Like the trippy paradoxes it so heartily embraces, the premiere of 12 Monkeys is a bit of one itself: it's more enjoyable when thinking about the teases of what's to come versus the somewhat plodding hour of what's already happened.
The pilot walks a bumpy road, but Salem Rogers is so continuously charming in its biting humor, and Leslie Bibb is so remarkable, that it's easy to forgive a dull joke here and there for the sheer obnoxious hilarity of it all.
Let me start off by saying that The LEGO Movie is my personal favorite movie of the year, so the rest of this may be (read: definitely will be) biased. With its true-to-brand depiction of the little yellow guys and gals popping about its gorgeously realized worlds, its whiplash-inducing deluge of jokes, references, and acerbic wit, and brilliant redux of the classical Hero’s Journey, this isn’t just my favorite movie of the year, but in years. And perhaps more importantly in this day and age: it’s one of the cleverest, managing to tackle a beloved childhood property and not totally ruin it.
A few unfortunately redundant plot lines clash with the nascent setting of the season, but fans of the show will undoubtedly be hard-pressed to find much fault in the final season's premiere.
"Oh great, another musical number," bemoaned a character in Galavant's second week. The sentiment, gladly, shouldn't be reciprocated by the viewers at home, as the show continued on a straight-and-narrow path of goofy endearment in both its third and fourth episodes. Although a bit of a formula is already showing its face, the show still feels energetic in a way a lot of the TV landscape nowadays is sorely lacking.
Although it's taken a step in the right direction, the show's previous ubiquity in high school pop culture leaves it as a pale imitation of its former self in the sixth and final season's two-hour premiere. The world, it seems, doesn't need Glee anymore.
It’s easy to miss a lot of good TV in a year’s time. Whether you heard of a show and just don’t have time to watch it, or weren’t sure it was worth your time at all, lots of quality TV can slip through our fingers (thankfully, plenty of crappy ones can, too). But, a few years later, when the show has reached a fever-pitch and all of your friends and family won’t shut up about it, you have one of two options: bite the bullet and join the hype-train, or leave it all in the dust.
While occasionally puerile and mawkish, and facing undeniable issues when looking at its long-term viability as a series, Galavant is an anachronistic crowd-pleaser with an infectious sense of humor and more than a few unexpectedly entertaining tunes.
Richelmy, in the title role, evolves from a meager, humbling, and somewhat lifeless beginning, into an interesting, captivating presence to watch on screen. Which is a sentiment I'd ascribe to Marco Polo as a whole, really.
