The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Movie Review: Big Trouble (2002)

Movie #21 of 2017:

Big Trouble (2002)

This is a family favorite, but it had been several years since I watched it last. Sometimes things like that can age poorly, but this one is still great, and the comedy holds up really well. I’m always surprised that this movie isn’t better known, but I guess it was doomed by a bland title and for making fun of airport security so soon after 9/11 (although it was technically written and filmed well before). It’s a zany comedy about absurd characters in Miami, and it’s well worth seeking out if you’ve never seen it before. If nothing else, it’s got a great cast that includes a young Zooey Deschanel at her most un-adorkable ever.

★★★★★

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

TV Review: Stranger Things

TV #47 of 2017:

Stranger Things

I know I’m about a year behind on this, but this show was a lot of fun. It wears its 80s homages right there on its sleeve, and although it never quite deconstructs those inherited tropes as much as I’d like, it at least manages to surprise me with unexpected character growth (most notably Hopper, Nancy, and Steve). Mostly it feels like something that could have been made three decades ago, and while sometimes that comes off as unoriginal and falling short of the show’s potential, it’s still a cozy comfort watch for fans of that era.

★★★★☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez

Book #239 of 2017:

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez

Julia Reyes is the best sort of YA protagonist, flawed but sympathetic and with an incredibly distinctive voice. She struggled under the weight of her immigrant parents’ expectations even before her older sister died, but now everything feels like it’s crumbling and she doesn’t know how to get past that trauma and go on with her life. Her parents expect Julia to behave as properly as their other daughter did, but even as she learns that her sister wasn’t so perfect, Julia can’t seem to get her parents to understand why she needs to leave home and go to college. It’s the basis for a powerful novel on grief and depression and the first-generation American experience, and on the importance of speaking about what hurts rather than keeping it bottled up inside.

★★★★☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Movie Review: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)

Movie #20 of 2017:

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)

If you consider this movie as an attempt to recapture the magic (pun very much intended) of Harry Potter, it’s hard to see it as anything but a failure. The stakes are muddled, this version of the Wizarding World feels more hazily drawn, and Newt’s personal story just isn’t as compelling as Harry’s. Taken in its own right, the situation is a little better, although I do think the script needed another draft or two to really iron out what was going on and why these characters were involved. The Graves/Creedence relationship is the most egregious case, but the whole thing overall could have benefited from a rewrite.

That being said, Newt Scamander himself was a perpetual delight, a protagonist who’s so obviously on the autism spectrum that my heart overflowed every time he was on the screen. I still think this was a largely missed opportunity for more diverse casting, given the relatively blank slate of the Fantastic Beasts franchise, but I’m really happy with the acting and directing choices that brought this rendition of Newt to life.

★★★☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

TV Review: The West Wing, season 6

TV #46 of 2017:

The West Wing, season 6

Oh man, late West Wing is such a mixed bag. I think season 5 is unquestionably the worst, and that lingers a little bit into the start of this next one. The primary campaign is a real shot of adrenaline, though, and it definitely works as a soft reboot for the show. (It helps that Matt Santos is forever bae.) Unfortunately, from here on out, we divide our time between the campaign trail and the understaffed White House, and those latter stories struggle to be as compelling as they once were. It’s still good stuff, as is the next and final season that maintains that balance into the general election, but I almost would rather the focus had switched over to the campaigns exclusively, rather than continuing to check in on the second-stringers propping up the last hurrahs of the Bartlet administration.

★★★☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King

Book #238 of 2017:

The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King

Another solid collection of short fiction from author Stephen King. The standout entry is Ur, a Dark Tower-adjacent novella about an e-reader that can access books from alternate realities, but King also offers up some delightful creepiness in Morality, Under the Weather, and That Bus Is Another World, all of which feature protagonists we probably wouldn’t want to spend a whole novel with. Most of the rest of the stories are good but unremarkable, but if you’re a King constant reader, you’ll likely be satisfied with what he’s got on offer here.

★★★☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier

Book #237 of 2017:

My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier

As with Daphne du Maurier’s earlier novel Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel is the sort of dark and gothic book Gillian Flynn might have written had she been born half a century earlier. In this one, narrator Philip Ashley’s cousin is abroad in Italy when he falls in love, gets married, and promptly dies, leaving his widow to make her way back to Philip’s English estate. He’s suspicious of the role Rachel played in his cousin’s death, even as he finds himself falling in love with her himself. There’s a delightful tension here for readers to try and work out whether Rachel is a conniving murderess or Philip is a deluded manchild, and although it seems pretty clear which reading du Maurier intended to be correct, she never quite confirms it beyond all reasonable doubt.

★★★☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: Seraphina by Rachel Hartman

Book #236 of 2017:

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman (Seraphina #1)

This novel depicts a fascinating world in which dragons and humans were once enemies but now live under an uneasy peace, with the dragons who take on human form (for diplomacy, study, or trade) forced to publicly identify themselves and live in ghettos within human cities. Each side views fraternization with the other as close to heresy, and the ultra-logical dragons don’t even seem to understand the human concept of love – yet when Seraphina’s mother dies giving birth to the girl, her silver blood reveals to her shocked husband that she had been an unregistered dragon all along.

Mixed children like Seraphina aren’t supposed to exist, and keeping her true nature hidden becomes more difficult than ever when she teams up with a handsome human prince to investigate a suspicious death that could shatter the peace treaty between her peoples. I loved this allegorical fantasy way of exploring issues of race, heritage, and apartheid, especially with author Rachel Hartman subtly presenting Seraphina’s insight into dragon and human customs and her ability to navigate both those worlds as strengths rather than flaws.

Some unnecessary flashbacks and memory palace antics kept me from fully loving this book, but Seraphina is a great character for anyone feeling stuck between two sides of themselves, and I look forward to seeing where her story goes from here.

★★★★☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire

Book #235 of 2017:

Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children #2)

This is a dark little fairy tale about twin sisters who fall into a world of vampires and mad scientists and must make choices about who they want to be as they grow up. It’s technically a prequel to the author’s earlier novella Every Heart a Doorway, but the two plots are largely independent and can really be read in either order. As with its predecessor, I wanted this to be a full novel instead of a novella, because there are some abbreviated moments that I would have liked to see fleshed out in more detail. Nevertheless, it’s a powerful look at how stifling parental expectations can be, and at the lengths children might take to escape them, if they could only find the right door.

★★★★☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

TV Review: House of Cards, season 5

TV #45 of 2017:

House of Cards, season 5

We had watched all but the last two episodes of this season before the Kevin Spacey news broke, and we finally got around to finishing it up. Even if you set aside everything we now know about the star actor, this was a pretty awful season of television (hence why it took us so long to get through it). Characters have no stable motivations or relationships with one another, the Underwoods can somehow see every political move coming a million miles away and still make really really senseless missteps, and the plot makes no sense and carries no weight. I really liked this show for the first season or two, but it had become a shell of itself even before Netflix fired its lead. Maybe the next (final) season will reinvent itself without Spacey, but I’m not exactly holding my breath.

★☆☆☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter