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Directed by Bonnie Rodini

Good Life ...... it's closer than you think!

Olive Pappadopoulous, 35, an Oral Hygienist, flees Cape Town for Greece to try outwit a broken heart, but is faced with the local villagers hostility and is befriended by a 7-year-old refugee who teaches her how to live “The Good Life.”

Erica Wessels Robyn Scott Sven Ruygrok Adam Neill Leon Clingman Caleb Payne

Director Director

Bonnie Rodini

Writer Writer

Rodini Films Inverse Films Happy Olive Productions

South Africa USA

Alternative Titles

Greckie wakacje, Buena vida

Comedy Drama

Releases by Date

09 sep 2021, 15 apr 2022, releases by country.

• Theatrical NR

105 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Cat In The Hat Enthusiast™️ ★½

A film set in Greece - fully filmed around Cape Town. Family watches picked solely by my mom will be the end of any and all letterbox integrity.

Review by Jack Steyl ★★★★★

My mom was in this movie so I am legally obligated to give it five stars

Review by Radagast21 ★½

What a sleeper... Lack of originality wouldn't even be a this big of a problem, if I at least considered it to be enjoyable. But it's not a funny comedy or well written drama.

Review by Overly Honest Reviews ★★★★

MOVIE REVIEW Good Life 4 out of 5 stars

Genre: Drama Year Released: 2021 Runtime: 1h 50m Director: Bonnie Rodini Writer(s): Bonnie Rodini Cast: Erica Wessels, Robyn Scott, Sven Ruygrok, Nicky Rebelo, Caleb Payne, Jennifer Steyn, Adam Neill, Leon Clingman Where To Watch: In select theaters and ON DEMAND starting April 15th

The synopsis for this film reads, “When Olive Pappadopoulous, 35, flees Cape Town for Greece to mend a broken heart, she is met with hostility from the local villagers until she befriends a 7-year-old refugee who teaches her how to live "The Good Life." and wow, is that the understatement of the year. I love how that summary is written; it tells you what you need to know…

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Movie Review: Good Life

Bonnie Rodini is the co-screenwriter and producer of The Story of an African Farm , a family drama directed by David Lister and starring Richard E. Grant. Based on the 1883 novel of the same name by South African author Olive Schreiner, this film took well over a decade to come together. The same can be said for Rodini’s latest movie, an indie romance comedy drama about Olive Papadopoulos’s Greek misadventure in the tradition of My Life in Ruins , Shirley Valentine and The Durrells .

Rodini started writing the first draft of the script while visiting family at a small Grecian village called Galaxidi. After 15 years of trying to raise financing for her passion project, and after several promising developments fell through, the Covid-19 pandemic undermined the global film industry. Being the eternal optimist, the stubbornly courageous and determined Rodini decided that she would make lemonade by going ahead with Good Life . Raising the money she needed on her house, Rodini decided to relocate on-location shooting to Cape Town and negotiated with cast and crew to work at reduced rates.

An inspired decision, constrained by flight restrictions and lockdown, it seems Good Life was bound to happen one way or another. The irony of it happening mid-pandemic when many professionals in the film industry were experiencing the exact opposite, Good Life is much more than just a movie. Brave or foolish, the context frames this lighthearted “international” romcom jaunt, which created employment and leveraged resources to breaking point. Having two decades of experience in the TV and film industry, Bonnie is best known for her work as a casting director. While instrumental in the creation of The Story of an African Farm as a co-writer and producer, Good Life marks her debut as a director.

Erica Wessels is a prolific actor, best known for Alles Wat Mal Is , The Harvesters , Hatchet Hour and I Am All Girls . When Rodini approached her in hard lockdown in a bid to reprise her role from the pilot made some 10 years earlier, Wessels was convinced she wasn’t right for the part any longer. After some persuasion, Wessels took up the challenge of a role now in a different phase of her life. To her credit, the charming, grounded and dependable Wessels recaptures the essence of Olive, a brokenhearted oral hygienist who flees Cape Town to locate a family home in Greece.

“Damnit, she had me at hello.”

While there’s a Bridget Jones in Greece undercurrent, Good Life harnesses the talents of a burgeoning cast between Cape Town and Greece as Olive befriends a 7-year-old refugee and faces the scorn of embittered villagers. Casting requires intuition and it’s no surprise that this is one of the strongest elements in Good Life . Rodini’s knack for reading people elevates the oddball community that make up this light and bubbly small town affair. The comedy drama romance’s supporting cast features Robyn Scott, Sven Ruygrok, Nicky Rebelo, Leon Clingman and Caleb Payne as Jet. Scott and Rebelo add a healthy dose of bitter and sweet to Good Life with solid performances. Clingman ramps up the comic relief as an inspector while Ruygrok’s local Romeo and Payne’s street urchin charm vie for a place in Olive’s heart. Also, look out for some fun cameos from familiar favourites.

