LittleBlade Reviews

Mrs Sidhu Investigates: Ripped (2023) Season 1, Episode 1

MURDER, SHE STEWED

[2/10 · 7 October 2023]

Take Murder, She Wrote, replace a mystery writer with a chef, and you get Mrs Sidhu Investigates. Only without the charm or barely any well-known actors.

Mrs Sidhu only gets involved in the investigation because, by an astonishing coincidence, she starts a catering job at a gym the day after two murders occur. By an amazing coincidence, her "niece" happens to work there and, by an incredible coincidence, is the prime suspect.

By the following day, without doing any kind of Jessica Fletcher-type snooping or inconspicuous interrogation of the people involved, she presents the police inspector on the case with a dossier she's produced, with motives, alibis, and photographs of all the suspects... including, for some reason, the inspector himself!

And that's it. We never see her doing any actual investigation. And the resolution of the mystery is galloped through in such a garbled manner, it's hard to understand what the hell it was all about : someone was blackmailing someone who was blackmailing someone else with something that was only mentioned briefly in passing, and was somehow driven to kill for some vague reason.

The most irritating thing is at the finale, Mrs Sidhu tells the inspector "We solved our first case together". Why would she assume she's going to be solving any further cases with him... unless she has another relative who coincidentally happens to work for an obviously potential murder victim that she just happens to be catering for.

The performances were okay, but nothing special, and I don't know if this appeals enough to want to watch any further episodes.

Family Guy: Oscars Guy (2022) Season 21, Episode 1

Time To Call It A Day

[1/10 · 14 August 2023]

To use a motoring analogy, Family Guy has been coasting on fumes for years, but with this episode it's now running on empty.

You'd think the writers would be spoilt for choice parodying movies that had won the Oscar for Best Movie, but no - it seems they haven't even seen one since 1999. (Though looking at a list of the films made since then that fit their criteria, I suppose they didn't have much to work with... I haven't even heard of most of them, let alone seen them.)

The problem was that the three films they chose to spoof were so old, there was nothing left to spoof that hadn't already been done before : Family Guy itself has already parodied all three films in short skits many times, long ago. There wasn't a single funny moment in the whole episode.

Seth MacFarlane (who even sounded bored performing his lines) said many years ago that he felt Family Guy should come to an end... there's no doubt that time has now come.

The Wrong House Sitter (2020 TV Movie)

The Wrong Face

[1/10 · 16 March 2022]

Anything with Jason Shane Scott is worth watching just for the sheer vanity of the man.

In my house, we call him "Flintstone" because of his ridiculous five o'clock shadow... more like eleven o'clock (pm) shadow.

In one scene, his face looks like it's made up from three different ones : the aforementioned, never the same twice, dirty-looking lower half; the natural-coloured, but clearly surgically enhanced area around the too-tight eyes; and the bizarrely pale forehead smoother than an ice-rink thanks to botox, enhanced by preened eyebrows that have been lifted so high they almost reach his hairline.

It's a toss-up whether he looks horrified, or he looks horrifying.

Does he own a shirt that he can fasten the buttons all the way up? Or does he just want us all the admire his chest pumped so much that it's bigger than those of all the female cast-members combined. And the tightness of his trousers over his too-big backside probably explains his strained voice.

I saw a quote from him saying that he quit a soap he was in because he was tired of being asked to do shirtless scenes. He must have realised that was the only reason he had the job, because he's done countless shirtless scenes - revealing a chest that looks more plastic that Ricardo Montalban's in Star Trek II : The Wrath Of Khan - in everything he's done since.

Does his contract for these endlees "The Wrong..." films stipulate that people must constantly refer to how handsome he is, in a vain - pun intended - attempt to convince anyone other than himself that he is handsome?

Follow a Star (1959)

The big flaw in one of the film's major plot points...

