Reviews

One should always approach docudramas with a particular level of caution, since as classical philologist Thomas Fleming pointed out, they are crafted to fool viewers into thinking that they are history rather than entertainment. Even so, the 'Impeachment' saga of the dalliances and fabrications that nearly brought down Bill Clinton is telegenic in its own right: indeed, it's such a colorful story it hardly needs any speculation or fictionalizing at all to make for a well-tied, entertaining narrative. This particular take certainly does the story justice in that department, even if the biases of the source material's writer and of these producers do inevitably show through, notably in the characterizations:

Monica Lewinsky was on the production team, and this version applies a much-needed softening to the treatment of Lewinsky herself, as well as to that of Paula Jones. Jeffrey Toobin's book 'A Vast Conspiracy,' the inspiration for this mini-series, was apparently not so kind to either lady. Even so, the portrayal of Lewinsky opposite Linda Tripp is just a bit lopsided. The script tries to portray Lewinsky as naïve and innocent and Tripp as somewhat cynical and self-aggrandizing, but it can't go as far as Lewinsky herself might have liked: after all, her own cheery complicity in making side business for a *second* married man in her life before she turned 25 is well-documented, in her own voice. The portrayal of Tripp is harder to critique: I believe she was far more convinced and perhaps even convincing than she comes across here of her own moral righteousness for doing what she did. Even so, the late Tripp's daughter has praised the portrayal as doing honor to her mother.

Bill Clinton, not surprisingly, doesn't come across very well at all: he leads Monica on, enjoying what she put out for him while offering at best intermittent and perfunctory warnings about the necessarily finite nature of their tryst. The series takes Hillary Clinton on her word that she found out about Lewinsky only once Bill realizes he would be forced to reverse his statement (Tripp and many others speculate that Hillary had known a long time before). But Hillary doesn't come across very well, either: she's more upset about the consequences for her media image and political future than about having been betrayed in her marriage. She and Bill are both portrayed as having massive egos and savior-like self-images. And Edie Falco was a very curious choice for Hillary Clinton, but I can't help but feel she's channeling her old Carmela Soprano character in a way that overstates the common points between the two ladies.

The other leads are quite well-chosen. Clive Owen is appropriately charming as Slick Willy; Beanie Feldstein is a great Monica Lewinsky; Annaleigh Ashford is appropriately simple and sympathetic as Paula Jones. Sarah Paulson might seem a bit overly "on the edge" as Tripp but she was clearly following instructions from above and it is true that Tripp's pre-plastic-surgery self was (sorry to say it) not especially telegenic. Even the supporting cast is great: Cobie Smulders in particular does a pitch-perfect Ann Coulter. As a general rule the producers were just a bit too keen on portraying a right-wing legal and think-tank apparatus as self-organized and "out for blood". Many on the right did indeed loathe the Clintons and were indeed on the lookout for anything to take him down, but it's important to remember that Bill Clinton was if anything a victim of his own "Violence Against Women Act," which Jones used as a pretext to open his sex CV to the world, and of his own mishandling of his affairs and obsession with "damage control."

The production values are excellent, from the shots to the music to the lighting. One is smackdab in the middle of the Washington, D. C. of the late 1990s, with all the excitement, tension, jealousy and anticipation there was at those moments. Episode 8 is perhaps the best: this one steers the camera away from Tripp and Lewinsky chronicles Hillary's "standing by her man" beginning with a flashback to her saving his 1992 after the Gennifer Flowers revelations, and it's just electric. In the same episode, we get to see Bill's ill-conceived attempt to have bin Laden downed with missiles into the Sudan while he was on semi-holiday at Martha's Vineyard, and it comes across as a hoot (that sounds awful, but 25 years on I think we have the right to "laugh or die" over such things), especially in light of the dynamic duo's outsized world-savoir complex. Overall a wonderful stroll down memory lane for those who remember that period, provided you're not too inclined to make sacred cows of either the left-wing or the right-wing players in this part of history.

It started as a plain old winter day with Charlie Brown being Charlie Brown and Snoopy being Snoopy. Ever the optimist, Charlie Brown thinks he can treat Snoopy as an ordinary dog. Ever the Walter Mitty, Snoopy refuses to act like a dog and pull the sled. So not surprisingly an attempt by Charlie Brown to demonstrate turns the roles around: Charlie ends up the victim and Snoopy, the triumphant blowhard.