Spinning off a number of supporting acts, Good Life is sweet and even charming thanks to its game cast but it’s also thinly scripted and a bit repetitive. The novelty wears off as you start to realise the romance comedy drama doesn’t have any more gears, lacking the story depth and character focus to offer much more than breezy and light entertainment. While the Nikos-Olive relationship is fun-spirited, it could have been developed beyond the confines of a superficial summer fling. Harnessing a TV quality, the slow pacing and holiday setting make Good Life amusing, but it’s too straightforward to conjure up much more substance beyond its wispy themes around family, community and curses.

A passion project made on a shoestring budget, this is a gentle, sweet and ambling movie, somewhat reminiscent of the small town comedy drama series Doc Marten for setting, story and character focus. Shot entirely in South Africa, production design and location scouting helps set the scene for a modest film created in winter during the Covid-19 pandemic. While an admirable effort to emulate Greece with an anchoring soundtrack and some choice aerial photography, “faux Greece” is never quite as idyllic or picturesque as the clichéd version expressed in movies like Mamma Mia .

Good Life would’ve been better served as a series or miniseries, giving the characters the luxury of time for further exploration, greater development and more emotional investment. Given its limitations, modest budget, shooting and travel restrictions, there’s still much to admire even if the overall feeling is a little vanilla. Imbuing heart, spirit and warmth, this harmless feel good romance comedy drama is deeply flawed and lightweight but still has its place. While better served to people unfamiliar with Cape Town’s sights and sounds, Good Life will find an audience with those wishing to enjoy some easy-going and undemanding summery holiday escapism.

The bottom line: Lightweight

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Review: In ‘Life,’ Extraterrestrial Fun, Until Someone Gets Hurt

• Share full article

By Ben Kenigsberg

• March 23, 2017

In an opening sequence, “ Life ” allows viewers to float through an international space station. The camera zips around corners and turns upside-down in a feat of impossible (and most likely effects-massaged) cinematography. It’s tempting to tune out the exposition and simply concentrate on the director Daniel Espinosa’s dazzling imagery, even if it now looks familiar from “Gravity” and “Avatar.”

The astronauts on board are on a mission to retrieve samples from Mars. The biggest find is a single-cell organism: proof of life on another planet. Because movie monsters never stay small, Calvin (as a girl on Earth names it) soon grows into a kind of iridescent snail. Hugh Derry (Ariyon Bakare), an exobiologist, marvels that each of Calvin’s cells can perform every somatic function. Miranda North (Rebecca Ferguson), who is from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and makes fruitless arguments for quarantines, translates: Calvin can simultaneously be all muscle, all brain and all eye.

Movie Review: ‘Life’

The times critic ben kenigsberg reviews “life.".

In “Life” a team of astronauts finds the first life from Mars. In his review Ben Kenigsberg writes: The camera zips around corners and turns upside-down in a feat of impossible (and likely effects-massaged) cinematography. The film is a trap because having started so promisingly, quickly settles for becoming yet another clone of “Alien,” as space travelers play a deadly game of hide-and-seek with a shape-shifting Martian. Despite the promise of an all-muscle, all-brain, all-eye creature, the effects artists seem to have gotten their visual ideas by playing mix-and-match at an aquarium. The primary suspense comes from wondering whether the killings will come in the reverse order of star billing.

It sounds like a trap — and it is. And not just because Calvin, at first playfully curious toward Hugh, turns hostile after a moment of human error. No, it’s a trap because the movie, having started so promisingly, quickly settles for becoming yet another clone of “Alien,” as space travelers play a deadly game of hide-and-seek with a shape-shifting Martian. (Not counting the android in that Ridley Scott 1979 film, “Life” even has the same number of crew members.)

The primary suspense comes from wondering whether the killings will follow the reverse order of star billing. The humans include Jake Gyllenhaal as a medic, who is growing loony from too much time in space. (Having seen military carnage, he doesn’t much care for Earth, anyway.) Hiroyuki Sanada plays the flight engineer with a newborn at home. In the best scene, Ryan Reynolds, as the crew’s mechanic, charges into the lab to rescue Hugh and is trapped with an extremely irritated Calvin, then in his jellyfish stage. (Despite the promise of an all-muscle, all-brain, all-eye creature, the effects artists seem to have gotten their visual ideas by playing mix-and-match at an aquarium.)

And as the astronauts contend with airlocks, busted equipment and escape pods, it becomes increasingly difficult to pretend that this isn’t territory where more inventive screenwriters (Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, the writers here, are also responsible for “Deadpool”) and stronger visual stylists have gone before. The movie isn’t, to paraphrase a line from “Spaceballs,” the stupidest combination you’ve ever heard. But it’s not very good, either.

Life Rated R for gravity-free blood globs. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes.

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Movie Review: Anthony Hopkins, Johnny Flynn find poignant synergy in real-life war tale ‘One Life’

This image released by Bleecker Street shows Anthony Hopkins in a scene from “One Life.” (Bleecker Street via AP)

This image released by Bleecker Street shows Anthony Hopkins in a scene from “One Life.” (Peter Mountain/Bleecker Street via AP)

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By the time Nicholas Winton died in 2015 at the ripe age of 106, the former London stockbroker and self-proclaimed “ordinary man” had been widely recognized for his extraordinary deeds — rescuing 669 Jewish children from the Nazis, saving them from certain death.

