DR. WHO: THE WOMAN WHO FELL TO EARTH – SHAVE AND A HAIR CUT…………….???

 

SHORT TAKE:

Disappointing, lackluster reboot of Dr. Who into the first female incarnation of the main character, in a plot that is a routine set up without any real payoff.

WHO SHOULD GO:

Anyone CAN go see this DR. WHO, but…(to use a different interrogative pronoun)…WHY?

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LONG TAKE:

I went with an open mind, I really did. After all, I was pleasantly shocked to discover that, contrary to my long held opinion, a good superhero could be made featuring a woman when Wonder Woman’s Gal Gadot knocked the socks off me with her powerful but feminine portrait of a righteously heroic super woman.

So it was with high hopes that I went to go see the premiere of the very first show featuring the very first woman Dr Who – that is with the exception of The Curse of Fatal Death, the parody filmed for the charity Comic Relief with Rowen Atkinson who ultimately morphs into Joanne Lumley in 1999.

If you like the cheap waxy chocolate in your Easter basket; if you make your milkshakes out of fat free ice milk; if you prefer plain unsweetened rice cakes for breakfast; if your refreshment of choice is a clear sugar free diet soda (why don't you just drink water?); if your musical taste runs to the elevator music version of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" — then this is the Dr Who for you. All promise and little delivery.

SPOILERS

To start with, the pronouns present a challenge, but let’s do this – if I’m referring to Jody Whittaker’s Dr Who it seems fair to use the feminine. BUT if I refer to any previous incarnation, then the masculine grammatical reference should apply.

For those of you NOT familiar with Dr Who, please refer to my previous blog on Dr Who: Twice Upon a Time, which gives a quick "cheat sheet" introduction to the Whovian Universe.

For those of you already familiar with Dr Who, the premise of The Woman Who Fell to Earth, is that the first female Doctor (literally) falls to Earth – and physically – through a train roof, just as the passengers are being terrorized by an energy ball of tentacles. Companions happen upon her and follow like dust motes in the wake of a guppy and they decide to figure out what it is and its connection to another alien with teeth imbedded in its face. Meanwhile, an entire more interesting and better acted subplot involving a missing girl and her murdered brother are brushed aside like so much flotsam and the story drags to a conclusion with manufactured tension and a lead who can not even smile convincingly.

None of this is remotely quality Who.

Even the beginning flies in the face of the basic mechanics of the Who-verse. Everyone knows or suspects strongly that Dr. Who’s TARDIS gets him/her to where they are most needed. From the get go, as explained by Whittaker's Who, the TARDIS was wounded and dematerialized leaving the new Who to the tender ministrations of gravity. So Who's propitious appearance at the train to save the passengers seems more like coincidence than it should.

Next, while the Doctor has shown himself to be physically resilient, and crashing bodily into Earth like a thrown bowling ball is not necessarily the most injurious event he has ever survived, to fall to Earth from near outer space and crash THROUGH a train roof without so much as mussed hair is a bit much for even my considerable suspension of disbelief. 

Tennant, having burst through a skylight in The End of Time Part II looks like he's been on the wrong side of a blender.

And her adaptability to her new body misses SO much. Tennant noticed new teeth immediately before collapsing from the regeneration effort. Matt Smith examined his whole body in a humorous frenzy even as the TARDIS was exploding around him: "Legs! I've still got legs! Good. Arms. Hands. Oo! Fingers. Lots of fingers. Ears. Yes. Eyes two. Nose. I've had worse. Chin. [Noting its size]  Blimey. Hair. [presciently] I’m a girl. [feels Adam’s apple] No no. I’m not a girl. [Pulling a lock of hair forward to look at it, grumps] And still not ginger." When River Song morphed from young black teen to middle aged but shapely white woman we got more brilliant acting with Alex Kingston as she admires her own new hair then hollars from the bathroom: "Oh, that’s magnificent! I’m gonna wear lots of jodhpurs!" 

Jody Whittaker's Dr. Who's only comment is "Brilliant" and we're not even sure she's reacting to her new gender. Granted this is a flaw in the writing, but there's no indication from her acting or movements that she is: awed, amazed, dismayed, confused, curious, intrigued, or turned on by the fact that for the first time she is whole new GENDER! When in the past your previous selves have been surprised and dazzled by hair color and teeth size, and another Time Lord by the size of her own booty, you'd THINK a change in your entire sex would merit SOME attention. Even the spoof skit showed Lumley impressed with her new found…upgrades. In The Woman Who Fell to Earth her responses COULD have been tastefully done and REALLY funny. But it was like "Shave and a hair cut…………….." WHERE was the overwhelm? Where was the curiosity?

