Malibu Dan the Family Man, Season 1 (Series Review)

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Plot Summary

Malibu Dan and Holidae Sinclair run the southern California early morning show Good Morning Malibu.  Dan is always getting himself into comedic scrapes, while Holi is always looking for a better media offer.  They work with a goofy but likeable crew, but most of all, Dan considers himself to be a devout family man.  What else could go wrong in Tommy Blaze’s latest zany comedic endeavors?

 

Production Quality (1.5 points)

Much like Hitting the Breaks, Malibu Dan the Family Man is a sitcom with an average production, which means it comes with that annoying laugh track again.  There are also other sound effects used now, however.  Another annoying aspect of the sitcom genre is the use of ridiculously fake backgrounds and cheaply limited sets, as well as a total lack of actual locations.  Props are fine, however, as are other standard production elements, such as camera work and video quality, which keep this production from being totally worthless.  However, the editing also suffers from lack of creativity as it is quite choppy.  In the end, however, these few production positives are the only ones that exist in this unnecessary series.

Plot and Storyline Quality (0 points)

If Tommy Blaze and company were so desperate to make another sitcom, why not just make another season of Hitting the Breaks?  Malibu Dan is really no different—just some rearranged characters and different cast members.  Who would have noticed if some cast members changed for a new season of Breaks?  As it is, Malibu Dan includes the same old tired and ridiculous messages Blaze and David A. R. White have been hanging out to dry for years, such as an absurdly stark gender divide, their patronizing view of Generation Y, and the endless pursuit of media fame and stardom.  As usual, David A. R. White is the bemused husband\father who gets himself into a comedic venture that solves itself in twenty minutes or less.  Everything is the same, and there is nothing new in PureFlix.

Acting Quality (0 points)

With the same old egotistical PureFlix cast members—the Whites, Brad Heller, Kevin Downes, Gregg Binkley—Malibu Dan throws in a few more, such as comedy staple Victoria Jackson and Erik Estrada with a few more plastic surgeries since the last time we saw him.  Regardless of the changes, the zaniness and the over-the-top non-subtlety is still present and still makes for an eye-rolling experience as the leadership of Blaze continues to push ‘Christian’ comedy to the limits of absurdity.  The other cast members are swept along in the wave of nonsense and must wonder how they got stuck with this crew.

Continuity Quality (0 points)

Sitcoms are not made for continuity.  There are no story arcs or character arcs as each episode exists within its own twenty-minute bubble in which all conflicts introduced are promptly and easily solved in time to tack a trite Christian antidote onto the end.  Thus, no points can be awarded here.

Conclusion

As long as the PureFlix faithful continue to garner funding for these frivolous projects, they will keep making them to satisfy their longings to parade themselves around like idiots in the name of Christian entertainment, ever in the pursuit of fame and stardom, just like the characters they portray.  They are as shallow as the comedy they create, but as un-ignorable as David A. R. White’s bombastic displays of idiocy.  They project themselves as the leaders in Christian film and the saviors in a dark world of Christian persecution, but if this is all we have to lead us, it’s no wonder so many people scoff at Christian media.

 

Final Rating: 1.5 out of 14 points

 

January 15, 2018January 19, 2019 by Box Office Revolutionary Categories: Comedy, Series Reviews, SitcomTags: 2018, Andrea Logan White, Anton Fair, Antonio Sabato Jr., Aria Walters, Brad Heller, Clint Howard, Comedy, David A. R. White, David de Vos, David Pires, Don DiPetta, Erik Estrada, Francisco Ovalle, Gregg Binkley, John O'Hurley, Jon Kondelik, Kelly Stables, Kerry Lynne McHugh, Kevin Downes, Laura Reilly, Lauren Harper, Mark Christopher Lawrence, Matt Shapira, Pat McNeely, Philip Morton, PureFlix, Robin Givens, Robin Miller, Sarah Malberg, Shari Rigby, Shelley Robertson, Sitcom, Tim Pipher, Tommy Blaze, Victoria Jackson 6 Comments

Hilton Head Island, Season 1 (Series Review)

Plot Summary

The powerful Trisk family funs the influence ISLE News Network, and they are headed up by the patriarch Daniel Trisk.  However, when he has a sudden stroke on air, the entire empire is threatened.  Victoria Trisk, wife of Daniel, wields her power over the family while her husband lays in a coma.  Everyone in the family has a secret to guard, and each one of them wants the upper hand in the ISLE News Network business.  Will they remember their Christian faith and learn what really matters in the midst of all their conspiracies?

 

Production Quality (1 point)

Though there are attempts at making this ‘hope opera’ series a good production, many of them fall flat.  Beginning with a disorienting opening sequence and continuing with time and location captions, this series commits quite a few errors.  Though location footage is excellent, we never see the characters go to any of those places and instead are forced to watch them awkwardly stand around in cheap and limited indoor sets and in front of painfully obvious green screens.  Issues like these seem to suggest the PureFlix team didn’t know what they were doing with this series, even though video quality, camera work, and audio quality are fine.  The soundtrack is mostly generic, and there is a lot of awkward editing throughout, including lingering scenes and fadeouts.  Unfortunately, a lot of this series’ production is a cover for shortcuts and cheaply done work.

