therefdotcom

Apart from many other things when it comes to film, I am a concept" guy. If you have a great basic concept, even if it has been done successfully in the past then you can count me in. I will even be much more forgiving than with other kinds of films. For example some of my favorite movies of all times are cube (1997), radius (2017) and the hole (2001) and in the case of the latter, the hole admittedly is not even a good film. Doesn't even make sense.

In some instances once you have said concept, the script for the most part composes itself. This here is an ideal example. Simply all you have to do is to write a compelling villain, a likable protagonist, a believable setup und you take it from there. You ALMOST got your first act. Almost, because this would only truly work out in a perfect world where everyone watches films completely cold", which is not the nature of cinema. You have to calculate in that everyone watching your film has at least read the tag line / basic plot description, because why else would they watch that film to begin with. At worst they have seen the trailer, so to keep things interesting you should not make the first act too obvious not construct some sort of distraction. Well, that's if you were smart enough to not disclose the baddie in the trailer, otherwise you have a whole lot of other issues that you will have to write around.

So ideally you want to build in some kind of reveal or turn" so to speak.

Or in other words: just having the protagonist meets the antagonist and play the old little did she know" game is rather insufficient. I am not remarking that it can't work out overall, but if that's all you can come up with, you are not necessarily in for a good start.

Nevertheless this is exactly what they went for in this case.

As I said, not all is lost yet, but then we immediately get to the next issue. Neither of both main characters is written in a very compelling manner. You might think that I am cruel at this point, but just because you write a tragic loss into the protagonist's background story that does not automatically mean that I like that character and feel exceptionally empathetic for them. Especially if you give us such a goofy tragedy to begin with. I am sorry, but I had to chuckle when she told it.

And the villain is not better either. Writers, keep in mind we know what film we are watching. There is no tension here. We know already what's about to unfold. Don't just let a creepy dude enter the scene and bore us until you get to the meat. There has to be more to this. Plus the dude is unbelievably boring. At least make him charming and funny, then at least you had SOMETHING.

So far for the first act. Should be better, but could possibly be worse.

Now we have the biggest issue of them all. The main story obviously should be about the time between the protagonist getting injected and the moment she is fully paralyzed. This is not rocket science. This is not the first film where the main thrill or better the main drive is the time restraints set by the basic concept. For Christ's sake, put a timer in the corner. If necessary fade it in and out so it does not become annoying. That means obviously that you have 15 minutes buildup 60 minutes interaction and then 15 minutes closeup or just go out with a bang then go directly to credits. Which also means that obviously you chose your serum to require 60 minutes until its final stage.

But noooooooooo, they go for 20 minutes and then it lasts for an hour in which you slowly regain your motor functions. Could work ... Doesn't, though ... Could though ... but ... WHY THE F WOULD YOU DO THAT TO YOURSELF AS A WRITER? If you go for 60 minutes, all you have to write and execute is a compelling cat and mouse game between a smart predator and a smart prey. Has been done before successfully gazillions of times. You could go for the dark ending, you could go for the light ending. Easy as pie.

Instead you are setting yourself up for a whole bunch of new factors that as we see in the execution the writers were everything but prepared for. Instead we are confronted by dumb decisions by the protagonist, dumb decisions by the villain, logic problems as far as the eye could see and a final act they are beyond ridiculous.

And the motivation of the antagonist? Don't even get me started.

I will give this 2/10 for the basic idea and Kelsey Abstille wasn't half bad, but boy oh boy I just can't fathom how they could mess this up so bad. It wasn't inherently unwatchable, but exceptionally disappointing.

I watched this not knowing the comedian, so i can not measure this as a part of his whole catalogue of standup routines, but i was willing to give it a chance and rate it on it's own merrits.

The positives: Vir seems like likable guy. Surely someone i would love to hang out with. If he dropped all of what he was saying in this special during a guys night out, it would surely be a delighted.

The negatives: With that said, his "material" is something that is very ok to drop in a private round, but not not even remotely close to something you go public with.

I also understand that this is cut together from different settings, so i don't expect a rounded set and transitions and callbacks and everything, but it is a though pill to swallow that these are supposed to be the best bits.

This surely is quite nice to have running in the background, when cleaning your appartment, but it is not enough for an active watch.

Also i had to drop it from a 3/10 to a 2/10 i read that he was charging people for this "show". Yes, the money went to charity, but you can not possibly charge people money for this. Make it a free show with a donate button. Even throughout the pandemic there were comedy streams/releases that were actual stand up.

Overall, likable guy, couple of chuckles, but c'mon, dude.