[5/10 · 11 July 2020]

One of the main plot points of the film is that Norman is afraid to sing in front of anyone, unless his girlfriend is present. And yet the first time we do see him singing it's at the theatre, amidst/in front of an audience, shamelessly upstaging the famous singer who gave him the free tickets in the first place... but his girlfriend couldn't even accompany him because she already had another engagement! Which makes his frequent later complaints that he can't sing because she's not there, ludicrous. The best thing about the film is the many guest appearances, especially Ron Moody as the doleful violinist. But as far as I'm concerned, Jerry Desmonde is the true star of the film - his television performance of his new hit song is hysterical. But why on earth did Vernon Carew think that Norman's singing voice would revive his career? I can only imagine what Vernon's faithful fans would think of his transition from mellow crooner to sounding - in that particular song - like a cross between Huckleberry Hound and Goofy! (To be brutally frank, I can't believe anyone in the real world would think that was a good singing voice.) I can't say I'm a huge fan of Norman Wisdom : he's okay in small doses, but quite often his scenes of gurning and capering go on so long they become intolerable. Having an idea of what he was like in real life (thanks to the many TV interviews he gave) it's clear that he had a pretty high opinion of himself and his many talents, and that comes across in his many of his films - especially the later ones where he has more involvement in the writing, staging, and so on.

The Lowe Files (2017)

Watch the season trailer... that's as much relevant content the whole series contains

[1/10 · 1 April 2020]

I don't know what programme the other reviewers here are reviewing, but it certainly can't have been The Lowe Files. I've watched the first three episodes (I only stuck with the third because it was shown as the second half of a double-bill, and there was nothing else on for that half-hour), and that's more than enough for me. It's beyond me how a programme with a running time of 24 minutes maximum, can spend the first 12 of them showing the Lowes dithering about who gets to ride shotgun, why they didn't get any cups with their meal - the ordering of which we get to see in every detail - , and who'll be first to get seasick. I've seen minute-long trailers for programmes with more content and substance than this abysmal ego-massage for the constantly mugging to camera Rob Lowe and his tedious bickering sons. It's blatantly obvious why this tripe didn't get a second season.

The War of the Worlds (2019)

Typical BBC force-fed brainwashing

[1/10 · 14 November 2019]

At the time of writing this, the British broadcast of this is still three days away... odd, bearing in mind the British public paid for it (via the compulsory television licence fee which funds the BBC - and ONLY the BBC) and I've now seen these reviews and found we're about the last ones to see it!

I've been looking forward to this (well, as much as I can look forward to anything the BBC make these days) since they announced this "first ever version that is loyal to the original book" about two years. Today I read some listings magazine articles promoting the series - and by the the time I was halfway through, I decided I wasn't going to bother watching.

The main character is Amy, "a fiercely intelligent woman fighting against the expectations of Edwardian society". Uh-oh. In the words of Eleanor Tomlinson - the actress portraying Amy - "there's a lot more of Amy in it. She's not in the book that much... she is sort of the leader of the two. She wears the trousers". And there you go : that enormous, crashing THUD you just heard is the other shoe hitting the floor. Yes, this is YET another BBC programme where the female characters have been put front and centre and are focus of the whole thing.

But wait : what of the other half of "the two" Eleanor Tomlinson referred to? Ah, that would be George, who's left his wife to live with Amy "much to the disapproval of society". George? To quote Rafe Spall, who plays him : "my character is essentially a new creation for this series"! So much for a faithful adaptation of the book! But he is named after H.G. Wells - well, his middle name, at least - so that's okay!

Thank you to all the people who posted their unanimously scathing reviews on here, because I now know not to bother watching JUST to see the Martians and their War Machines, because from the sound of it, they're barely in it!

If the BBC can't make anything nowadays that isn't centred on empowered women or racial injustice - whether or not it fits into the context of the story and/or setting - I wish they just wouldn't bother. I'm sick of being force-fed this constant brainwashing! And after finding out that the British public is paying to make programmes that we're the last to see (although in this case, I think that might be a mercy!), I'm seriously considering lobbying Boris Johnson to revoke the television licence fee altogether!