And her acting is – to put it kindly – bland. To NOT be so kind, she demonstrates all the emoting variations of an indulgent second grade school teacher.

Don't believe me? Let's take a trip down memory lane:

Tennant:

Smith:

Eccleston:  

Hurt:

Capaldi:

Now here's the new Dr Who: Her busy face,  her studious face  her surprised face. Is she afraid to move her eyebrows? Or show any genuine enthusiasm? Or risk looking silly?

Where is the humor? Where is the childlike enthusiasm to which we can all relate? And while, again, this is largely the fault of the script, it's not even that the show takes itself too seriously. I've often told our kids – it's not necessarily WHAT you say, but HOW you say it that makes all the difference. And I can't help but nostalgically wonder how a previous doctor (pick one – ANY one) would have done the reading on these same fairly uninspired lines and what desperately needed, resuscitating life they might have given them.

The writing is mundane and pedestrian. The trailer even features a good example: "I'm The Doctor. When people need help I never refuse." This is not only lazy writing but it is said with all the conviction of a PSA.

There's a scene where she jumps dramatically and dangerously (in Capaldi's slippery ill-fitting dress shoes) from one crane to another about 15 stories off the ground, then simply talks and tosses something to the bad guy to win the day. It would have been far more interesting if she had realized she did not have the upper body strength in the female body she now has, admitted that and worked around it. Realistically she could have done exactly what she ended up doing – talking and tossing – only without the death defying leap. This is just manufactured suspense.

Even the title is not particularly creative, merely a take on an old David Bowie sci fi vehicle The MAN Who Fell to Earth. There's no connection except the paraphrase.

Her companions are ginned up from what looks like the politically correct pool of the week: an elderly white man, married to a caricature of the pushy black woman, with a black teen grandson and a young woman whose last name is Khan who used to be a classmate of the grandson. They are all intimately related to each other yet we are to believe it is all coincidence. It was so unlikely a group of connections that I thought, surely the links must be part of the plot twist. But no, again just lazy writing to avoid having to introduce these characters to each other and endure the arduous task of creatively writing ways and events for them to get to know each other. Yet none of them has any real chemistry with either each other or the Doctor. And when one of them dies…..

SORRY – SPOILER – BUT HONESTLY, "WHO" CARES?

…….I wanted to feel badly about it but the show gave us little emotional investment to spend.

The direction was unremarkable but adequate – sort of like a high end shampoo commercial.

There is no vision. There was no rhyme or reason. Dr. Who started out over a half century ago as Britain's answer to Mr. Wizard – a science show which presented interesting facts in an entertaining way. It has – up to now – held to the tradition of teaching …. something: how to treat your fellow sentient creature, clever ways to solve puzzles, return evil with kindness, self sacrifice to protect the innocent, theories on effects of time travel, how other creatures from entirely different perspectives might react to the human culture, simply – thou shalt not kill. But I got the impression Mr. Chibnall, the show's new writer, has not yet gotten the memo on this one. He wrote a couple of the mini-shorts "The Power of Three" and "Pond Life" as well as some pretty decent other shows: 42, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, Cold Blood/Hungry Earth. But being able to pick up a basket of pecans does not mean you have the strength to carry the entire TREE. And carrying a FOREST is what shouldering the work of creatively moving forward with this formerly imaginative show, with more than 50 years of history and backstory demands from WHOever thinks they can captain this ship. Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat or Russell T. Davies, Chibnall is not.

There IS a lot of running, some red herring puzzles and a so-so denoument with forced tension and nothing to learn in the end. We don't even really find out what happens to the person she set out to save. And when the survivor moves in self-defense she chides him: "You shouldn't have done that." We go to an awkward visual cut to somewhere else on the soundstage and that's the last we ever see of him. Huh?

She preposterously builds a new sonic screwdriver out of dust, gizmos and a bag of metal coffee spoons lying around a cluttered human workshop. It might have been vaguely believable if she had used the tech that WAS potentially available from a discarded space "eggshell" but even that McGuffin wasn't utilized. If they are THAT easy to make why doesn't she make LOTS of them? Hand them out like party favors to her companions?

And to top everything else off they went out of their way to dis Christianity. Mostly, Dr Who, like Star Trek, leaves religion alone. But when one of their crew dies, the funeral is held in a church, but the cross beam of the cross behind the altar area is deliberately covered by carefully placed…balloons! Balloons? At a FUNERAL? And why HAVE the funeral in a Christian church if you are going to cover up the primary symbol of that institution unless you: A. Want to go out of your way to thumb your nose at the Christian faith, or B. You don't want to be bothered to think of any place else and you're too cheap to actually take the cross down. So disrespectful or indolent, take your pick.