But for most of his life, Winton’s rescue of those children from Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II, bringing them to safety in Britain, was unknown to the public. His story was revealed dramatically on the BBC show “That’s Life!” in 1988, which introduced him, in an emotional surprise, to some of the very people he’d saved. Tears were shed and a fuss was made over this unfussy man. He was dubbed the “British Schindler,” and knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003.

Even if you didn’t know Anthony Hopkins was starring in “One Life,” the straightforward yet still moving new drama based on Winton’s tale, you’d be forgiven for assuming it the minute you learned Winton was a modest and quiet elderly man, keeping much to himself. Hopkins can play such a character in his sleep.

What he’s truly great at, though, is that moment when he finally lets the wall around him crumble and shows what he’s been feeling all along. Yes, this happens in “One Life,” and yes, you’ll likely be wiping tears along with him. The emotional payoff takes a while to arrive, but once it does in the last act of this film, you’ll have a hard time forgetting Hopkins’ face.

Holocaust-themed movies are crucial but notoriously tricky ventures. At Sunday’s Oscars, Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest” was honored for a hugely inventive approach , illustrating the banality of Nazi evil in its chilling portrayal of an Auschwitz commandant’s family life right outside the camp wall. “One Life,” directed with efficiency by James Hawes, takes a much more traditional approach, telling its story in flashback with dialogue that sometimes borders on the overly expository, but with a lovely cast and a story that begs to be told.

Hopkins is the key draw, but Johnny Flynn, the talented actor-musician, has the difficult task of channeling Hopkins as a younger man (the filmmakers chose to shoot the Hopkins scenes first, so that Flynn could then build the connective tissue between the two, something he does admirably.) And it’s a lot more than 50 years that separate the two versions of Winton. It’s the war itself. The events with younger Winton took place in 1939, as the Nazis were marching across Europe but two years before they began implementing their so-called Final Solution, the mass murder of European Jews. The elder Winton knew exactly what became of all those children he couldn’t bring to safety, and you can see it in his eyes here.

We first meet the elder Winton at home in Maidenhead, a town in southeast England. It’s 1987, and he’s staring at faded photos of children from the war. He spends his days involved in local charity work. He can’t seem to get rid of all the clutter in his study, despite the pleadings of his wife, Grete (Lena Olin), who tells him: “You have to let go, for your own sake.” He’s still trying to figure out what to do with a frayed leather briefcase, which contains a precious scrapbook full of war memories.

We flash back to 1939 London, when 29-year-old Nicky, as he’s known, who is of Jewish descent but has been raised as a Christian, resolves to leave the comfortable home he lives in with his mother, Babi (Helena Bonham Carter), to travel to Prague. He aims to help with the growing crisis caused by the influx of refugees from the Sudetenland region just annexed by Germany; he and others fear (correctly) that the Nazis will soon invade and send the Jewish refugees to camps.

In Prague, he finds desperate families and starving children, like a 12-year-old girl caring for an infant who has lost its parents. “We have to move the children,” he tells his colleagues. They say the task is too daunting. He persists, convincing a local rabbi to give him lists of children to begin the process (“I’m putting their lives in your hands,” the rabbi tells him.) Upon his return to London, aided by his spirited mother, he embarks on a furious race against time and government bureaucracy to obtain visas for the children and raise awareness in the media. “The process takes time,” an official says. “We don’t have time,” he replies.

Somehow, he manages to get the transports going, meeting the trains in London, where children are matched with foster families. (The most moving scenes in the film, until the emotional crescendo at the end, are departure scenes in Prague, with children saying goodbye to parents who must surely sense they’ll never see them again).

As the film toggles between 1939 and 1987-88, we learn that Winton managed to get eight trains of children out but not a ninth, with 250 children who were turned back once the Nazis invaded, a loss he keeps buried inside. That is, until he he meets a Holocaust researcher who happens to be married to news magnate Robert Maxwell.

That meeting ultimately leads to the climax in the television studio, faithfully recreated by Hawes, who actually once worked on that very BBC show. The scene is doubly poignant given the knowledge that some of the background actors in the studio that day were actual family members of those Winton saved. “There was not a dry eye on the set floor,” the director has said.

That’s not difficult to believe.

“One Life,” a Bleecker Street release, has been rated PG by the Motion Picture Association “for thematic material, smoking and some language.” Running time: 110 minutes. Three stars out of four.

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Life feels good, common sense media reviewers.

Feel-good coming-of-age movie has nudity, sex.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

With the help of strong family support, dedicated

Mateusz is a perceptive, intelligent, and keen obs

Mateusz observes domestic abuse in the apartment b

Brief female nudity in two scenes, breasts. Female

Infrequent profanity: "F--king," "t-ts."

Vodka and beer drinking. Cigarette smoking.

