Barley is exuberant and physical, but not bullying.  He's super-excited about Ian's birthday.

On to school.

Uh-oh.  Time for the Girl of His Dreams to walk by in slow motion, her hair blowing in the wind.

Nope:  No teenager in the movie displays or expresses any heterosexual interest.  John Hughes must be turning over in his grave (if he's dead)

Hesitating, petrified, Ian approaches the it-kids to invite them to his party.  Is one of them a troll with cerebral palsy?  Disability inclusive!

Uh-oh.  This is where they savagely reject him. "Come to your party, dick-wad?  I'd rather kiss a goblin!"

Nope.  They are perfectly willing to come to the party.

The Plot:  Ian's Dad (Kyle Bornheimer) was into magic, and left him a special gift: a mage-staff, with a spell that will bring him back to life for 24 hours, but only once.

Thrilled with the prospect of spending a day with his Dad, Ian starts the spell,but only gets Dad's bottom half revived before the Phoenix Stone that powers the staff breaks.  Ian, Barley, and Dad's Bottom Half are off on a dangerous quest through the urban wasteland to get another stone and finish the spell before the 24 hours are up.

They are pursued by Officer Bronco, Mom, and a helpful Manticore.

There are some minor complications.  The brothers have some minor disagreements:   It's all rather mild stuff up to the dragon at the end, the father resurrected only for a few seconds, and final brother-brother hug.

I think that the writers were trying so hard to be nice that forgot to be exciting.

Beefcake: No animated beefcake.

Gay Characters:  One of Colt Bronco's fellow officers mentions that she has a girlfriend, and the two are shown among the patrons of Manticore's restaurant in the final scene.  I expected a gay subtext between Ian and Barley, but their relationship is blatantly fraternal.  But not to worry, I'm sure the high school has a Gay-Straight Alliance.

My Grade:B+.

"Undone": If I See One More Chicken-Peck Kiss....

"Stunning!"  "Entrancing" "You've never seen anything quite like this!"  "A masterpiece!"

Reviews like this usually mean "it's about heterosexual romance."

So I resist Amazon Prime's animated series Undone,even though the premise sounds interesting: After an accident, a young woman gets the ability to change reality.

But I get the spiel every single time I go on the Amazon website, "Watch this!  It's the most compelling television ever!  It's the greatst work of art of all time!  Shakespeare pales in comparison!  On your deathbed, you will recall this tv series as the most wonderful experience of your life!"

The curiosity gets the better of me.  I cautiously tune in.

Scene 1: Alma (Rosa Salazar) is driving through a big city, crying, her eye shadow running.  The animation is so realistic that we could easily be looking at real people; why even bother to animate it?

Suddenly she sees the world dissolving into blackness.  Then she's hit by a truck, spins out, and crashes into a telephone pole.

Scene 2:  Doing her daily routine, Alma narrates that she's "bored with living."  Every day she wakss up next to the same person, eats the same breakfast, works at the same job, and then compares two cans of beans at the supermarket.

If you don't like your boyfriend, your cereal, or your job, just get new ones and stop whining.

Scene 3: Alma is complaining to her sister about how "everything is pointless."  Sis just got engaged to Reed Hollingsworth (stupid made-up rich person's name!).  Alma doesn't like him because his parents are rude and racist (big deal -- so are mine).  She also disapproves of Sis getting married while their Dad is dead. So...never?

Scene 4: Alma goes home to her hot boyfriend (Siddharth Dhanajay, top photo) and kisses him like a chicken. Peck, peck, peck, peck, peck!  Nauseating!  Then they swallow each other's faces.  She discusses how she doesn't want to get married or settle down.  Then they peck, peck, peck some more. Disgusting!  Fast forward...

Scene 5: Morning routine, then off to her job at the daycare center for meaningless interactions with the kids and Hot Coworker (Daveed Diggs, left).  I have to admit, this is boring, Could Hot Coworker at least take his shirt off?.

Scene 6: Morning routine, then to Mom's house to prepare for Sister's engagement dinner.  Tbey discuss Dad's death, 20 years ago, and how Alma never knew that he smoked!.