Plot and Storyline Quality (.5 point)

This ‘hope opera’ also commits pretty much all of the clichés that exist in the severely limited genre of soap operas.  Everything is overly dramatic for no reason, and every conflict seems forced and trumped up, as well as the premise itself.  It feels like this series exists in some alternate world, like a child’s play world, rather than the real world.  Most, if not all, of the characters are annoying and impressed with themselves as most of their dialogue is filled with information dumps of things that happened off screen.  For that matter, there is a lot of talk about these characters doing media work, but we rarely see any of it.  The Christian themes therein are extremely forced and plastic; however, near the end of this season, things take a sudden turn towards remotely interesting rather than the previous fingernails-in-the-chalkboard style they were going for.  Unfortunately, this is too little too late as too many loose ends and unnecessary subplots are introduced in the latter half of the season.  Though there are some interesting attempts at creating flawed characters, it’s just not enough to save this series from itself.

Acting Quality (1 point)

The cast of Hilton Head Island is perhaps among the most plastic-looking and fake-looking we have ever seen, including Hallmark casts.  The makeup work in this film is freakishly awful and out of place.  Besides this pageantry, as previously mentioned, cast members stand around awkwardly like they don’t know what to do.  Their line delivery is unnatural and stilted, while emotions are very wooden and forced.  A lot of the time, they are trying way too hard, especially in scenes that are supposed to have high emotion.  However, there is some improvement noted throughout that keeps this section from being zero.  As a side note, why did Bradley Dorsey choose this mess to restart his acting career with?

Continuity Quality (1 point)

Most of the time, episodes break and transition in the oddest ways.  Also, the same old transition sequences are used over and over again between scenes.  Though there are some attempts at character backstory, many concepts tend to recycle and repeat themselves throughout this series.  There are also way too many subplots going on for any hope of organization to exist.

Conclusion

Once again, PureFlix tries to breach new territory in the Christian entertainment world, and once again, it’s a swing and a miss.  We definitely need a series that has intrigue, conspiracy, and flawed characters with no clear heroes, but this is not the way to do it.  The soap opera mentality is doomed to failure from the start, and the plastic Christian message of this series is laughable, not to mention the utter pageantry embarrassment that this cast is.  Better luck next time, PureFlix.

 

Final Rating: 3.5 out of 14 points

 

January 11, 2018January 19, 2019 by Box Office Revolutionary Categories: Inspirational, Series Reviews, Soap OperaTags: 2017, Alysoun Wolfe, Anna Zielinski, Antonio Sabato Jr., Bradley Dorsey, Carey Scott, Carl Turner, Christina Collard, Crystal Hunt, David A. R. White, David Pires, DH Lewis, Donna Mills, Elizabeth Lambert, Inspirational, Jasmine Wright, Jeremy John Wells, Kenton Duty, Kerry Lynne McHugh, LA Castle Studios, Laura Reilly, Michael Swan, Michelle Thomson, Palma Lawrence Reed, Pam Pipher, PureFlix, Robert McCullough, Robin Miller, Shanna Strong, Soap Opera, Tim Pipher, Trevor Thomas Olwig, Wink Martindale 5 Comments

Me Again (Movie Review)

Plot Summary

Richie Chaplin is a mess.  He’s struggling to convey meaning in his pastoral ministry.  His wife has separate from him due to his depression and sleepwalking, taking their three children with her.  His two younger children don’t even know who he is.  His older daughter is messing around with a boy.  Basically, Richie doesn’t want to be himself anymore.  He wants somebody else’s life because his life stinks.  He’s forgotten the original purpose God created him for, so he’s about to embark on a wild journey outside of his control to remind him why he is living the life he is living.  In the end, he will have to decide whether or not he likes the life God has given him or if he is going to make one of the biggest mistakes of his life.

 

Production Quality (1 point)

To their credit, at least PureFlix invested in better camera quality than usual for this film.  The sound quality is also fine, but these are the only positive aspects of the production of Me Again.  Throughout this zany drug trip into the creative faculties of David A. R. White and Tommy Blaze, the camera angles can get dizzying, confusing, and downright amateurish in their attempt to be dramatic or comedic.  Cheesy horror effects are inserted randomly and out of context.  Low-quality special effects are overused and invasive.  The surroundings are painfully obviously reused from Marriage Retreat, suggesting that this movie was borne out of that film’s B-rolls.  Finally, all editing sense is thrown out the window as the plot tosses hither and fro with no system or consistency, like they’re just throwing stuff up against the wall to see what happens.  Overall, Me Again feels like an experimental film that either accidentally got released or was released to try to glean desperately needed funds.  Either way, it doesn’t work.

