TV Show Review - Murderville (Season 1)

Season: 1
Genre: Mystery/ Crime/ Comedy
Number of episodes: 6
Year: 2022
Starring: Will Arnett, Haneefah Wood, Lilian Bowden, Philip Smithey, Annie Murphy, Kamail Nanjiani, Marshawn Lynch, Sharon Stone, Ken Jeong, Conan O’Brien  

   
Description: Eccentric detective Terry Seattle (Will Arnett) teams up with clueless celebrity guest start to investigate a series of murders in this improvisational crime comedy.

Review: In the detective series “Murderville”, detective Terry Seattle gets a different police partner each episode. Together they tackle a murder case, but the guest actor who plays the role of partner has no script. He or she must therefore improvise and at the end of the episode, select the murderer from three suspects.
The idea of “Murderville” is brilliant and has a lot of potential. In six episodes, we see six famous stars try to solve the murder mystery: Conan O’Brien, Marshawn Lynch, Annie Murphy, Kumail Najiani, Sharon Stone and Ken Jeong. As detective Seattle, played by comedian Will Arnett, keeps things going. He leads his unsuspecting partner past the crime scene (littered with hints) and then past three suspects (even more hints) to the final scene where the culprit is unmasked.
“Murderville” works a little better at some moments than others. Some guests break character (Will Arnett also sometimes), which can be distracting. Especially Ken Jeong. Sharon Stone and Kumail Nanjiani are the best at improvising, but Conan O’Brien did a bit of both. And I think he was my favorite guest star. Will Arnett is perfect for the job though. He perfectly navigates between the roles of actor and host. As a viewer, it’s fun to join in, because can also try and guess the culprit. It’s not very difficult though because of the overabundance of clues given.
If you like to tag along in solving a whodunit, “Murderville” is a fun time.  

Movie Review - The Mitchell's Vs. the Machines

Director: Michael Rianda, Jeff Rowe
Genre: Animation/ Family/ Adventure/ Science Fiction/ Action
Runtime: 114 minutes
Year: 2021
Starring: Abbi Jacobsen, Danny McBride, Maya Rudolph, Michael Rianda, Olivia Colman, Fred Armisen, Eric André, Beck Bennett, John Legend, Chrissy Teigen, Conan O’Brien

Description: A quirky dysfunctional family’s road trip is upended when they find themselves in the middle of the robot apocalypse and suddenly become humanity’s unlikeliest last hope.

Review: Thanks to a selfish tech slouch in Silicon Valley, all robot and machines are tuning against humanity. There seems to be only one family that can stop the evil this man has wrought. Let that be a dysfunctional family of awkward misfits. “The Mitchell’s Vs. the Machines” is full of witty jokes about the evils inflicted on humans by big tech companies, but then seems to negate these criticisms with the decidedly meme-like aesthetic regularly chosen.
Katie Mitchell is different from others, but that’s really true of her entire family. Katie makes crazy videos, which she uses to get accepted to film school. Father Rick doesn’t quite get these videos, but he doesn’t seem to be able to get a grip on the internet and his growing daughter anyway. Brother Aaron has a very big obsession with dinosaurs and mother Linda tries to keep the family together with her patience and love. When the robots seize power, this seems like the last family that can offer any hope of saving humanity.  
Chaos is already rife when destructive robots fly around, but when a vengeful siri variant decides to shut down the global wifi, panic really breaks out. “Will someone take pictures of my food”, screams a woman desperately as the world behinds her burns. These are the kinds of highly visually elaborate cynical jokes that the film is full of, providing and extremely witty take on humans and their technologies. When murderous Furby’s, dryers bent on massacre and aggressive robot vacuum cleaners also come along, the film proves truly hilarious.
The makers also seem to want to appeal to a younger audience, it is after all a children’s film. However, they do this with an aesthetic what is midway between Snapchat filters, memes and TikTok movies. This form of animation withing animation not only looks very annoying, it sometimes actually ruins successful jokes and undermines the fiilm’s strong criticism Big Tech. the result is king of a cacophony of memes that are projected in between the successful animations when you weren’t actually looking for them. But still, because of many hilarious scenes and top-notch cast, the makers are forgiven.

Rating: 3,5/ 5