bandersnatch- choose to watch something else

Log in to Netflix and fire up Twitter for your response because the folks across the pond are back again with another edition of the sci-fi anthology phenomenon, Black Mirror! Rather than an episode though, Black Mirror’s newest project comes in the form of a choose your own adventure movie called Bandersnatch that gives viewers the chance to choose between different paths at various points throughout the story. It’s a cool idea on paper, but I don’t know man. Ultimately I felt like it was far more gimmicky than it was actually enjoyable. The main idea of Bandersnatch is what holds it back the most and prevents it from being as deep or interesting as many of the other episodes in the series.

Black Mirror is one of the most unique shows on television right now. It’s often compared to The Twilight Zone for its anthology elements and uses of storytelling to portray contemporary issues. If I had one big criticism of the series, it’s that almost every episode boils down to “technology is bad.” The ways that this message is portrayed vary drastically from episode to episode, but the message is mostly the same. When I’m feeling more cynical I sometimes wonder if Black Mirror is actually that deep at all, but then I ultimately decide that even if it’s not, the series is so well-conceived and produced that the complaint isn’t even that valid if it were true. One thing I personally love about the series is how everyone has their own choices for which episodes are the best, and there’s really no reason for anyone to be more correct than anyone else. My personal favorite is Fifteen Million Merits. Its world is wonderfully terrifying underneath its colorful screen-filled future, and the ending is so frustratingly unsatisfying and ironic. But I don’t necessarily think it’s objectively the best episode. I really don’t know if there is definitely a Black Mirror that’s better than the rest (apart from The Waldo Moment, which is definitely not the best don’t even try to argue for it).

All of this is to say that when I say that I really only felt “meh” about Bandersnatch, I honestly have no idea how valid that is. Judging by public reaction online, there are people who seem to really enjoy it or at the very least feel dedicated to mapping out the various pathways the movie can take and uncovering every ending and storyline possible. But at the same time, most of what people are talking about goes back to Bandersnatch’s interactivity rather than its actual story, and I think that’s very telling of the quality of the movie as a whole. Its concept is far more intriguing than its final product.

So what is the final product? Set in 1984 (hehe get it?), Bandersnatch follows an aspiring video game developer named Stefan who is in the process of writing Bandersnatch, an adaptation of a book of the same name. It’s an ambitious game because for it to succeed it relies on branching paths (get it? like the show? so clever!), a concept difficult with the limited technology of the time. As the story goes on, it is revealed that the writer of the original Bandersnatch book murdered his wife after seemingly going insane from writing the book, and it seems that a similar fate is going to follow Stefan. Paths explore mental health, the concept of a sort of Big Brother-like figure, and even breaking the fourth wall, as Stefan realizes an external figure is controlling his actions.

One of the biggest issues I have with the movie is that if the interactivity is taken away, Bandersnatch is actually really pretty simple. That’s not to say that Black Mirror has never been simple before. One of the, if not THE, most highly regarded episodes in the series is The National Anthem, a very simple episode in which the English Prime Minister has to perform sexual acts on a pig on live television in order to save a princess from a terrorist. It’s simple, tense, and terrifying. And yet, despite being simple it has a lot to say about society’s addiction to media and how people have become desensitized to   disturbing content. Bandersnatch on the other hand is simple, but it doesn’t really have much to say. You could spend hours combing through its endings, but there’s never anything that productive being said. Technology is bad, there may be someone somewhere controlling our actions, and that’s it.

It becomes especially frustrating because the options given were never particularly satisfying, and often it felt like they didn’t have enough weight in the general story. For example, the first big choice you get to make is regarding how Stefan will go about working on his game. He could either work in the office of a game studio, which will provide him with resources to finish Bandersnatch but on a strict deadline, or he could continue to work on it from his bedroom. Rather than opening up the possibility for two completely different stories, the first option signals an immediate end to the story. Bandersnatch is released, but it’s an unplayable mess, and viewers are sent back to the option back at the game studio. Out of curiosity I picked to work in the office again in the slight chance that the movie would reward messing around with it, but no, it gave the same ending and booted me back to the office. Most of the choices in the movie boil down to this. If you want to break off from the path the movie wants you to travel down, the results will be unsatisfied and you’ll get sent back down the preferred path. For example, Stefan goes to his therapist, who asks him to talk about his mother. If you answer no, the story will briefly continue only for another unsatisfying ending to occur. It’s then only possible to go deeper into the story by talking about the mother. The element of choice is in Bandersnatch, but not really.

“Psh, you foolish pleb,” you might already be typing. “That’s the point of the episode! Choice is an illusion! Nothing will ever be as satisfying as you want it to be! The choices you have in life are tragically limited, and Bandersnatch represents that perfectly!”