Parents need to know that Life Feels Good is a 2013 Polish drama about a young man with cerebral palsy struggling to communicate his thoughts and feelings with those around him. It's in Polish with English subtitles. Some female nudity -- breasts. The lead character is obsessed with breasts, so much so that…

Positive Messages

With the help of strong family support, dedicated teachers, and innovative educational techniques, the lead character, who has cerebral palsy, is able to express his thoughts and feelings, revealing himself to be a smart, sensitive, and curious person. The mentally challenged are portrayed with dignity.

Positive Role Models

Mateusz is a perceptive, intelligent, and keen observer of what he sees around him and what he has been taught by his parents; with the help of an innovative teacher, he devotes himself to learning how to communicate what is in his mind and express his feelings so his family and caretakers can understand him.

Violence & Scariness

Mateusz observes domestic abuse in the apartment building across from his window; the father of his love interest slaps her hard in the face and slaps his wife. Mateusz tries to drop a bottle on the head of this man when he's below Mateusz's window. Mateusz is shown going into convulsions; in one instance, his mother falls backwards while trying to take care of him, gets injured, and must go to the hospital. He tries to commit suicide by falling out of his chair and falling down a flight of stairs.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Brief female nudity in two scenes, breasts. Female intern sneaks into lead character's room with a pornographic magazine, opens up the magazine to show the lead character, then removes her top so he can feel her breasts. Orderly in a mental health facility shown looking through the pages of a pornographic magazine. Lead character, through narration, talks of how he used to rate female breasts on a scale of one to ten. Lead character can hear his brother loudly having sex with his girlfriend in the other room.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

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Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Life Feels Good is a 2013 Polish drama about a young man with cerebral palsy struggling to communicate his thoughts and feelings with those around him. It's in Polish with English subtitles. Some female nudity -- breasts. The lead character is obsessed with breasts, so much so that as a young man, he rates on a scale of 1 to 10 the breasts of the women around him in the institution where he has been sent to live. A young intern who seems to make a connection with the lead character enters his room late at night, shows him pictures from a pornographic magazine, then removes her top so he can feel her breasts. In another scene, the lead character hears his brother and girlfriend having sex in the other room. Some drinking, cigarette smoking. Language includes "f--king" and "t-ts." The main character tries to commit suicide by falling out of his chair and falling down a flight of stairs. Overall, this is an inspiring coming-of-age story that passionately explores the hidden intelligence and unique qualities of those classified as "mentally challenged." To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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What's the Story?

In LIFE FEELS GOOD, Mateusz (David Ogrodnik) is a young man born with cerebral palsy in Poland in the 1980s. He cannot walk, needs help with eating, dressing, and cleaning himself, and is unable to communicate his thoughts and feelings. While his loving mother and playful father do all they can for him, Mateusz, through voice-over narration, is a perceptive and sensitive person unable to express the depth of his humanity to those around him. He is befriended by Anka, a neighbor in the building across the courtyard from the window he looks out of from his apartment, a girl his age who becomes his first "girlfriend" and perhaps real friend. She takes him on adventures around the city, but must leave due to her abusive father. When Mateusz's father passes away and his mother becomes too old to take care of him, Mateusz is sent to an institution. He hates living there initially, and even tries to commit suicide by falling out of his chair and falling down a flight of stairs. He experiences another deep connection, this time with an intern named Magda, who spends hours engaging with him, but her personal problems cause her to abruptly quit. But when an innovative instructor comes to the institution with a new way to teach communication to Mateusz, Mateusz eagerly learns and begins to find a way to communicate with his family and those around him.

Is It Any Good?

This manages to be a feel-good coming-of-age movie that avoids the usual mawkish cliches of feel-good coming-of-age movies. Incapable of communication for much of the movie, Mateusz (portrayed in an incredible performance by David Ogrodnik) is revealed to be a sensitive, observant, and perceptive man quite aware of what's going on around him even if many in his world have written him off as a "vegetable." He's also obsessed with breasts, and filled with a murderous hatred for the abusive father of his first "girlfriend." In other words, he isn't a sanctimonious saint, but a human trying desperately to let the world know that he's alive.

Refreshingly, the movie doesn't rely on Hollywood-style bombast to heighten and overdramatize a story that doesn't need it. The teacher who teaches Mateusz how to communicate with a series of symbols in a binder, for instance, isn't made out to be some larger-than-life character like the kind Robin Williams often played when cast as a doctor or poetry instructor. She does her job, and so when the breakthrough happens, it's all the more rewarding. Life Feels Good is funny and poignant without being sappy and sentimental; no easy feat.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about coming-of-age movies. How does Life Feels Good one compare to others you've seen?

How is the historical backdrop of the setting -- Poland in the '80s, '90s, and 2000s -- shown in the movie?

What does the movie say about the treatment of the mentally challenged? What does it suggest about possibilities of treatment and education of those who had previously been deemed incapable of communication?

