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| Friday, March 28, 2014 02:35 PM |
| On the Viewer - Veronica Mars |
 by Fëanor |
After I supplied my drop in the bucket for the Veronica Mars movie Kickstarter, I realized I really had to go back and watch the rest of the series (I never watched the last season first time around). And while I was at it, I should really watch the whole thing over again from the beginning. So I did. It was a blast. The show can tend a bit toward the repetitive and the melodramatic, but it always cuts the melodrama with sarcastic humor, and I never really got tired of its standard formula.
Once I was done with the series - which ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, to my surprise - I quickly downloaded my copy of the movie and fired it up. I was not disappointed. It's a wonderful and faithful continuation of the series, returning to all our favorite characters nine years later, and examining how they've grown and how they've not in the intervening time. (Even Dick Casablancas! My favorite dumb-ass asshole of all time.) In particular, and understandably given the title, it's a portrait of Veronica Mars herself and her destructive, addictive personality. She realizes ultimately that the past nine years have been her attempt to come clean, to escape the dark need inside her - and it's all been a lie. She's been playing at being a good, normal woman with a good, normal job; pretending she can be with a plain, upstanding, nice guy (poor Piz); trying to convince herself she can live without the dirt and the darkness. But with her 10th High School reunion looming, and an old lover in trouble again, she's quickly sucked back to her old town and her old ways, and nearly loses everything in the process.
The movie has the same cleverness, the same sharp sense of humor, the same wild drama as the show. But now they can also say curses! Well, some curses. It's PG-13, not R. Also, Wallace and Mac got super hot.
There are some great cameos from celebrities playing themselves, my favorite being James Franco, as his appearance involves a super-nerdy Tolkien reference. Also, remember to stay tuned after the credits for an extension of his cameo (yes, the movie has an after-credits scene; these seem to be de rigueur now).
I don't know how interesting or entertaining the movie would be for anybody who had not watched the show, but then again, I don't know why anybody who had not watched the show would bother seeing the movie, so there you go. |
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