Snoopy has long tended to be slightly different on screen from in print. In the comics his manlike antics are largely fantastical (and usually pulled back down to Earth pretty fast), only occasionally and with more than a little ambiguity crossing the line into the surreal. On TV and in the movies he seems to get away somewhat more often with acting like a literal playboy, and that's what happens here:

To celebrate his victory and to restore himself after a day in the snow, Snoopy whips up five pizzas, a chocolate milkshake and a large salad, polishing everything off in a matter of minutes. A nasty bout of indigestion combined with Charlie Brown's bitter comparisons of Snoopy's to the austerity of life as an arctic sled dog leads to twenty minutes of nightmare: Snoopy now IS a sled dog in the Arctic!

Like Buck in Jack London's 'Call of the Wild,' Snoopy is too civilized and too soft for his new role, only exaggeratedly so. But ever the able one, Snoopy finds his footing and manages to become the "Alpha Dog" of the pack.

Some disliked this one because it didn't fit Snoopy's personality. On the contrary I thought it perfect. Snoopy is a loyal dog to Charlie Brown but he won't be a squish: witness the numerous occasions on which Charlie Brown tries to put him in his place and Snoopy shuts Charlie Brown up by pretending to "hand in his collar."

Others disliked the idea of Snoopy being punished. Let's face it: he's kind of a cocky glutton sometimes (he certainly is here) and he's definitely got it made under the Browns' mostly patient ownership. A couple days in the real world to prove what he's really got? Well, he did! Well, almost.

Still one of my favorites. The animation is simple as any 'Peanuts' offering is but is highly expressive and there are a few hilarious/absurd sequences to punctuate the torturous horror. It ends on a positive, if cheeky, note. It isn't pure 'Hallmark' fluff but 'Peanuts' never is (the existence of Lucy Van Pelt should attest to that much). If you're the type to enjoy roller coasters and/or slightly offbeat humor, this is for you. Cheers!

'Project X' starts with a familiar but very timeless concept: ordinary, marginal John or Jane Doe hatches a "foolproof" plan to make a big splash and "become someone" overnight. It's a fantasy firmly anchored in the American imagination when proud rugged individualism clashes with the need to belong to something greater. The trope is particularly powerful among adolescents, who aren't yet fully attuned to the adult consequences of adult-scale actions or the potential for a situation to get out of hand, and we've all heard about the discrete kid deciding to throw a wild party while his parents are gone for the weekend, in the hopes of landing a spot in the "in-crowd" and maybe humiliating the alpha persecutor (the Cocky Blond Guy or Nasty Cheerleader) along the way, while scoring the ultimate bomb of the opposite sex (the potential to bang the chick of one's choice being, of course, the primary motivation for males to get "in").

The thing is, this sort of situation depends on the backdrop of a kind of a sleepy, cohesive and (ironically) "wholesome" neighborhood tissue to support the public high school from whence the host and the guests are drawn. By 2012, what with increasing ethnic and social fragmentation in the American landscape - especially in large urban conglomerates (this one is set in Pasadena) - this adolescent dynamic already seemed dated, and 'Project X' is not a period piece. Watching it just a few years later, after the Obergefell ruling and the instauration of "Drag Queen Story Hour," the movie looks even more naïve, the creators drawing their inspiration from the high-school dynamics of their memories projected into their day and blissfully unaware of how the ongoing social revolutions were rendering it impossible to continue.

Some may find it odd that I should characterize as "naïve" a picture depicting casual use of ecstasy, an army of young, topless roses jumping in the pool, underage characters engaging in foreplay, scatological accidents, the most sexually racy rap lyrics imaginable and even girl-on-girl face-sucking. That *was* long the reality for *certain* wild middle-/upper-middle-class adolescent/young-adult parties - though perhaps not in *quite* the concentrations depicted here and less and less every year for quite some time. Not only does it happen less often, but also, we're all jaded. Nowadays the biggest controversies even in those demographics seem to be over political correctness rather than sex or drugs. This isn't an edgy film by any means, the proof being that it was fine depicting lesbian filigrees but not male-on-male sexual activity (a similar film made today almost certainly would have, but that is not edgy in the current context however much the critics would argue it is).

So is it a comedy? A drama? A coming-of-age story? 'Project X' wants to be all these, but is more than anything an exercise in un-self-conscious wish fulfillment which leans too much on the grandiosity of a spectacle that wasn't even shocking anymore by the time it was made, at the expense of clever comedic timing. Furthermore, the film takes itself too seriously: its adolescent protagonists assign disproportionate importance to their current social repertoire, as adolescents often do, yet this is never sent up or satired in any way.