And the death was stupid ANYway. The character threw themself into a dangerous situation unnecessarily then died clumsily. The death served no real purpose other than to cut the number of companions from four to three. "Thrift, Horatio, thrift." Fewer paychecks I suppose.

There are a zillion other dumb plot decisions: did she really wear that manky suit to the funeral? She doesn't even TRY to negotiate for the captured sister that one of the subplot characters died horribly trying to find. Since when does a Time Lord stick their finger up their nose to determine when they are going to faint? Did Chibnall think this was funny? Why on Earth would someone touch a glowing grid that appears out of nowhere? How DID he get his bike out of the tree? Did she not even CONSIDER her "friends" might be sucked into space with her using her jury rigged spit and bailing wire transporter? Why would she run on a wet crane in slippery dress shoes a couple sizes too big when she could have at least taken them off? What are the chances ALL the companions, randomly found, knew each other already without that fact being a plot point?

It all felt  – as though you were given Peter Davison's celery stalk with no dressing as your entire dinner or you were expected to warm yourself with only a bit of fringe off of Tom Baker's scarf – underdone, incomplete, ill-thought out, unfulfilling and unfinished (kind of like the way we all felt about the actor Christopher Eccleston's career as Dr. Who after he refused to be in the 50th Anniversary Special for no particularly good reason). So watching this Dr. Who I now know how Roger Rabbit felt when Judge Doom knocked on the wall and "inquired": "Shave and a hair cut," and he wasn't allowed to yell "TWO-BITS!"

So finally we are left with yet another interrogative pronoun and a burning question: WHERE is the real Dr. Who?! And will SOMEONE please say "TWO-BITS!"

CHRISTOPHER ROBIN – HIS LAST NAME WAS MILNE!!! AND OTHER STUPID FILMMAKING DECISIONS

SHORT TAKE:

Christopher Robin attempts to show how a grown up with an intimate connection to a famous child's fantasy book, deals with adulthood in a British version of the equally weak Hook. Dull, ponderously slow, with a poorly thought out plot, while there's no reason NOT to take your child, there is very little to recommend it.

WHO SHOULD GO:

Anyone CAN go.

AND IF YOU LIKE THESE REVIEWS PLEASE SUBSCRIBE! THEN YOU'LL GET     EVERY NEW REVIEW SENT STRAIGHT TO YOUR E-MAIL!!

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LONG TAKE:

I REALLY wanted to like Christopher Robin. I had been looking forward to it for months, but the over trailer-ing should have given me a clue. Advertising too much is often a sign the film makers know they have an underachiever and throw everything up on the screen hoping it will attract enough audience to pay for itself.

The good news is there is nothing, per se, wrong with the movie and you can, I think, safely take a child of any age to see it. The biggest danger you run is that they will fall asleep.

The acting is excellent and special kudos go to Ewan MacGregor, the grown up Christopher Robin, who, like Bob Hoskins before him in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, had to perform with … nothing. There was never a moment when these stuffed animals did not seem alive.

The voices were all very familiar. Jim Cummings, the only veteran in the crew, who has been speaking lines for Winnie the Pooh and Tigger since 1988 reprises the voice roles with his very familiar tranquil-laconic Pooh and loquacious-over excitable Tigger. The others re-create the other characters' voices almost flawlessly.  I only wish the story had been as well conceived.

Brad Garrett is the eighth person to groan the apathetic donkey, since Disney’s original featurettes. Nick Mohammed is the fourth Piglet. Peter Capaldi, the twelfth Dr Who (thirteenth if you count John Hurt), is the sixth Rabbit. Kanga is voiced by Sophie Okonedo (Liz Ten, the Queen in Dr Who), Roo by Sara Sheen. And Toby Jones, character actor from Sherlock, Dr. Who, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and an Avengers baddie, does a kiddie movie turn as Owl.

Hayley Atwell (Peggy Carter, Captain America's first girlfriend) is lovely as Christopher’s wife and Bronte Carmichael is very sweet as Christopher’s little girl Madeleine. The performers acted their little hearts out.

The bad news is that the resulting film was so disappointing it made me mad. So I hereby present to you:

SEVEN REASONS WHY CHRISTOPHER ROBIN, THE MOVIE, MADE ME MAD:

Where should I begin?

How about with a list?

1. Winnie gave me the creeps; 2. the theme was stupid; 3. there were a LOT of missed opportunities; 4. poor character development; 5. profoundly stupid historic inaccuracies; 6. man abuse; and 7. the crowning jewel of all ignorant decisions.