Don’t worry, I’ve already thought of that and disregarded it as pretentious and wrong. Bandersnatch brought out some of my more cynical views on Black Mirror because I really don’t think it’s that deep. I don’t think its lack of impactful choices represent the lack of choices we have in life. I think it represents the lack of resources they had to make a movie with endless possibilities. And it’s silly to believe that all roads truly lead to “kill dad,” as Bandersnatch might lead you to believe. I really do think that they had a good idea for a concept, but relied so heavily on said concept that the actual content they made was just mediocre.

There was one moment that built my hopes that this episode would turn into something great, but like all choices in the movie, it led to quick endings that sent the viewer back to a previous scene. Rather than choosing to see a doctor at one point in the story, viewers can send Stefan to to Colin’s apartment. Colin is another video game developer, and he and Stefan take hallucinogens together. Colin uses the experience to tell Stefan that their lives are being controlled by someone else and that their own choices are meaningless. The scene ends with the choice to throw either Stefan or Colin over the apartment’s balcony to his death. I hoped this would lead to some deeper layers of a Black Mirror acid trip, but that didn’t happen. If Stefan goes over, Bandersnatch gets released posthumously and the movie ends. If Colin goes over, Stefan sees a monster and the movie ends. Moments that could be interesting turns in the story, but they just never pan out like they should, and the experience Bandersnatch wants you to have instead is far less interesting.

I’m glad I watched Bandersnatch because it really was one of the most original concepts for a show I’ve ever seen, but this was done at the expense of coming off as gimmicky and ultimately a lesser Black Mirror experience. People have found enjoyment out of Bandersnatch, but I don’t think I’ll ever have a desire to watch it again. I’ve seen all the endings that I know of and was occasionally entertained. If someone finds a secret ending or path that makes Bandersnatch more interesting, my opinion might change, but for now, it really was just meh. It serves as a lesson that not all good ideas produce good products.

Or, in terms the movie would understand, 2.5 stars out of 5. Kill Dad.

to all the boys i’ve loved before-if it achieved a 95% on rotten tomatoes, so can you!

Welcome to an IWaP movie review, where someone with a minimal understanding of film rants excessively about movies he just saw. Since MoviePass is experiencing the consequences of its questionable business model, I’m left watching movies for cheap, so today I’ll talk about the Netflix smash hit, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, a film with a title long enough to be on an old Fall Out Boy album.

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, or TAtBILB as I’ll call it because I’m lazy, has gotten rave reviews because it has a protagonist from a group incredibly underrepresented in Hollywood of its charming cast and generally wholesome tone. The teen rom-com is an adaptation of a young adult novel of the same name by Jenny Han. Since its release on August 17th, it has amassed quite a following, and critical praise of it has resulted in a  Rotten Tomatoes score of 95% (Note: This does not mean critics say it is a 95% quality movie; rather it means that 95% of critics would at least classify it as good).

As someone who hates when something gets universal praise due to some weird, inexplicable belief that there has to be balance in the universe, I admittedly had a negative preconception of TAtBILB before viewing it, but I tried to keep an open mind. Upon seeing it my verdict is… meh. See, I come from a bizarre place of finding the current wave of young adult fiction to be obnoxious as hell, but at the same time I have a weird, only semi-ironic love of late 90s, early 2000s teen comedies. While they’re probably objectively bad, I love movies like She’s All That. I also sometimes like coming of age stories, and sometimes I don’t. I loved 2016’s The Edge of Seventeen… but I don’t really like To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.

Anyway, whats’ the premise of To All the Boys Who Stole My Lunch Money In Middle School? Lara Jean, played by Lana Condor, is a junior in high school. She’s the middle child with her older sister, Margot, moving abroad for college, and her younger sister, Kitty, in fifth grade. Lara Jean has very few friends and mostly keeps to herself in her room. Except she has a secret; she has written five love letters to boys she has loved over the years and stored the letters in a box. Her story starts when Kitty steals the letters and sends them out in an effort to get Lara out of her comfort zone. The premise sets itself up for some fun moments interacting with the five recipients as she starts to express herself and grow up.

But what we get is a very by-the-books love triangle with not too much new to add to the genre or anything too interesting to say in general. My first complaint may solely be an Ethan Nitpick™, but I didn’t like the way the letter plot ended up. One of the letters is returned to sender because Lara Jean mailed it to the camp she fell in love with the boy at. A second, sent to a boy she met at Model UN, doesn’t really ever turn into anything. A letter sent to Lucas, a boy she danced with at homecoming, amounts to nothing because Lucas is gay. That leaves us with the final two letters, which leave Lara Jean with the classic young adult dilemma of which boring, conventionally attractive white boy she wants to bang PG-13 make out with.

Maybe this is also a rare problem, but it needs to be said. It was hard to tell the two generic white guys apart for a while. Noah Centineo who plays Peter and Israel Broussard who plays Josh are similar enough that it honestly took halfway through the movie for me to confidently say who I was seeing when a scene started. It’s clear early on that they are there to make young girls fantasize about being the girls they fall for instead of Lara Jean because their personalities are even blander than their appearances. Peter is a jock who just broke up with Genevieve, Lara Jean’s ex best friend, and Josh is an artsy (?) type who used to be a close friend of Lara Jean’s and, more importantly, was dating Margot until Margot broke up with him before leaving for college. Lara Jean had crushes on both of them at different points, but after the letters get out, she is forced to confront her feelings for them.