All that said, the film is not a total loss. The cinematography is top-notch: the filmmakers work the cinéma vérité style to perfection and the director draws out awesome party energy. It's about as close to being simultaneously cinematic and documentary as one could reasonably hope for. The actors portraying the lead buddy trio put a great deal of heart into their roles, and despite their cocky attitudes, total lack of discernment and crass adolescent mouths prove themselves as devoted and caring of friends as anyone could want, something that was lost on a lot of contemporary critics hung up on feminism and dainties and forgetting the age-old lesson not to give too much importance to appearances.

One will of course need to suspend disbelief to project a 1995's American society with 2012 technology, to believe that adolescent girls would willingly flash themselves at a huge mixed party in front of unhidden cameras just because adolescent boys asked and to accept, for no reason other than the script calling for it, that Kirby Bliss Blanton could be any less tempting a score for the birthday boy than Alexis Knapp. But if you can just play along, it's a fun little ride into a wild night - as well as a good reminder of how far NOT to go when partying - and you'll be rooting for the birthday boy despite the silliness of this project and entirely predictable catasrophe he and his friends are courting. The film was remade in France two years later as 'Le Babysitting' with an adult cast, a reversal of the social-climbing dynamic, a less cataclysmic dénoument and much better comedic timing: despite its far-out premise the remake was overall more plausible. But it's worth checking out the original.

... which is not saying a whole lot.

So far as the overarching "myth-arc" went, though, 'The X-Files' was really resolved in mid-season 6, with the conclusion of the Gibson Praise arc and the killing off of the syndicate. In hindsight, however, given that the writers felt obliged to continue, we can really say the introduction of Praise was the show's jumping of the shark: I mean, really, a kid who can read minds perfectly is impossible to top for a series that wants to showcase the paranormal and retain some sort of verisimilitude to its look and feel. Not surprisingly, subsequent attempts to revive or re-explore the series's alien mythology never really took off or built up to any sort of grander coherence, and the standalone "Monster of the Week" installments became increasingly self-referential.

None of it was necessarily *bad*, but neither was it even remotely so gripping as had been the first five and a half seasons. But surely season 9 could have done better with just about any stupid or disjointed story arc than the one it actually played out: the search for Mulder and the invasion of the supersoldiers. Weren't these points already hit in season 8, for crying out loud? It was a mess of a season but to the writers' credit they seemed resolved to tie it up however they could. I suppose that's why the finale gets so much flak: tying up this mess was a dirty job but somebody had to do it, and really, there's not much else it could have done.

At any rate they hit all the essential plot points encapsulating the ninth season and indeed, the series as a whole. The missing Mulder turns up suddenly and naturally, he's in trouble. In his quest to expose corrupt, shadowy powers lurking behind the scenes in our lives and our society he has been unjunstly put on the hook by those same powers, who are determined to keep their dark secrets hidden whatever and whoever the cost. Scully will play the key role in getting him out, helping him as the two have always helped each other, aided indispensibly by Skinner as well as Doggett and Reyes (the latter of whom notwithstanding the writer's stated intentions to make a central character never really rose above being Scully's midwife and then nanny).

When she does get him out, life won't go back to normal at the FBI as it always does at the close of such a problem, for the simple reason that there will be no more X-Files and so we can't have such a non-closing closure. Mulder and Scully are to go into exile. And in the appropriate meta-style they are seen off by a consortium of all the important people in their careers: Skinner, Doggett, Reyes, Hirsch and Praise. Along the way they even encounter the Ghostly Trio of the Lone Gunmen. It's a farewell that couldn't be cheesier if everyone were throwing flowers as Mr. and the new Mrs. Mulder sped off in a Ferrari with "JUST MARRIED" scrawled on the back, but it's strangely appropriate and satisfying. So too is the conclusion, on the bed at almost the same cheap motel the two stayed in on their first case, meditating on the implications of their work, of Christianity and of each other for the future of humanity and indeed of themselves.

It's a scrappy couple of episodes but that's really the whole point. It's about picking up the scraps of a once-solid narrative which had grown weary and senile, notwithstanding the often-impressive afterglow in the last two and a half years. They could have done worse. Maybe they could have done better, but I'd say worse was more likely. Bravo, Ten-Thirteen!