Thursday, March 4, 2010

Dead Like Me: Life After Death

After finishing the television series Dead Like Me, I went into the movie with some reluctance. Everything I loved about the show (read here), the originality, the characters, the actors who play the characters, and Bryan Fuller's imagination, have all been thrown out the window. The movie picks up five years after George has died (four years after the series was sadly killed), the beloved leader of the pack Rube has finally seen his lights and a new leader replaces him. This new leader is younger, much wealthier, is all about technology (the beloved post-its are no more). Now I hate this guy from the beginning. Of course the only reason he is brought on is because Mandy Patinkin is off doing post-Dead Like Me stuff. Along with him being absent, the other notable changes are that they brought in a new actress to play Daisy and Der Waffle Haus is burned to a crisp. With all these changes, I can't expect this movie to be anything like the series I loved, and it's not.
None of the characters are even the same, even the ones that are played by the same actors. Apparently, the writers thought it'd be OK to just leave everything from the show out of the movie. The new leader is so carefree and manipulative that the group decides to throw out all the rules Rube had them follow. I can't even begin to explain how disappointed I am in this movie, which I'm only halfway through so maybe the second half will have some redemptive quality.

I'm crossing my fingers, but not holding my breath.

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