Skip to main content

A Horrible Christmas Rant

Horrible, Horrible Christmas, In Every Single Sense of the Word
Horrible Christmas - A Quick Rant by Nathan Brooks


The Good
When you expect one thing, and get something else, you can get very angry. You can get so angry that you refuse to acknowledge the positives of what you have got, and just focus on what you haven't got. For example, Agents of SHIELD. I think Agents of SHIELD is great, but unfortunately I don't appear to share that opinion with a lot of other people. Why? Because they're too busy whining about the lack of all the superhero-y stuff they expected and fair enough, considering you are watching a Marvel TV show. However, I've managed to let that initial disappointment go, and I've found I really enjoy this show. 

The Bad
Horrible Christmas, a Horrible Histories stage production, is the complete opposite of this. As the theme of this post suggests, I expected something great. Horrible Histories is the only children's educational series with any effort put into, at least as far as I can tell and clearly other people feel the same, as both the books and the TV series have won numerous awards, including two British Comedy Awards for best sketch show, in 2010 and 2011. It was also nominated again in 2012 and has won multiple children's choice BAFTAs. Horrible Christmas isn't going to win any awards, apart from biggest disappointment. I would've reviewed this, but realised that that'd be too obvious. So, instead I wrote this.

The Ugly
To be honest, I have no idea where I'm going with this rant. I guess I should explain why I was so disappointed. If you've watched the TV series or read the books (and if you haven't, what the heck's wrong with you?!) then you'll know how hilarious the majority of the jokes are. But I won't treat you with those award-winning gags, no instead I'm going to give you one of the jokes in this play. Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer calls Oliver Twist 'Oliver Twerk-it' and then proceeds to 'twerk', whilst repeating the words, 'twerk-it'. The five year olds in front of me probably thought it was the funniest joke in the history of the world. They've obviously never watched the show or read the books. 

 This rant has already gone on long enough, as it was supposed to just be a quick rant. Lets just say this play was an embarrassment to the Horrible Histories series and doesn't deserve to use that name. I expected Horrible Histories, I got Postman Pat's Time Machine featuring 50 fart jokes per second (FJPS). Were my expectations too high? No, Horrible Histories is excellent and those expectations are entirely reasonable, and if you've ever seen the show or read the books, you'd completely agree with me. Yet, even without those high expectations it would SUCK. Agents of SHIELD doesn't suck, it just isn't what most people expected. This just sucks, with disappointment or without. Don't watch it. Ever.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hail, Caesar! Review - Genius Behind the Madness

On an entirely surface level, Hail, Caesar! is a really silly film. The sets are bright and colourful, the characters are bombastic and larger than life and the plot is completely insane and all over the place. If you take a closer look, however, it's much more intelligent than it initially comes off as. Yes, the sets are bright, but their attention to detail is so fantastically minute, you're totally convinced that this is the 50's. The fake film sets are also just as convincing and the films themselves could easily pass off as authentic, if it wasn't for the 21st Century actors populating them. They are obviously slightly exaggerated, for the sake of satire, which probably resonates more with those familiar with retro cinema than regular filmgoers. It's also shot brilliantly by cinematographer Roger Deakins (who was recently Oscar nominated for his work on Sicario ), who manages to make the film feel like something that's not only set in the 50's, bu...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is Avengers: Age of Ultron Any Good?

Avengers Assemble! Again! Avengers: Age of Ultron - Film Review by Nathan Brooks And they say English Weather's bad. Back in the summer of 2012, a little film came out called Avengers Assemble. It wasn't much. It's only the biggest superhero film of all time and it only made $1.518 billion. Everybody loved it, I loved it and clearly moviegoers did as well.  Due to its massive success, obviously a sequel was going to be made. In this case, that sequel is Avengers: Age of Ultron, but with all the hype it's received, is it actually any good? Story The story in this film is definitely not for first time Marvel viewers, you really need to see most, if not all, of the previous Marvel Cinematic Universe films. It is packed full of references to earlier films and understanding a lot of elements of the story will require you to have seen the others. But is the story any good? I thinks so. The main story centres around the fact that Tony Stark, or Iron Man, has ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Complicated Entitlement of Arthur Fleck

Joker’s (Probably) Accidental Identity Politics The discourse around Joker , the Joaquin Phoenix-starring origin story of the infamous Batman villain, has been exhausting. Beginning before most people had even seen the film, battle lines were immediately drawn between those decrying its allegedly alt-right sympathies and edgy gamers convinced this was going to be the greatest film of all time. Now that it’s actually in cinemas and I’ve seen it, it’s a lot more complicated than that, even if it isn’t on purpose. To get it out of the way, Joker is a fantastically constructed film. Whilst it’s certainly derivative of other prestige pictures (Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and King of Comedy have been regularly brought up) that doesn’t stop it from being spectacular and gripping in its own right. At the centre of it all is Phoenix, who’s performance is genuinely astonishing. The gruesome physicality he brings to the role is mesmerising, exemplified during the surreal dance sequences i...
Post a Comment
Read more