Watched: Riverworld

Exceptionally mediocre entertainment. Which is not to say unenjoyable. Starring Tahmoh Penikett (who I remembered as being decent in Whedon's shitty-then decent-then great-then shitty again series Dollhouse) as Blandy McDudeGuy. He is a tenacious, honest, hard-working, brave (are you bored yet? I was.) American reporter killed while proposing to his girlfriend in Vietnam. As is the girlfriend. Then he wakes up in a river, on a... world... of rivers... created by aliens/gods/blue Alan Cumming WHY so that people can atone for the mistakes. And people from all times in history are reincarnated there, which allows for lots of farcical, generalized attempts at being culturally sensitive. There's some Spanish jerk, and then there's a British jerk, and a Japanese lady samurai, and then the girlfriend turns out to be a jerk, and there's a Senegalese taxi driver/soldier who is kind of cool but gets like five lines? Plus some guy hamming it up as Mark Twain who isn't terrible but... I don't know. Two gay guys whose whole story is that they keep not being together, and the one who's kind of more sensitive, urbane of the two keeps getting kidnapped/hurt/killed so WELL DONE THERE RIVERWORLD. There's just a lot of jerks, a lot of broad, uninteresting characters, and a lot of random plot devices that are either thoroughly predictable or completely nonsensical and unexplained. It's not bad, per se.... but it's not really good either.

 (Caucasus what what!! Even though this sequence is only used to illustrate the violence Matt "Mary Sue" Boringface witnessed while working and makes the Caucasus look pretty brutal, so thanks for that Riverworld. Thanks a lot.)

Is this because the X-Men movies got you hooked on blue paint? What's next, a Smurf movie? Come on man. You're better than this. You're Kurt "Nightcrawler" Wagner, you're Darryl Zero, you're Saturninus, you're Mr. Elton, yo- oh, I'm looking at your IMDB page now and it appears you have indeed done voice work for a Smurf movie. As well as a Spy Kids. And a Garfield. So... never mind.

Carry on. I guess.

 Riverworld... because it's a world, composed entirely of rivers. So. Yes. Quite.

 Stupid nonsense plot twists, ahoy!

Because why not. Maybe the book is better?