It's been 20 years, and Alma still disapproves of her sister getting married? Get on with your life, already!

Scene 7: Fancy restaurant where Boyfriend works as a waiter who gets paged.  Alma is upset that Mom is hiding horrible secrets, like Dad smoking, so Boyfriend tells about his mother's abusive first husband.  In other words, "Stop whining!"

They discuss their relationship, then chicken-peck-kiss.  I swear, one more chicken peck and I am turning this off, blog post or not.

Scene 8:  The engagement dinner.  Mom criticizes Alma and kisses Boyfriend (finally, a name!  Sam!).  Reed (Kevin Bigley, left) discusses how much he loves Sister (another name!  Becca!).  Alma sneers.

When are we going to get to the changing reality? You know, the interesting stuff?

Scene 9: Morning routine.  Alma asks "Do you ever feel like you're in a play, and everyone is just playing a role?"

Yep, that's classic solipsism.  Everybody gets it when they're around 16. You're 28 -- get over it.

Scene 10:  At an empty dive bar, Alma tells Becca that she broke up with Sam because she's afraid that she's going to become schizophrenic. Becca thinks she realized that Sam wasn't good enough for her.  The hot bartender flirtts with them.

Scene 11: At Alma's house.  Apparently they have invited Hot Bartender home for a three-way.  While he and Becca kiss,Alma throws up in the bathroom.

I don't get it, but at least Hot Bartender shows us his chest.

Scene 12:  Church.  Hot Priest (Tyler Posey) is talking about something boring.

Becca blames Alma for the hookup last night: "You wanted to destroy something because it wasn't yours! You're broken!!  You don't even know all the things that are wrong with you!"

Um...just tell your finacee=.  Maybe he'd like a three way with the Hot Bartender, too.  Heterosexuals make things so complicated!.

Scene 13: The accident from Scene 1, only this time Alma sees her dead father congealing out of the ooze,

Beefcake:  two guys with their shirts off.

Other interesting sights: No.

Gay characters: No.

Chicken-Peck Kisses: 15.

Whining:  Incessant.

Heterosexism:  Oh Lord, take me now!

The 5 Gay Connections of "Night of the Living Dead"

Take a good look at this physique. The chest, the biceps, the interplay of muscles when he moves, the butt-and-baket close-ups.

Unless you contact his children and ask for family photos, this is the only time you will see Keith Wayne, aka Ronnie Hartmann, the Teen Hunk in Night of the Living Dead (1968).  His only movie role;  he was a Pittsburgh-area singer cast for his muscles rather than his acting ability.  Afterwards he continued his musical career, and then became a chiropractor.

Gay Connetion #1: the intimate attention to Keith's physique (although he seems to have been straight in real life).

The story of Living Dead is well known: After a few years of filming tv commercials,  26-year old George Romero wanted to try his hand at fiction.  So he gathered some Pittsburgh-area friends, started a production company, and wrote a script designed to meet the 1960's "taste for the bizarre."  He drew his inspiration from vampire movies, Richard Matheson's I am Legend, and The Tales of Hoffman, but not from the slow, lumbering zombies of Haitian folklore.

Everybody has heard of the movie, but few people have actually seen it.  Last night I did.  When I wasn't gawking over Keith Wayne's gorgeosity,  I noticed many differences from the contemporary zombie mythos:

We begin in an isolated rural cemetery, where "within-it" 1960s post-teens Johnny and Barbra (Russell Streiner, Judith O'Dea) have driven three hours from Pitsburgh to put flowers on someone's grave.

Gay Connection #2: Why are they brother and sister, and not boyfriend/girlfriend, like every other couple in every other horror and science fiction movie of the 1950s and 1960s?  It allows for a gay reading of one or both.

They clown around a bit, and then a man approaches.  He doesn't speak; he just stares and attacks.  Johnny falls to the ground, injured or dead, and Barbra runs to an abandoned farmhouse.  She spends the rest of the movie utterly useless, either catatonic or hysterical.

Ben (Duane Jones) appears, explaining that he has encountered many other silent, murderous people on the road.  Some approach the house, so they barracade themselves in (well, Ben does all the work, while Barbra whimpers).