Except she really isn’t? Apart from a moment of initial embarrassment, the movie quickly shifts to a far more important plot device: this really convoluted plan between Peter and Lara Jean. In order to make Genevieve jealous, they planned to pretend to be dating. The rest of the movie takes a very predictable route of this fake dating turning into them actually developing feelings for one another. This makes the actual love triangle of the movie between Lara Jean, Peter, and Genevieve. Because Josh is out of the movie for like an hour. Seriously, Josh gets completely left out after a while only to come back in the end to give Lara Jean the ok to go after Peter. It almost felt like the writers had an idea for the Josh/Lara Jean relationship and then scrapped it a fourth of the way through to focus on Peter/Lara Jean, but then they never edited their old material out.

Ok, now that I’ve typed out Lara Jean enough times I have to commence my rant on this character. Lana Condor does a good job with the material she’s given, and as I’ll talk about later she does have some moments that are legitimately charming, but the general character of the TAtBILB protagonist just comes across as obnoxious, the way adults think quirky teens are. First off, the writers did a quick cop out by giving her two first names in place of a personality. “Lulz, isn’t it quirky that she goes by Lara Jean instead of Lara or Jean?” Her only real conflict in life seems to be that her mother died when she was young, which doesn’t really seem like that big of a deal because her father is shown to be a loving, supportive figure. Plus, she’s a doctor’s kid in a comfy upper middle class house, so I feel very little sympathy for her. What really makes her annoying is the bullshit idealistic artsy tendencies they give her. The title of the movie alone should be enough to illicit a groan in most groan adults who have realized that love is not all cute and perfect and can be wrapped up in a beautiful little love letter. When she narrates the point of the letters to the audience, it comes across as forced poeticism, a trap all of these poorly-written young adult movies/books fall into. No one talks like that. They do              k i n d   o f  touch on this in one point I actually liked about the movie. At the end when Josh tells Lara Jean that she can’t live life writing things in letters and never doing anything about them. In general though they seem to portray this #adorkable style of romance to be a good thing. Oh, and another thing about Lara Jean. One of the few personality traits they give her is that she can’t drive. Good job, team. Way to give combat  stereotypes.

Wait, how have I not talked about Lara Jean’s friend yet? Apart from Lucas, the gay recipient of Lara Jean’s letter who sometimes is friends with her throughout the film, Lara Jean’s only real friend is Christine. I think they were trying to make her a hilarious rebellious type, but it never really landed for me. Her motivation in the movie is that she’s Genevieve’s cousin, so she wants to get revenge on her too? It’s weird. And she ditches school at lunch to go get Subway™. One of her main personality traits comes from product placement. I’m never too harsh on product placement as long as it doesn’t interfere with a movie since sometimes it’s necessary to get a movie funded, but at the same time, it probably should not be a key part of a character. Anyway, she doesn’t really do much apart from eat Subway.

There were a few times where the movie did live up to its charming status. When Lara Jean and Peter are coming up with the terms for their fake relationship, Lara Jean offers to allow Peter to put his hand in her back pocket. When Peter asks why she offered that, Lara Jean replies that that’s what they do in Sixteen Candles. This is a rare instance where her naivety does come across endearingly, and it’s a great detail for how limited Lara Jean’s real world experience is; John Hughes movies are her standards for romance. I liked it. Good job. Another moment I liked came after a video was posted of Lara Jean and Peter kissing in a hot tub. Lara Jean, again because she was so naive, stated that she was embarrassed a sex tape of her was uploaded. They unfortunately kind of ruined this by repeating it a few times in a single scene. Like, I got it the first time. It was cute. Move on.

The movie ends on a happy note that’s mostly deserved, even though Josh is completely, unjustly ignored. I honestly think if To All the Boys I’ve Sang Mr. Brightside With At The Bar was not as hyped as it is, I would probably think it was cute when I watched it, and then I’d never think of it again. But I’ve seen so many articles and tweets about it that I sadly must be so opinionated about it.

Here’s some thin ice for me to walk on: representation in film. It is an important thing. People deserve to see themselves represented in film. Black Panther was an awesome movie that gave a large number of people a chance to see someone who liked like them on the big screen. That’s really cool. However, we should not simply praise a film for inclusiveness. We need more movies about Asian Americans, but I don’t personally think a movie should receive the amount of praise TAtBILB has solely on the basis of its representation though. Anyway, I’m going to stop before I say anything incriminating.

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before certainly isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever seen. But the laughs in it are sparse, the drama is minimal, the characters are pretty shallow, and it really does stick to rom-com tropes way too closely. There’s apparently some appeal to it, but I didn’t really get it.

I give To All the Boys Who Said “You Up?” on Tinder a six-inch Subway sandwich out of a delicious footlong Subway sandwich.