Dr. Horrible...

[sdelmonte]

In the end, what was very witty and well done turns into something painful and predictable if still well done. It's a Joss ending, which doesn't fit with how the story started, but is what we expect from him by now. I love his work, but it's getting so tiring to always have the rug pulled from under.

Also, it didn't help that while Billy was a reasonably well rounded character, the other players were stick figures, creating an imbalance. You can excuse this by saying that this was not meant to be particularly deep, but the film was about the length of an average TV drama, and so Joss had no reason to make Penny and Captain Hammer so flimsy other than he wanted to. The climax might have been stronger if Hammer were not such an over the top clod.

Still, the music was good, and the acting was good and this does show that straight-to-the-Net projects can work. To a degree.

Comments

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

This is just to say, your cut tag isn't working.

[sdelmonte]

D'OH! Sorry. Have fixed it.

Saves me the trouble of writing a review

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

I have to agree. I do think Whedon is in something of a rut, which is odd for someone who is also being very creative.

Even in his longer works, like Firefly, Whedon invests a great deal in his central characters and leaves nothing over for his villains or side characters. They have more and more ended up being props for the hero, rather than anything else.

[the_croupier]

I almost completely agree ('almost' only because I had too much fun watching Fillion playing a lumbering dimwit). As of Act III, Joss endings have become very tiresome things indeed.

But still, had fun with the rest of it. Now I want more Evil League of Evil.

[sdelmonte]

I agree about the ELE. I am very curious about Bad Horse. Can he talk? Is he truly a horse? Is he truly evil?

[the_croupier]

And we never got to hear the horrible Death Whinny!

[genarti]

Captain Hammer was flimsy, but I found him the most entertaining character in the show. Mostly because Nathan Fillion was clearly having tons of fun hamming it up, and he was marvelously over-the-top.

I liked Penny, but I didn't expect much of her. Either she'd leave them both for being jerks -- which I would have found more satisfying, but it would have made it more her story than anyone else's in a somewhat unsupported change of narrative focus, and as someone else pointed out in another post it would have given Dr Horrible a really annoying Nice Guy Pushed To Evil Through A Woman's Spurning motivation -- or she'd continue to be nice and pleasant and the most human character on the screen, and thus never really holding her own in the over-the-top scenery-chewing that the whole show was set up as. ...And then, of course, she got refrigerated, and I buried my head in my hands and said, "Of COURSE she died. Thanks, Joss." I didn't expect it, but I should have; I was more annoyed than surprised when it happened.

Overall, I had fun with moments -- mostly the moments when the actors were clearly having the most fun -- but I wasn't deeply impressed.