brokentoy

I'd finished Raya Sirena a few weeks ago (what a nothingburger of a show, ultimately) and thought hey, I'm in the mood for some other mermaid media. H2O: Just Add Water unfortunately just left Netflix, and I didn't feel ready to start on season 2 of Siren without a recap. So, A Mermaid for Christmas, a made-for-tv rom com that was only ever available on Amazon prime until I finally found an alternate stream, it is.

Me: This is going to be so bad. SO BAD. SO SO SO BAD.

[half an hour later]

Me: Actually this is pretty funny, some of the jokes are legit, and some of the line readings are pretty good! Problem is, it's not zany ENOUGH, and it's hampered by a tiny budget that doesn't give it the glistening zany feel of a DCOM or Netflix Christmas film. It's not "good" but it is self-aware and managed to pull off lampshading jokes that usually sound embarrassed or tryhard, but here feel like they're bringing the audience in for the joke, and it's kinda charming for that. It's still not "good" and offers almost no eye candy for mermaid fen, but I had more fun in general than I did with Raya Sirena, so that's something.

Edited to add: I felt oddly unsatisfied that the movie was middling fine and that I kinda enjoyed it, so I ended up browsing listlessly for a bit and ended up watching the 2020 CN film Legend of Mermaid and it was so awful! Exactly the kind of bad I was looking for! And all is right with the world.

Edited again to add: I figured I might as well watch the sequel Legend of Mermaid II, and... oh? This one's actually fun! And funny! And has actual character arcs! And a villain twist that makes sense! And two things that felt like plot holes turned out not to be! Bonus majority female cast vs. the first movie's sexual menace towards women! This is legitimately a good movie, and much better than A Mermaid for Christmas even, what a wonder it is when there's good writing, what the heck.

What a rollercoaster.

Since my last proper Agatha Christie post, I have read:

• The Man in the Brown Suit - Anne Beddingfield is a lunatic and I love her! The book has elements of Christie's espionage stories but is more of a crime caper with the Big Boss mystery in the middle. I was SO worried that Anne's new friend Mrs. Blair would turn out to be the villain! Anne and Mrs. Blair are such strong, distinct personalities, and it's fascinating how Christie can voice characters well. Shame about all the casual racism against black Africans, woof.


• N or M? - This was a relief to get to next, because I'd read a bunch of Christie's non-murder mysteries in a row, which was a little frustrating. Technically this one is still espionage, but there is a whodunit contained to a single location with a locked cast of characters, so it's functionally like a murder mystery. Also, another Tommy & Tuppence book! I was startled about the time skip, so they're now in their 40s and have adult children and are in a second war, what a time.


• Hallowe'en Party - This was fun! A tragedy of a child’s death at a party after she boasts about having seen a murder, and an investigation years after the fact. I liked the setting, and I figured out some of the elements from the clues themselves, plus I didn’t find Ariadne Oliver as grating as I otherwise sometimes do. The writing/pacing felt really smooth in this one.

After finishing that last one, I vaguely recalled that Branagh's third Poirot movie might've been loosely based on it, so I looked it up and it was, so I watched it!

Surprise surprise, I actually like Branagh's version! Which is HILARIOUS because I thought his Orient Express was just okay, and skipped Death on the Nile entirely (for cast reasons, but when I heard about the moustache's backstory, decided that that was probably a good decision).

Looking back, the problem with Orient Express, I think, was that it was close enough to the book that it made the differences more frustrating, and brought into sharper relief the things that Branagh didn't think were important but I, personally, felt were important, and vice versa. Then Death on Nile looked like more of the same.

A Haunting in Venice however, is a full-on remix, and I think the right way to go! Instead of pretending to be an adaptation, it does its own thing while retaining the broad strokes for some of the characters and some of the specific dynamics, especially ( mild spoilers ) but in a new way that I found legitimately fun. Because it's a remix it's more enjoyable to spot what's been retained and what's been moved around, and it allows (for me, at least) more generosity in parsing this version's new themes, in this case the weight of death and guilt clinging on to the living and not allowing them to move on. (Brought to the most extreme with the murderer, even before the first murder.)

Of course, now that I want Branagh to make another, he's not going to.