Movie Details

• In theaters : October 11, 2013
• On DVD or streaming : November 7, 2018
• Cast : David Ogrodnik , Dorota Kolak , Arkadiusz Jakubik
• Director : Maciej Pieprzyca
• Studio : Tramway Film Studio
• Genre : Drama
• Character Strengths : Communication , Perseverance
• Run time : 112 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Last updated : July 31, 2022

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Bad Boys: Ride or Die

When their former captain is implicated in corruption, two Miami police officers have to work to clear his name. When their former captain is implicated in corruption, two Miami police officers have to work to clear his name. When their former captain is implicated in corruption, two Miami police officers have to work to clear his name.

• Adil El Arbi
• Bilall Fallah
• Chris Bremner
• George Gallo
• Martin Lawrence
• Vanessa Hudgens
• 21 User reviews
• 78 Critic reviews
• 53 Metascore

• Mike Lowrey

• Marcus Burnett

• (as Paola Nuñez)

• Captain Howard

• (as Khaled 'DJ Khaled' Khaled)

• (as Dennis Mcdonald)

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• Trivia The initial Filming has been completed on 4th March 2024

Capt. Conrad Howard : [on video] You're my bad boys. Now clear my name.

• Connections Featured in Black Eyed Peas & El Alfa Feat. Becky G: Tonight (2024)

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• Jun 4, 2024
• When will Bad Boys: Ride or Die be released? Powered by Alexa
• Why is Theresa Randle not returning in this film?
• June 7, 2024 (United States)
• United States
• Những Gã Trai Hư: Chơi Hay Bị Xơi
• Columbia Pictures
• Jerry Bruckheimer Films
• Westbrook Studios
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

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• Runtime 1 hour 55 minutes
• Dolby Digital
• IMAX 6-Track
• Dolby Atmos

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Bad Boys: Ride Or Die Review - Aging Gunslingers Still Hit The Spot

• Martin Lawrence and Will Smith are at the top of their respective games
• A visual treat for the eyes
• Juggles its expanding roster well
• Aspires to be little more than a good time

In the wake of the Oscars slap controversy  and the relative failure of his prestige picture "Emancipation," Will Smith really needed a win. Luckily for him, revisiting his movie star roots and teaming back up with longtime collaborator Martin Lawrence has reaped dividends. Whether or not it proves a financial success, "Bad Boys: Ride or Die" is shocking in how effectively it pleases a crowd. It continues the work of "Bad Boys For Life," breathing new energy into a thirty year old franchise that, on paper, should have ran out of steam by now.

The underlying majesty of the Jerry Bruckheimer formula for blockbuster filmmaking remains intact here, with maximalist visuals and melodramatic shorthand storytelling between constant bursts of action. But passing the baton from Michael Bay to Adil & Bilall, the hot directing duo who've held the reins since "For Life," has opened the series to being both a throwback to its own origins, as well as a study in how to adapt to the changing times. 

"Bad Boys: Ride or Die" may be short on actual ambition, but it's long on ticking all the necessary boxes for moviegoers. 

The boys have still got it

The "Fast & Furious" films have created a blueprint for outmoded film series to expand their horizons by accepting their new place in the landscape. The same way some racing enthusiasts went from stealing DVD players to putting a car in outer space , "Bad Boys" has gone from being two buddy cops breaking all the rules, to elder statesmen wrestling with middle age and the evolving face of law enforcement. In "Bad Boys For Life," we saw the cast expand to the hotshot, tech-enthusiast special team AMMO (featuring younger stars like Alexander Ludwig and Vanessa Hudgens), throwing more players into the mix to help reduce the amount of stunt work the aging Mike Lowery (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) must engage in. 

Last time out, it was Mike who had a near death experience and a mid-life crisis, refusing to grow up — and Marcus, now a grandfather, begging him to accept the present. In "Bad Boys: Ride or Die," it's Marcus who nearly bites the big one as a result of his refusal to take his health more seriously. But he returns from the beyond with newfound insight into his soul-tie to his partner and a false sense of immortality after their slain Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano) tells him it's not his time yet. Some sketchy villains (led by Eric Dane) are posthumously framing Howard, and only Mike and Marcus can clear his name. In the ensuing adventure, they end up having to work with Mike's illegitimate son Armando (Jacob Scipio) while on the run from Captain Howard's U.S. Marshall daughter Judy (Rhea Seehorn). The ensemble, amidst all the MacGuffins and twists, gets ample time to shine. There's even a spotlight for Marcus' put upon son-in-law Reggie (Dennis Greene) that made this reviewer's screening audience erupt as if the portals from "Avengers: Endgame" were opening up.

The film's plot works well enough and the characterization is pretty threadbare, but the cast are all having a blast and filling in the blanks with pure charm. Lawrence, in particular, cuts loose more than he has in years, mining Marcus' newfound spirituality for plenty of laughs. But the key is, when there's enough of a breather in all the bullets and explosions for some serious emotions to be addressed, he seamlessly brings the film's heart to the fore. It's the sort of impressive work that is only possible with the combination of experience and being unafraid to laugh at yourself for the age it took to acquire it.

Will they ride one more time?