Only through radio and tv reports do they discover that, due to some scientific balderdash, the newly deceased in funeral homes and morgues in several U.S. cities have risen and are trying to eat the living.  The government is taking action; refugee centers are opening.

Eventually other occupants of the house emerge from hiding in the basement: Teen Hunk, his Girlfriend, Imperious Guy, his Wife, and his Infected Daughter.

Gay Connection #2: Duane Jones (Ben),  who later became a professor of theater at SUNY Old Westbury, was gay in ral life.

Gay Connection #3: Ben never displays the slightest romantic interest in Barbra.Of course, they're in a stressful situation, and a black-white romance would have been problematic in 1968, just a year after the Supreme Court invalidated the miscegenation laws.  But still, there's a hetero-romance in every other post-Apocalyptic, zombie, horror, and science fiction movie of the era. We can easily read him as gay.

Surprising Racial Dynamics:  A black guy becomes the leader of a houseful of white people, and no one objects (well, Imperious Guy does, but not because of Ben's race). Romero claims that he hadn't planned specifically to cast a black actor, but he made some script changes in response, like making Ben intelligent and well-spoken rather than the dim-witted truck driver in early scripts.

The other refugees are killed one by one, leaving Ben alone.

Surprising Trust in the Government:  This is no Apocalypse.  By morning, the government has things under control (less than 12 hours after the first reports!).  Every city has FEMA centers set up. The national guard and local police are scouring the countryside, killing the remaining undead and finding survivors.

The Lynching:  In the shocking last scene, some good old boys with dogs and guns approach the house, see Ben inside, and shoot him.  But if they were looking for survivors, wouldn't they check to see if he is undead before shooting?  Unless.."Look!  A Zombie!" was just an excuse to lynch a black man. Strange fruit hanging from a Southern tree.

Gay Connection #4: Could you do a reading with Ben as gay rather than black?  Queer the text?

Gay Connection #5: This is the last photo you will ever see of Keith Wayne, just like the Grindr hookup who you can neve find again.

"Nancy Drew": Riverdale Rip-Off without the Underwear Shots

Nancy Drew, the girl detective who sleuths out The Secret of the Old Clock, The Message in the Hollow Oak, The Clue in the Crumbling Wall, and so on, has been in print constantly since 1930, and on tv twice, most notably when she shared the spotlight with the Hardy Boys (1977-79).  Until now, she has been an old-fashioned "good girl," solving mysteries that require brain power, not fisticuffs. No bloodshed, no deaths, and certainly no sex.

But then Archie comics used to be about "who should I invite to the big dance?"

The new Nancy Drew series goes all Riverdale on the girl detective, casting actors with Greek-god physiques, getting them out of their clothes a lot. and spinning a complex, ludricrous plotline in which everybody has a hidden agenda, secrets abound, and the adults are always evil.

Prologue: a montage of a teenage girl being pushed or jumping off a cliff, four teenagers playing in the cemetery, a young Nancy Drew watching her parents bury a body, and Nancy tanking on her college apps.

She hears about her mother's terminal illness.  True to the Riverdale practice of casting former teen idols as the adults, Dad is played by Party of Five alumnus Scott Wolf (top photo).  Mom's grave.

Scene 1: Nancy wakes up in the bed of her boyfriend, Nick Nickerso (Tunji Kasim, the bottom), who is already up, working at the auto shop..  He was a college football star in the books -- apparently dreams fade quickly in Horseshoe Bay, Maine, and he's doing the whole Goodbye, Columbus bit

















Scene 2: Nancy runs across a crowded exterior shot -- lighthouse, boats, teens photographing each other -- to The Claw, the diner where she works as a waitress (what, not the Crusty Crab?).  Her boss, a pigtailed Asian girl named George (Leah Lewis), bitches at her.  She starts dishing uot the chowder (wait -- isn't it early in the morning? Shouldn't that order be Adam and Eve on a raft?).

Her other coworkers are the "Zen and the Art of Dishwashing" Ace  (Alex Saxon, left) and the rich ditz Bess (Maddison Raijani).

