MovieChat Forums > Dead Like Me: Life After Death (2009) Discussion > really don't get the hate for this movie...

really don't get the hate for this movie...

posted 12 years ago by buffy1234515
9 replies | jump to latest

apart from the fact that sarah wynter absolutely sucked as daisy (laura harris was beautiful and could act) and rube wasn't involved i thought it continued the greatness of the tv show.

i thought i would despise it cause it didnt have rube in it but henry ian cusick was great as cameron. his death was funny too.

the ending was brilliant (the hint that george is the new boss) i loved reggie, she became less annoying than she was in the show, mason is still mason, the best character in the series.
ellen muth is a terrific actor who needs more acting gigs. i just wish crystal was involved more than she was (one scene wasn't it?)

so overall not as good as the series but a great 'ending' for the series as a whole.

extremely under rated all because of actor changes. silly reasoning

[–] BrokenMirrorsbrokenMinds 11 years ago

I didn't hate this movie...and it's certainly nice to see the characters again, but after recently rewatching seasons 1, 2, then this...there's a few things that just feel off and it pains me to say so.

The good:
- The satisfaction of George finally revealing herself to Reggie.
- George, Joy, and Reggie's storylines in general.
- Mason was still good ol' Mason.
- Dolores, Crystal, Murray

the bad:
- Try as she might, and although she did a serviceable enough job...Sarah Wynter is not Daisy...and this movie would have greatly benefited from introducing a new reaper instead.
- The score. Too much melodrama. I felt like I was watching an episode of "Six Feet Under" at certain points. The series was always approached with a more black comedy stance, and this movie just felt a little too serious at times.
- Reggie's flashback scene with her boyfriend. Wasn't needed.
- Terrible writing, execution of the new Rube character.
- The pacing was awful. Felt like a 2 hour long movie :/

In general, there really was an unmistakable drop in quality. The movie wasn't as zany as the series was, visually and otherwise. Even in the special features, Ellen Muth comments how one of the producers (perhaps the director) was going for an American Beauty aesthetic. This show was always anti-American Beauty, IMO.

[–] snoho 11 years ago

I do. It was bloody terrible. No way near as good as the series. They should have waited for a better script and more available actors.

[–] mark-1883 11 years ago

I'm with you, Buffy. Just watched it again today, after about 2 years and thought it was quite good. Not perfect---for example, Sarah Wynter is a good actress, but was terribly miscast as Daisy.

But the overall plot---the reapers being tested by temptation, leading to George's promotion at the end; plus, the very moving sub-plot of George/Reggie were quite good. And the mystery of just who Kane really was. (The devil, perhaps?)

Sadly, most of the "fans" couldn't get past the fact that because of the 5 year gap in real life, some changes just couldn't be avoided (Like Mandy Patinkin being under contract for another show).

Not perfect, but a good pilot for a new series. Which, unfortunately, never came to be. Still, a decent enough end to the original series.

[–] strongbad-274-706634 11 years ago

I loved the Series but the Movie is just terrible. I don't understand how a person as nasty as Cameron was put in charge of the Reapers?

[–] Professor59 10 years ago

I was mostly disappointed with the movie. I don't blame Sarah Wynter, an actress, for doing the lines that were written for her. It was just bad writing and directing. Sure, I didn't like what she had become, but to blame the actress is weird.

I'm still glad to have the movie at all, though, and the ending was very nice.

[–] beierfilms 8 years ago

This was beyond awful.

I don't want to pick on Sarah Wynter too much but it felt like one of these amazing moments where bad writing meets bad acting to create something truly terrible. The "Old MacDonald" scene is easily the single worst thing ever in the show. Not only is it a totally un-believable portrayal of the character from a writing standpoint but the acting is just unbelievably bad. I'm still perplexed how anyone thought that scene could be construed as "funny." Her whole performance is like watching a car crash in slow motion. I want to look away but I can't because of how bad every second of it is. Once again, this is not entirely Wynter's fault as Daisy's character has now been a reduced to a one-dimensional moron. It's just a shame that Wynter apparently read the script and, rather figuring out a way to do something with the character, just seemed to play Daisy as funcionally retarded for the duration of the film.

But forgetting about Daisy, the real issue here is the writing. ALL of the characters are shells of their former selves. It's as though the writers said, "hey, you know we be a great twist in this one? Let's make everyone one-dimensional *beep* That's really the best way to put it. Everyone suddenly is robbed of any depth they might have had and reduced to such a child-ish cartoon version of themselves that it's hard to believe that this was written by anyone from the show. It doesn't help that the dialogue is pretty awful as well and just about every attempt at humor falls flat.

The direction also just feels wrong for this film. I'm just not sure why we needed a comic-book style for a story that never felt the least bit comic-booky. I mean, part of the charm of Dead Like Me was how it took a fantastical afterlife scenario and put it in such mundane settings (hence the intro of Grim Reapers riding the bus to work).

Finally, given that the only reason to make a film like this so far after the fact would be to provide some closure for fans, it's amazing how the film managed to ignore every single plot-thread that the show had left dangling. Why does George see Gravlings as a child? How did George get the power to reap Gravlings? What goes on at upper management? What happened to Betty? Sorry, we don't have time to answer those questions because we need to watch Daisy have sex and then sing Old MacDonald...

[–] Danioton 8 years ago

Godchaux and Masius wrote the movie script.

And, they took over as showrunners and frequent script writers for the TV show after Fuller left early in first season.

So...what happened?

[–] verycoolnin 8 years ago

It was totally different that the show. And for the fans waiting 5 years for something, this was extremely disappointing.

[–] vbel 7 years ago

The PTB (Powers That Be) made exceptions to their rules in the series, allowing Rube to say goodbye to his daughter etc.

I don't think allowing George to talk to Reggie would be one of them. After five years of not contacting her family it would have been better to leave it be. They could still show what's going on with Joy and Reggie.

I think we were lucky to get a movie and see most of the characters again. Though the writers really botched it up, the ending was great.