"Bad Boys For Life" felt like a lucky break, but "Bad Boys: Ride or Die" leaves things feeling like the series is just getting started. Where before, you could imagine either the third or fourth outing ending with one or both of its heroes going out in a blaze of glory to clear the runway for a reboot, or for some of the new characters to rise up and take their place, this film makes it clear that Will Smith and Martin Lawrence can steer the ship for a while longer, as the supporting players split the labor necessary to keep things moving along.

Credit must be given for this vitality to directors Adil & Bilall. It feels like they've created an environment and a ferocious kind of energy that proves to be a renewable resource. The borderline nihilism inherent to even the most lighthearted moments from the Michael Bay outings is all but gone. In its stead, there's a sincerity and a sweetness that continues to feel truly refreshing. And for those who miss the "Bayhem," the debacle behind the cancelled "Batgirl" movie   hasn't dulled the duo's visual flair whatsoever. It feels like they came at "Ride or Die" with a chip on their shoulder from the whole ordeal and spin inventive and dynamic camera work throughout every action set piece to prove they've really got the goods. 

Every camera movement or wild transition is more than just smoke and mirrors to make the viewer forget how old its two leads have gotten, but rather part and parcel of what makes the movie feel so young in spite of its age. "Ride or Die" is a blast and proof that audiences will keep following Mike and Marcus until they finally get their pensions and retire. Hell, even then, they could keep at it as private investigators.

"Bad Boys: Ride or Die" hits U.S. theaters on June 7. 

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You heard of a feel-good movie? This is a feel-right movie. The truths that are rooted in “The Good Lie” are exactly what set it free from the trap of being the latest example of Hollywood-generated inspirational hogwash. Not that this intimate account of how a band of Sudanese orphans survived a bloody civil war (which raged on for more than two decades starting in 1983) and managed to forge a fresh start in America years later isn’t uplifting. How could it not be?

But instead of settling for being simplistic and condescending, this moving story possesses an honesty that compensates for any of the more obvious tugs on our tear ducts, most of which arrive in the latter part of the film.  The primary source of this authenticity is a cast populated with South Sudanese actors who captivate without pretense. Two of the three male leads, as well as the actress who plays their sister, were caught up in the conflict before fleeing their homeland for asylum elsewhere. One was a child soldier, the other two lost relatives in the war.

An innate understanding of what their parts entail pours forth from their very being. You can sense it in their faces, their body language, in the distinctive cadence of their speech, and in their humble though dignified stances. Even the younger versions of their characters are the offspring of the so-called “Lost Boys of Sudan.”

The trailers and poster for "The Good Lie" give the impression that Reese Witherspoon is the star and that her plucky Midwesterner is yet another cinematic incarnation of a white savior coming to the rescue of struggling black people, similar to the role that earned Sandra Bullock an Academy Award in 2009’s “The Blind Side.”  But that’s just a marketing ploy that relies on its own good lie as a selling tool: promoting an Oscar-winner as bait for a drama full of unknowns. 

There does exist a 2011 film, “ Machine Gun Preacher ,” that fits that clichéd description in the manner in which it uses the Sudanese unrest as a backdrop. The biopic verges on B-movie exploitation as it features Gerard Butler as a reformed drug-abusing outlaw biker who becomes a missionary and pledges to defend the African orphans against guerrilla forces. The outcome isn’t exactly awful, but the movie’s biggest mistake is telling the wrong story about the wrong hero.

Instead, “The Good Lie” honors its subject matter by devoting its first half-hour or so to events that unfold in Sudan, starting with a sudden and brutal attack on a rural village. Bullets are fired from a swooping helicopter, killing everyone save for several children. Related or not, they form a makeshift family and embark on a grueling 1,000-mile barefoot trek across punishing terrain where the threat of danger is around every bend.

Hoping to draw a wider audience with a PG-13 rating, Canadian director Philippe Falardeau (“ Monsieur Lazhar ,” a 2011 nominee for best foreign language film) skillfully finds a way to keep graphic violence at bay and still get the point across with a harrowing sequence that involves crossing a river strewn with floating dead bodies to evade the vicious rebels nearby.

Starvation, a lack of water and illness claim the lives of several of the companions. As for Theo, who inherited his late father’s status as chief, he allows himself to be captured to save the rest, who eventually find sanctuary at a Kenyan refugee camp. And there they will stay for 13 years, until humanitarian efforts abroad allow them to seek a permanent home in Kansas City, Mo., where three of Theo’s brothers–gentle giant Jeremiah ( Ger Duany ), handyman Paul ( Emmanuel Jal ) and Mamere ( Arnold Oceng , a standout who knows how to express a lot with little apparent effort)–are sent.

Enter Witherspoon, with long brown locks that put her natural glow on a dimmer switch. She’s Carrie Davis, a free-spirited single lady (afternoon trysts and all that) and take-charge job recruiter tasked with finding work for the trio. Unfortunately, when a rep from a Christian charity group (bouncy Sarah Baker ) can’t pick them up at the airport, Carrie soon becomes a reluctant chauffeur and ambassador for the three young men.

It is a good thing these actors are charming enough that they aren’t too hampered by a long string of fish-out-of-water gags. Everything from escalators to telephones to lemon-lime Jell-O rings serve as  sources of culture-shock humor. However, it is kind of cute when Mamere thanks Carrie for her help by saying, “May you find a husband to fill your empty house.”