Plot and Storyline Quality (.5 point)

Few screenwriters venture to create a psychological comedy, and Me Again may stand as a testament as to why.  The plot of this film is extremely hard to nail down.  After watching an unusual sequence on television two nights in a row, David A. R. White is suddenly transported into an alternate universe in which he gets to become a random rich guy, a model he saw on TV, a goldfish (?!?!), an infant, a housemaid, the teenage boy trying to date his daughter, and finally his own wife.  The only real explanations that are offered for this potentially interesting psychological journey are vague and trite inspirational quotes from an offbeat angel character he should have already known about (more on that shortly).  The leaps from one impersonation to the next are not only painfully horrible at trying to be funny, but also leave no room for real character development.  The dialogue is horrifically childish and often feels adlibbed and impromptu.  Yet somewhere in the midst of histrionic displays from A. R. White, including a fake (or not) heart attack, a purposeful makeup disaster, voiceovers for a goldfish and an infant, generally idiotic behavior, self-parodies, and an epic conversation with himself in the alternate universe (perhaps his acting dream), there is some interesting meaning hidden here.  If someone was able to ‘walk in someone else’s shoes’, then they would view life a lot differently.  But this potential meaning is covered up due to time wasted on downright stupidity.  This goes without saying that, in keeping with usual White themes, everything is too black and white.  ‘Good’ characters are obviously perfect and wise while ‘bad’ characters are complete over the top strawmen, bringing more disgrace to how people think Christians view ‘worldly’ people.  Also, solutions to problem are far too easy, trite, and shallow, and offer no real help for people struggling with the real issues presented.

But perhaps the worst element of this entire plot is found in the unusual sepia tone flashback prologue and epilogue.  It’s so devastating that it warrants a Box Office Revolution first: a separate paragraph of discussion.  The prologue and epilogue are presumably supposed to depict Richie and his wife as childhood sweethearts drinking honeysuckle tea (whatever that is).  The epilogue completely undermines the purpose of the plot and suggests that it’s all one big joke.  Either that or PureFlix is full of incompetence (probably a little of both).  Richie’s wife, as a girl, tells him that she knows they’ll be married one day because the specific angel he later sees on television and has a conversation with in the midst of his psychological adventure told her so.  If this is the case, then he should have known what was happening when he recognized the name of the angel.  Another alternative possibility is that the entire middle of the movie is just part of the girl’s dream, which suggests that the entire movie is useless.  Whatever the case is, this plot is so slipshod and incompetent that we can’t make heads or tails of it.  All we know is that it’s an experience we’ll both never forget and never wish to repeat.

Acting Quality (0 points)

As usual, the Whites and their comrades have no restraint or direction in their acting but are content to blurt out lines in ‘funny’ fashions and lazily act their way through another cheap movie full of one-take scenes and adlib behavior.  No emotional meaning can be felt here because the acting is so absurd, especially David A. R. White’s zany impersonations of other characters and Tommy Blaze’s generally bizarre behavior.  In short, another zero point acting job is business as usual for PureFlix.

Conclusion

If anything was accomplished through this unique experience, it was that a movie like this has never been made before and should never be made again.  Unfortunately, any attempt at deeper meaning is so shallow that’s easily washed over with a tide of absurdity.  Many elements of this movie seem to suggest that the Whites and company have no grasp on the real world, as they treat important issues too lightly and portray people has completely good or completely bad.  It seems like the only purpose of Me Again is to make fun of everything, including themselves, and to waste another good idea.  The one merit PureFlix has is an acceptance of creating different types of movies, but in most cases, like this one, they ruin the reputation of Christian movies in unique genres.  This is not to mention the fact that Me Again is just another film that makes the name ‘Christian film’ more of a laughingstock.  At some point, the creation of this type of nonsense must end and Christian filmmakers must get serious about generating quality content if we are ever going to make a true difference.

 

Final Rating: 1.5 out of 10 points

July 5, 2016January 16, 2019 by Box Office Revolutionary Categories: Comedy, Movie Reviews, PsychologicalTags: 1.5 points, 2012, Ali Landry, Andrea Logan White, Anna Zielinski, Bradley Dorsey, Bruce McGill, China Anderson, Clynton Lamur, Comedy, Cordelia Sonnenschein, Crevita Tamille Brown, Crystal Jenious, David A. R. White, Della Reese, drug trip, Edward James Gage, Ethan Cooper Roy, Hatcher, Honeysuckle Tea, Ina Summers, Jeffrey Peterson, Jonny Lenox, Joshua Lee Johnson, Justin Prentice, Kass Connors, Kenzie Lane, Kerry Stein, Kiara Muhammad, Latigo Entertainment, Lou Betty Jr., Michael Scott, Obnoxious, Ocean White, Paul Lauden, Psychological, PureFlix, Robin Miller, Ron Gilbert, Russell Wolfe, Ryan Florida, Shelley Robertson, Sleepwalking, Tommy Blaze, Victoria Bruno, Will Musser 10 Comments