Early Trib review:
Quote:
‘WandaVision’ review: A couple of Avengers struggle to assimilate in suburbia with mixed results — so far
The early half-hours of “WandaVision,” Marvel Studios’ new Disney+ TV series, boast special powers of audience division. While it’s far too early to assess the nine-episode, $150 million gamble fully, so far it’s interestingly bad.
I know. I was hoping for better too. The gathering storm clouds and heavy-duty tonal shift promised by future episodes, indicated by at least one Marvel trailer, may save it, since the Marvel Cinematic Universe is nothing without imminent global destruction. Premiering Jan. 15 on Disney+, “WandaVision” seems likely to entice die-hard, movie-starved Avengers fans in pandemic lockdown. It may also frustrate others to distraction, or the bailout point, just as things have a shot at getting interestingly good.
Philip K. Dick asked the question: Do androids dream of electric sheep? “WandaVision” asks the question: Can the speedy Marvel android named Vision, played by Paul Bettany, die, twice, in “Avengers: Infinity War,” and still return to co-star in a series of half-hour TV sitcoms alongside Wanda Maximoff, aka Scarlet Witch, played by Elizabeth Olsen?
After the events of “Avengers: Endgame,” Wanda and Vision are reunited, by means to be explained in future episodes, for a Witness Protection Program riff on suburban sitcom life. In episode 1, we’re more or less in early ‘60s “Dick Van Dyke Show” land, in old-timey 4:3 aspect ratio and black and white. Wanda and Vision are trying to fit into this strange new world. They’re just an android and “a magical gal in a small-town locale,” as the peppy theme by the “Frozen” and “Coco” Disney regulars Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez describes the set-up.
Vision works for Computational Services Inc., while Wanda gets to know the neighbors, particularly the brassy, nosy, Gladys Kravitz of the bunch, Agnes (Kathryn Hahn, italicizing every real and attempted wisecrack). The premiere deals with a disastrous dinner party saved by Wanda’s resourceful magical powers.
Episode two, new decade, new “show,” new theme song. We’re now in mid-’60s “Bewitched” territory, with animated opening credits and an eventual shift from black and white to color. More superhero slapstick lowjinks ensue with Vision and Wanda participating in Westview Elementary School’s talent-show fundraiser, overseen by a planning committee more menacing than anything in “The Stepford Wives.”
Cracks in this antiseptic paradise are starting to emerge: strange noises, glimpses of sinister characters from the 23-film Marvel “Infinity Saga,” a fleeting image of someone in a TV studio control booth, monitoring the sitcom action. Also there are commercials for Stark Industries toasters and the like.
By the third, shaggy-haired ‘70s-styled episode, all about Wanda’s miraculous, accelerated pregnancy, the emphasis shifts to Wanda’s friend and neighbor Monica (Teyonah Parris). She’s doing her own probable undercover act, and we know her as the young girl in “Captain Marvel,” now grown up and on the verge of revealing her own Avengers connection.
“WandaVision” director Matt Shakman and head writer Jac Schaeffer go whole hog with the TV sitcom tropes, to the point of utilizing a laugh track in some cases, a live studio audience for the premiere and an aura of strained unreality throughout. It’s theoretically fascinating and, in practice, as one-third of a first season, strained in the extreme. Live or canned, the laughter all sounds canned and deadly, and it practically suffocates all three of the initial episodes. Bettany and Olsen have their charms, but their comic ease is AWOL, and the banter and interplay is never truly funny, or funny/scary, or funny/ironic, or ironic/scary/funny. It’s a premise stretched, like gum, across three episodes that should’ve been two, or even one.
On the other hand, it’s certainly the weirdest thing Marvel’s done. In a Guardian newspaper interview, Olsen acknowledged the matter of Vision being “dead” and brought back to life, at least in these morphing sitcom confines. “WandaVision,” she said, is “about grief and coming to terms with one’s life and trauma. And processing.” The processed, canned-ham universe of the early episodes paves the way for all that.
We’ll see if it gets there. Also, Kat Dennings and Randall Park from the “Thor” and “Ant-Man” franchises have yet to appear, and they may do for “WandaVision” what they did for their Marvel movies: lighten the load and bring the deadpan.
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To IkeSouth, bigfan wrote:
Are you stoned or pissed off, or both, when you create these postings?
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