SPOILERS

1. WINNIE AND FRIENDS GAVE ME THE CREEPS

The animals gave me the creeps. They were dirty and old and used looking. Not at all the way a small child would see them or an adult in fond memory. They looked as you might find them mouldering away in some old attic. And, save, for some reason, Rabbit, their faces barely moved. They were virtually expressionless. This all would have made some sense if, as time went on and Christopher spent more time with them, they started appearing cleaner and newer and more alive. But, alas, they continued in their bedraggled state throughout the course of the movie. A child would not have noticed them being dirty so if we, the audience and Christopher are looking at them through his child eyes, then they would have seemed fresh and new. If we are looking at them REALISTICALLY, through the eyes of the jaded and adult Christopher why were they animated at ALL? And, if we are looking at them realistically, why do any of the other humans see them move or talk? If this was all part of Christopher’s delusions, no one else would have seen them animated.

The stuffed animals in Christopher Robin all had more in common with Sid’s toys in Toy Story than in a visit to the Hundred Acre Woods.

2. THE THEME WAS STUPID

The theme was "sometimes you have to do nothing to do something" ….uuum? What? Christopher takes this to heart and brings it to his employer, the owner of a luggage manufacturing company, as a solution to their economic woes. That they should give all of their employees two weeks paid leave so they will buy luggage … to go on holiday. This would be like giving someone $100 to spend $25 in your store and then calling that $25 a profit. Based on this, NO one should put Christopher in charge of a business. NOW – he ALSO, as an offhand comment, suggests they should have a line of luggage for the "common" folk, rather than exclusively produce for the wealthy. Well, OK, that’s a good idea but not when linked to the other one.

3. MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

With three screenplay writers, two "story by" credits and based on the works of A.A. Milne and Ernest Shepard, you would think Disney could have come up with a tight clever plot. Instead, it plays out exactly what it is – a story mashed together by committee.

Why didn’t Christopher bring his daughter with him when he followed Pooh to the Hundred Acre Woods for the first time in 30 years? Or have the writers have her follow him in? She was available having just seen the red balloon Christopher left her on her bike. He knew she would eventually figure out he had been there. His balloon gift made it no secret he had been in the vicinity, so why did he not just bring Madeleine with him?

From a plot point of view, this would have thematically helped establish a bridge between his youth and adulthood, AND allowed him to see his favorite playground from a fresh set of youthful eyes, AND provided Christopher with someone to bounce dialogue off of aside from talking to himself, of which he does a lot.

Why didn’t he see his reflection in a pool of water as a Heffalump? The idea is casually alluded to but the writers ignored the chance to bring this to the forefront and make it part of his character arc.

There is ONE good line in Hook, when the aged Wendy, finding out Peter has grown up to be an attorney specializing in corporate takeovers quips: "Peter, you’ve become a pirate!" Similarly, an image of the heffalump in place of the grown Christopher’s reflection could have been a touchstone moment. Instead he flails about with an unseen imaginary invisible heffalump to deliberately fool his stuffed animal friends.

Why couldn't, for example, each of the Hundred Acre inhabitants represent a change Christopher needed to make or an issue he had to resolve? Winnie could be his need to relax. Tigger to inspire finding the joys of childhood. Eeyore his insecurities. Kanga and Roo to renew and deepen his relationship with his wife and daughter, etc.  Nope they were just dirty tag overs, apparently abandoned in a dust covered corner of his attic.

4. POOR CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

There is little transition for Christopher from becoming a man so business oriented he reads hard economic texts to his daughter for bedtime stories to someone talking to an animated bear. Bruce Willis' character, Russ, in the comedy The Kid is inexplicably faced with the incarnation of his 10 year old self. Like the appearance of Winnie the Pooh in Christopher Robin, this manifestation forces the protagonist to confront some unpleasant truths about his grown up self. However, Russ, in The Kid, does not accept the little boy's identifty or even existence right away. Russ, first, seeks professional counseling, takes medication, and enlists the help of his personal assistant, all to simply prove to himself the kid is actually there and that others can see him. Putting aside that this was just a better movie by several factors of ten, this single point is a more realistic portrayal of someone coming to grips with an unknown. And Russ was only faced with a child, not a walking talking stuffed animal.

Alas, Mark Gatiss, we thought he knew better, Horatio. Mark Gatiss, (writer and actor from Sherlock and Dr Who) was roped into embarrassing himself, with a bad toupee, in the thankless task of a caricature bad boss. His Giles Winslow is so shallow it could have been replaced by a drawn stick figure. Gatiss is a wonderful actor but he was given little to do but tell Christopher to work on the weekend, knock over the same display several times in an incomprehensible show of clumsiness, which was neither amusing nor set up for any later pay off, and sulk when thwarted.

5. PROFOUNDLY STUPID HISTORIC INACCURACIES

The movie Christopher Robin shows the father as anxious to send the boy Christopher to boarding school and the mother sympathetic. Goodbye, Christopher Robin, the far superior biopic about the relationshiop between A.A. Milne and his son, was much more historically accurate, based upon the verifying documentation of the real Christopher's interaction with his mother and the fact he wouldn't have anything to do with the fortune made from the Winnie the Pooh stories. It was the MOTHER, in real life, who was callous and cold and couldn’t wait to be rid of the boy. OK, this is a Disney movie. I can overlook that alteration.

In C.R., his father dies while he is in boarding school, making him the "man of the house" when he was about 11. In fact, as accurately portrayed in Goodbye, Christopher Robin, his father didn’t die until after Christopher had grown, been to war, declared MIA, returned, and reconciled with Christopher. Christopher was 36 years old when A.A. Milne died. There was no particular reason for the premature "killing off" of Christopher Robin's father in this Disney misadventure except, perhaps, to explain why Christopher was in an unfulfilling job at a luggage factory. Reality would have provided a better plot point here too. In fact, Christopher rejected all of the money made from his father’s books and ran his own bookstore instead. This could easily have been worked in as a far more interesting character development issue.

Christopher detested his boarding school days and would NEVER have considered sending a beloved daughter there.

Christopher’s obsession with turning his daughter into a career woman was massively anachronistic for the early 1950's.

The real Christopher DID indeed marry but to a Leslie, not an Evelyn. And he did have a daughter but her name was Clare not Madeleine and she had cerebral palsy.

While I completely understand taking creative liberties for the sake of a story, if you are going to diverge THAT MUCH from an established and well known historic figure, why don’t you just create a NEW person out of whole cloth who has, perhaps, been INFLUENCED by the Winnie the Pooh stories and not concoct this absurd confabulation of made up "facts" about a real human whose past was rather well documented and easy to confirm.

6. MAN ABUSE

Here's a quiz for you. What doClick, Jingle All The Way, Kramer vs Kramer, Hook, and even Mary Poppins to a certain extent – all have in common? ANSWER:  Hard working, faithful husbands who are painted as the bad guy because they are busting their buns to provide for their families. In return, all they get is guilt from unappreciative wives and whiny children. I am sick to death of movies who cast men, who deny themselves fun and recreation, who proudly provide for their families, as negligent, solely on the grounds of that hard work.

What do these women WANT? Homer Simpson? Then, if a man is portrayed as fun loving, as in Mrs. Doubtfire, this behavior is presented as grounds on which to dump him and trade up to a rich established guy. And in Christopher Robin they do it again. Christopher is chided by his wife, raled at (behind his back) by his daughter and threatened (subtly) with divorce (I think we'll stay out here at the cottage for a while LONGER). Why? Because he had to forego a vacation when faced, by his superior, with two days to figure out how to cut 20% of the costs in his department without FIRING 20% of his people. I do not think his wife had any sense of proportion.

7. THE CROWN JEWEL OF IGNORANCE

And finally, the most egregious, most nonsensical, most distracting transgression was that the protagonist of the movie, acknowledged as the son of the author of Winnie the Pooh, was called Christopher Robin. His boss, who refers to everyone by their last names, calls him Robin. His WIFE is referred to as Mrs. Robin!!! This is not only wrong, it is profoundly STUPID, and worse, without purpose!! The name of the son of the author of Winnie the Pooh was NOT Christopher Robin!!! It was Christopher Robin MILNE!!! His father, the author of Winnie the Pooh was A.A. MILNE!!! The name "Milne" is never even mentioned!!! It is as though the screenwriters relied for accuracy on someone whose only experience with Winnie the Pooh was to watch one Disney short, for the first time, as an adult. And, I checked, there is no evidence to indicate that Christopher Robin MILNE, though he distanced himself from his father’s books and even his father’s money, EVER distanced himself from his family name. Christopher MILNE even wrote a book himself, The Enchanted Places, under the name Christopher MILNE!!!

You know, even wikipedia knows more than this. Pick up a BOOK why don’t you, Disney screenwriters, and look on the edge for the author's name!

So — take a small child if you must. There’s nothing really WRONG with the movie. But there is little right with it either. Personally, I think you’d be better off digging out one of the books by A.A. MILNE and reading the original to them. Or go back and watch The Kid.