Why is a rich girl working in a diner?  Why did Blair on The Facts of Life work in the school cafeteria?

Scene 3: Closing time. The parade and fireworks are going on outside.  George decides to stay open for the demanding, imperious "affluent socialite" Ryan Hudson and his cronies, who want to have a sinister "private conversation."

Ryan is played by Riley Smith, former teen idol and underwear model.

His wife, Tiffany, is waiting in the car.  Nancy brings her some food.  And then has a glass of wine!That's like Archie having sex with...oh, right, Riverdale.

Scene 4: Even more closing time.  Suddenly the power goes out to the whole marina.  Nancy investigates, and finds Tiffany dead beside her car!

Scene 5: Sheriff McGinnis (former teen idol Adam Beach) interrogates the crew.  He dislikes all of them.  Nancy discovers that her boyfriend Nick is an ex-con.

"You never told me that!" Nancy exclaims.
"One of many things you never asked me about."
Who asks about criminal records on the first date?

The Sheriff wants to pin the murder on Nancy, so she has to act fast so solve it.

Dad arives.  Nancy yells at him for being neglectful.  Apparently they're estranged.  What adult-child isn't on Riverdale...um, I mean Nancy Drew?

Scene  6: Out on the street, Nancy is horrified by the sight of a dress in a shop window.  I don't understand why.  She goes home and looks at photos of her dying mother.

Scene 7: The next day, at the diner.  Nancy believes that Tiffany was murdered by the ghost of Lucy Sable, the girl who jumped or was pushed off the cliff in the year 2000.  I don't understand her deduction.

I know it's 2020, but I was still shocked to hear "the year 2000" expressed as long-ago history.  For most of my life it was a far future science-fiction date:  "We'll have flying cars and colonies on the moon in the year....2000!"

Scene 8: Looking for clues, Nancy breaks into the home of grieving socialite husband Ryan  She finds a secret drawer containing a locket, a note: "For your protection. H. G.", and an address.

She also hears a ghost voice -- the supernatural is real!  Better not tell Shaggy and Scooby!

Scene 9:  The address on Gallows Lane (how cheery!) is the home of a medium (Pamela Sue Anderson, the original tv Nancy Drew).  She conducts a seance, where the spirit of Tiffany says "Find the dress."  Wow, this is getting convoluted.

Scene 10:  Nancy discovers that Dad is dating Karen the Cop.  I don't know why she should care, but she's upset.

Scene 11:  Dad discovers that Nancy is dating Nick Nickerson (dumb name).  I don't know why he should care, but he's upset,and says "keep away from that kid."   He won't say why, so Nancy snoops around and discovers that he was Nick's lawyer during his trial for manslaughter, during which he was convicted due to the testimony of Tiffany the Dead Socialite.  Nick has a motive!

Scene 12: So does everybody else.  George is having an affair with Ryan the Husband.  A montage of scenes I don't understand: a lady leaves a trailer and puts on Dead Tiffany's ring.  Nick finds a brick or box in a car he's repairing.

The lights go out, so Nancy climbs into the attic, rips open the wallpaper, and finds a note: "Lucy Sable, be careful that the killer doesn't get you." And an old trunk containing the bloody dress that Lucy was apparently wearing that night.

So Dad killed Lucy 20 years ago?  And took off her dress? I'm lost.

Gay characters:  If you read ahead, you find that Bess is a lesbian, and starts dating someone.

Beefcake:  No.  Nick wears a muscle shirt in one scene.

Other Interesting Sights:  Not except for the establishing shot of Horseshoe Cove. It's all intereiors or dark streets.

Plot:  I got tired of people not telling each other things so they could  find out and be upset.  Too many secret, hidden connections. And it gets worse:if you read ahead, you find more ghosts, spirit possession, curses, a trip to the spirit world, secret identities, and "The Seawater Festival," in which a bucket of seawater is used to determine if somebody will die in the coming year.

What about clever Sherlock Holmes-style sleuthing?

And where are all the underwear scenes?

Will I keep watching? No.

See also: Alex Saxon: From fundamentalist Missouri to ace and trans characters to androgynous teen angst hunk.