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Reviews
Cobra Kai (2018)
80s Nostalgia in the best possible way
It is so obvious that this show was written by a child of the 80s who wants to geek out with his friends about everything he loved growing up, so for the rest of us who grew up then, it's a lot of fun. It also makes you wonder where William Zabka has been, because he is shockingly good.
There's really a lot to like about it. The soundtrack is on point. The acting, across the board, is solid. The stories are generally engaging, and none of it is really hooky or cheesy, which, let's be honest, it so could be. The fact that they dug up nearly everyone actor/actress who had anything more than a bit part in the movies and brought them back is also a lot of fun. Finally, the random things they throw in (probably just because the show runners love them) are always a trip. I mean how can you not love the healing powers of a Dee Snyder concert?
That being said, I have to say that sometimes the writing is lazy to the point of being a little annoying. They have a tendency to write themselves into a corner with some big event, and then have to either fast forward the timeline (which never seems to really work because it makes no sense that the central conflict would drag out like that in order for characters to heal, server their time, etc.) or somehow in this world, people heal at a miraculously quick rate and attempted manslaughter and evading arrest gets you a couple of months in juvie. The way they treat the police is also hard to accept. One restraining order and they ignore theft, vandalism, breaking an entering, assault (including with a deadly weapon), etc. Since Kreese took over, they have upped the ante so much on the Cobra Kai antics from what was in the movies, that literally, every single member should, and probably would be, in prison.
The other issue is, as my wife pointed out about mid-series, you almost always know what's going to happen next. Sometimes that's not a bad thing, because what happens next is a fun character reveal, but it would be fun if they tried a little harder to throw in a twist once in a while.
Behaving Badly (2014)
How desperate were they?
Seriously... Mary Louise Parker, Cary Elwes, Elizabeth Shue, Patrick Warburton, Jason Lee, and Dylan McDermott all in a movie that is this incredibly bad... and all in fairly big roles playing reprehensible characters. I just can't wrap my head around it. I have to believe there is a much better movie to be made about how they were talked into this.