Review: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

When I talked with Melissa about Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (as we are wont to do), she said that she wasn't going to judge the show (musical? what is the proper term?) until she saw the last act. Now, having seen all of it, I have to say that I'm surprisingly meh about it.

Which is not at all to say that it's bad. There are a lot of really great things about it-- the songs are catchy and cute, Neil Patrick Harris is fantastic, and the format of the show is unprecedented-- but the problem is that there is so little substance. To be fair, Joss admits that this is a sort of fun side project and it's not intended to be heavy hitting and thought provoking, but once the last song ended and the screen went to black, I felt little more than, "That's it?" It wasn't even that ache of wanting more more more, but a vague sense of having wasted a lot of time and anticipation if that was it.

(I am also going to be lame and add a quick disclaimer: I'm normally not this thinky, but I watched The Dark Knight less than twelve hours ago, and it's coloring my thoughts to the SERIOUS BUSINESS side of things.)



** SPOILER ALERT **



Before it aired, I thought the musical would hinge on the fact that this is a villain's blog and that, in a glib way, it would play on the whole idea of the internet and self-disclosure with an underlying wink at the concept of a superhero. Sure, it's a forty-five minute web musical, but Joss is good at pinging on contemporary issues and spinning them into an entertaining and funny story. He didn't have to say anything explicitly; I thought the format of the show would implicitly call them into question.

But. Well. Aside from that one quick little cut pre- and post-Freeze Ray misadventure in Act II, the blog itself barely kicked in. Joss starts to get there in the last act where Dr. Horrible is starting to step into his evil role and he sings, "Spread the word, tell a friend, tell them the tale, get a pic, do a blog, heroes are over!" He doesn't want Penny to see, even as he craves his names in the headlines. When she dies (blah blah who cares?), Dr. Horrible steps into his new life, and the nightmare's real. But it's really only the last second or so of these forty-five minutes that brings a semblance of depth to the film. In his blog, Dr. Horrible finally reveals a secret: Billy feels nothing. No hopes, no dreams, no love. It hits you right in the chest because, yes, there's the reason we sat through the first 44:59 minutes or whatever. Without that last second where, finally, Billy tells a secret, this entire thing would have been an entertaining and fluffy waste of forty-five minutes. As it is, that last second is just an agonizing tease of what this could have been.

Honestly, though, I imagine that most people would not have been annoyed by that; life narratives are a huge part of what I'm interested in, and I was really kind of invested with the whole blog idea.

The other main thing that I didn't like was, simply, Penny. While watching, I didn't really consciously ping on it, but after someone pointed it out how genuinely useless and empty a character Penny is, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I felt increasingly that it was a failure on Joss's part to write such an empty character. Okay, we get it, she's The Girl. The villain wants her, the hero has her, she has to die. Surely Joss, with his deft touch with cliches, could do something about that. But -- no. She's the simple laundromat girl who wants to save the world through petitions. She is asked out by the hot, shallow guy but she decides to go through with their relationship (or whatever) being wooed by frozen yogurt and possibly the HammerJack. That's fine. It's even fine if Felicia Day decides to play her exactly as she's written with zero creativity or personality. There are people in real life who rock the clasped hands and furrowed brows of sensitive pain. But in the context of this story? She is seriously nothing outside the two men, and that's way below what I would expect (unless I am totally missing something and the Whedons are satirizing this type of character, which is both possible and preferable to what I'm seeing). She's Billy's love interest. Captain Hammer has happy hammer time with her for the sole purpose of getting back at Dr. Horrible. Her death means nothing to anyone except as a measure of change in the two men. I mean, really? This is the reason that Dr. Horrible truly comes into being? This is Captain Hammer's terrible revenge? Did anyone care about her death for any reason outside what it'd do to Billy?

I'm sure I sound like a terrible woman-hater here, but it's not that she's The Girl so much as her existence is only as The Girl. Even the one thing that was hers -- the homeless shelter-- she passed over to Captain Hammer's inept yet impressively gloved hands. In the press conference scene, you don't even get the impression that she was on stage because she was involved with the project; she was there because Captain Hammer wanted her there. She crept off the stage once Hammer started to talk about their sex life, not even protesting or looking outraged. What? And, now that I'm thinking about it, Dr Horrible just stands there as Captain Hammer talks about using her for sex without a twitch. In the epic battle between Hammer and Horrible, she's a pawn, but not really something worth fighting over. Worst yet? She's not even self-aware enough to realize it. Joss wrote her with so little self-knowledge that in this entire musical she is the only one who doesn't know how pathetic she is. Even the media is aware that she's just "What's-her-name." That last makes me want to think that the Whedons are trying to satirize the The Girl character, but, well. I'm not really feeling it. (And if I were feeling like being one of Those People, I would mention how her name already sets a tone for her mundanity and valuelessness. It's a good thing I'm not.)

In sum, I know that this makes it sound like I hated Dr. Horrible and think Joss Whedon is a sexist pig, but that's definitely not what I mean. I liked Dr. Horrible, and I suspect I'll either end up getting the DVD or renting it repeatedly or something, but it's not as much as I was hoping for. So while it's a great fluffy musical with typical Joss-quick humor and throwaway lines, it lacks a depth that, honestly, I thought would be there.

Of course, that perceived lack of depth is not going to stop my brain from playing that Laundry Day song on loop for days ("Stop. The woooorld!") or from feverishly replaying that amazing zoom in at the beginning of Brand New Day before it is taken down. (Or from wanting to make a Dr. Horrible figurine. Arrrg, lack of tiime.)

So, here, let's end on a happy note: Neil Patrick Harris? AMAZING OR AMAZING?



Related Links:
+ Music for the first two acts of Dr. Horrible. (I'm apparently missing software, so I can't open it, but, well, there you go.)
+ Neil Patrick Harris is more excited about Dr. Horrible than about the Emmy nomination.