But the moment that best expresses the joy of their newfound freedom is when Mamere shares a joke he heard at work that day: “Why did the chicken cross the road?” The well-known punchline – “To get to the other side” – results in fits of glorious laughter. When Paul starts chuckling again minutes later, he explains with a grin, “I am thinking about that chicken.”

Not everything goes smoothly, of course. There are on-the-job misunderstandings, tensions between the brothers, and homesickness that is somewhat eased whenever the trio visits the farm belonging to Carrie’s boss, Jack ( Corey Stoll , always a welcome sight) and hang out with his cows as they used to do in their village. Falardeau and screenwriter Margaret Nagle (who developed TV’s new “Red Band Society”) lend a somber weight to their travails by relying on silent flashbacks of past ordeals to suggest pangs of trauma, guilt, grief and longing.

A double whammy of complications closes the movie, one of which involves sister Abital (the lovely Kuoth Wiel ), who was forced to live with a family in Boston when they all first arrived and has been separated from her brothers ever since. Carrie, who finds herself becoming more and more attached to the threesome, goes full pit bull and makes a reunion her personal mission, red tape and post-9/11 regulations be damned.

Susan Wloszczyna

Susan Wloszczyna spent much of her nearly thirty years at USA TODAY as a senior entertainment reporter. Now unchained from the grind of daily journalism, she is ready to view the world of movies with fresh eyes.

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Film Credits

The Good Lie (2014)

Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, some violence, brief strong language and drug use

110 minutes

Reese Witherspoon as Carrie Davis

Arnold Oceng as Mamere

Ger Duany as Jeremiah

Emmanuel Jal as Paul

Corey Stoll as Jack

Kuoth Wiel as Abital

Sarah Baker as Pamela Lowi

• Philippe Falardeau
• Margaret Nagle

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Movie review: Filmmakers bring action flourish to flimsy ‘Bad Boys: Ride or Die’

The first “Bad Boys” came out in 1995, which means we’re officially entering the “aging action star” territory with this franchise. The fourth installment, “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” is directed by the up-and-coming action filmmaking team Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, known as Adil & Bilall, who took over directing duties from Michael Bay with 2020’s “Bad Boys for Life.”

There seem to be two options for the action star – and franchise – that’s getting up in years. One can either take the Tom Cruise route, returning to a text that was originally all flash and sensation, and infusing it with a sense of soulful poignancy as the character (and actor) reckons with what he’s sacrificed in his pursuit of pure adrenaline (e.g., “Top Gun: Maverick”). The other option is to join the crude, cynical supergroup known as “The Expendables,” where beloved action stars josh and jostle for a cash grab.

But the “Bad Boys” franchise has taken another tack. Adil & Bilall take the basic scaffolding and structure of the previous films – the Miami setting, the character archetypes that stars Will Smith and Martin Lawrence have established, and Bay’s distinctive visual language – and then freestyle on top of it. Adil & Bilall dutifully pay homage to Bay’s signature visual style, aping his constantly moving camera, low Dutch angles, and the signature “Bad Boys shot,” in which the camera circles around Smith and Lawrence as they stand up into frame, staring into the distance. But they treat the “Bad Boys” template like a coloring book, scribbling with their own wild artistic experimentation on top of these lines.

“Bad Boys: Ride or Die” is a declaration of action independence, using new technology like drones, and infusing the film with the visual language of video games. Bay himself used drones with a certain gonzo artfulness in his 2022 film, “Ambulance,” but Adil & Bilall use their drones to follow people and movement in space, explore the geography of interiors and transcend screens within screens.

They also use wild, rapidly swapping first-person-shooter-style POV shots in the shootouts, which are legible to the average gamer even if they don’t always make cinematic sense. They can easily get away with layering in this kind of stylistic experimentation because the beats of “Bad Boys” are so familiar, and in “Ride or Die,” are essentially perfunctory.

Writers Chris Bremner and Will Beall offer a story that is wide but shallow. There’s certainly a lot of plot, and even more characters, even if we don’t get to know them all that well. This convoluted yarn concerns the bad boys’ deceased Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano), who has been posthumously framed for corruption, accused of sharing intel with drug cartels. Marcus (Lawrence) and Mike (Smith) seek to clear his name, but find themselves at odds with Howard’s U.S. Marshal daughter, Judy (Rhea Seehorn), bent on vengeance, and their colleague Rita (Paola Nuñez), who has brought the charges with her attorney/mayoral candidate fiance Lockwood (Ioan Gruffudd). Their only chance at fingering the real bad guy is Mike’s drug dealer son Armando (Jacob Scipio), who has been imprisoned for the bloody chaos he wrought in “For Life.”

Meanwhile, our guys are grappling with their own mortality and PTSD. After a near death experience at Mike’s wedding, Marcus finds himself spiritually renewed, feeling invincible, euphoric, babbling about his past lives. Mike, on the other hand, is gripped with anxiety as a newlywed and as a “new” father.

