Reviews

The fun moments, decent plot, and heavy lifting by actors Amy Adams, Maya Rudolph, Gabriella Baldacchino, and Idina Menzel can't quite hold up this movie. The plot and dialogue are clunky, and secondary characters are given too much screen time with out driving the story forward. The songs are so poorly written that the talents of Amy Adams, Maya Rudolph, and Idina Menzel (Badder, Love Power) can't save them. Additionally, Nicole Yvette Brown, who is a hilarious comedian and talented singer, is bizarrely under-utilized as one of a villain's minions. How Disney managed to cram in time for unnecessary romance and cosmological apocalypse sub-plots, but not at least one song from Ms. Brown, is very disappointing.

Hocus Pocus 2 regurgitates the most memorable moments from the first film, but brings almost nothing fresh to audiences. Except for the original cast, the performances are underwhelming. The quartet of new teen leads are simply forgettable. The visuals, editing, and plot progression are choppy at best. Each musical number sticks out awkwardly like a sore thumb. As does the overuse of green-screen effects.

This film had the opportunity to explore the nature of sisterhood, and to possibly give the Sanderson sisters an origin story, and even a redemption arc. Instead it stumbles around like Billy Butcherson until it crashes into an ending that vaguely reminds you of the initial flashback. Almost as though the film had lost it's head after the first ten minutes (losing all the lore and character development of the first film with it) and only got it back more or less in hand during the last two.

Spoiler Alert: There is a shameless and uninspired post-credits tease for another sequel or spin-off.

Save yourself the disappointment. Rewatch the original and skip Hocus Pocus 2.

Ms. Marvel has the excellent production values and music we've come to expect from Marvel movies. Iman Vellani, Matt Lintz, Yasmeen Fletcher, Rish Shah, Travina Springer and Aramis Knight do an excellent job, but the rest of the cast seem inconsistent in the quality of their acting.

In addition to its problematically lop-sided misrepresentation of Indian history, the series is inconsistent in it's focus and rapidly switches between three or four plot-lines, only two of which needed to be included.

Get your favourite breakfast cereal and settle in for a fun little story.

If you want to see a lot of He-man and Skeletor throwing down you'll have to wait until Part II because this series has a single arc. It's not episodic like the Filmation production.

The Low Points

• Mark Hamil is pretty much voicing the Joker, and Sarah Michelle Geller is pretty much just doing Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

• The Sorceress and Queen Marlena are seriously underserved as characters given their back stories and relationship to the setting.

The High Points

• The animation is pretty well done.

• This series has plenty of fun nods to the various cartoon series, comics, toys, and even the live action film, without disrupting the feel and flow of the story.

• Andra is a nice, if new, addition to the series.

• Kudos to the production team for giving Teela and Evil-Lyn something meaningful to do in the story.

• Lena Headey and Griffin Newman do a great job in episode 4, it's my favourite episode so far.

Overall, looking forward to Part II.

Excellent casting, and the sit-com send-up was inspired. I enjoyed the slow-burn mystery tone that the show starts off with, but it's body-checked off course by the unnecessary inclusion of SWORD.

SWORD, effectively a spin-off of SHIELD, and its police procedural elements just take up a lot of unnecessary space that could have been spent on Wanda's family and neighbours for a more engaging resolution of the story arc.

In hindsight, casting Evan Peters was clever, and a let down as an opportunity to connect the events of Wandavision with the events of Loki.

Visually great, fun music, entertaining concept, talented cast and yet I don't remember laughing out loud. Not even once.