But this simply provides the playground upon which the filmmakers can experiment and Lawrence can clown to his heart’s content. His performance is garish, but there’s something about him that just wears you down over the course of two hours – one must simply submit to his comedic ministrations. The first half of the film is overly concerned with Marcus’ sugar addiction, and during one shootout in an interactive art gallery/creative space, he has a single sip of fruit punch and reacts as if he’s freebased crystal meth. That theme is quickly dropped for other equally cartoonish bits, such as a run-in with a redneck militia, a callback to their infiltration of the Klan in the second movie, and a side quest to a strip club, where they tangle with Tiffany Haddish.

“Bad Boys: Ride or Die” never quite finds its tone, but then again, the franchise has always walked the strange line of goofy and hard, teeter-tottering between Lawrence and Smith, and despite the cinematic experimentation and a couple of impressively nasty fight scenes (courtesy of the younger actors), this installment favors the goofy. It’s a thin tapestry of lore with some interesting creative embellishments, but without any real interest in character, it feels flimsy and disposable. You could do worse, but you could certainly do better.

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Review: ‘Marlon Wayans: Good Grief’ Is The Best Special Of the Year

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t go to Marlon Wayans – or any of the Wayans family, honestly – for earnest sentiment. I don’t watch a Wayans special and expect to see the world any differently, to change how I look at and treat the people in my life. But Good Grief made me reassess. I might think back to it one day and find myself quietly thanking Marlon Wayans for being so honest and vulnerable in it.

I hate feeling like this. I earnestly believe in the power and importance of art, so much so that my entire career is dedicated to thinking and writing about it, but it’s always a bit embarrassing when critics get all serious. This is stand-up comedy, after all. We’re here to have a laugh. The point of Good Grief is that we need to have a laugh, even in the hardest, most painful moments.

Good Grief debuted on Prime Video the day after Jo Koy: Live from Brooklyn debuted on Netflix , entirely by chance. But both specials reiterate the same sentiment – that it’s good to laugh. But Jo Koy tells you why like a high school science teacher. Marlon Wayans shows you why. You can see the pain that the laughter helps him cope with. You could draw a line between the experiences he recounts and the edgy sense of humor possessed by all of the Wayans clan, a comedic dynasty that owe everything, it seems, to Howell and Elvira Wayans.

Marlon was the youngest of ten children and got the best version of Howell and Elvira. They were older by the time he came around, no longer the strict disciplinarians that had raised his brothers and sisters, who at this point were rich and famous. Life for the Wayans was different, and Marlon saw his parents as his friends. That made losing them, especially his mother, even harder.

Real voicemail messages from Elvira and Howell bookend the special. Almost all of the material is about them, aside from a hysterical section in the middle about the death of Kobe Bryant and the (continuing) life of Magic Johnson. It’s here that Good Grief most resembles a Wayans brother special, but the same themes of appreciating what you have are threaded throughout this bit too.

The rest of the special isn’t as funny, but it’s more heartfelt and poignant. Marlon has lost both of his parents; first his mother, who died from “everything” because she loved life too much to succumb to a single illness, and then his father, who drank himself to death in his grief. It’s sad in many ways, and Marlon spends most of the hour on the verge of tears and several minutes in floods of them. But it’s also bracingly honest and thought-provoking, and will likely change your relationship with your own parents.

The honesty comes through in Marlon’s outward emotions, but also in the truths he shares about how the family – and his mother especially – were affected by his father being a devout Jehovah’s Witness. There’s a unique way that particular belief system is isolating and cold in its steadfast refusal to acknowledge holidays and even personal milestones. Howell spent a lot of time physically separate from the rest of the family, locking himself away from their jubilation and celebration for the sake of his faith.

It’s hard to make this stuff funny, but Marlon manages it consistently. Some of his puerile sensibilities still creep through – an extended bit about changing his parents’ diapers will raise a few eyebrows, but even that builds to a vital point – but there’s an expert, seasoned quality to his writing and delivery that takes a real comedian to pull off. Only rarely will a comedy special make you want to laugh and cry at the same time like this one does.

Marlon Wayans: Good Grief is, on balance, a pretty exceptional special, one that treats its audience like part of the family, welcoming them into private and powerful moments. Many people who watch this will take a lot from that openness. So, call your parents. Tell them you love them. Now’s as good a time as any.

Article by Jonathon Wilson

Jonathon is one of the co-founders of Ready Steady Cut and has been an instrumental part of the team since its inception in 2017. Jonathon has remained involved in all aspects of the site’s operation, mainly dedicated to its content output, remaining one of its primary Entertainment writers while also functioning as our dedicated Commissioning Editor, publishing over 6,500 articles.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘In Good Hands 2’ on Netflix, a Mawkish Sequel to a Turkish Terminal-Illness Weepie

Where to stream:.

• In Good Hands 2

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Thank You, Next’ On Netflix, About A Lawyer Taking A High-Profile Divorce Case While On The Rebound

Stream it or skip it: ‘art of love’ on netflix, a turkish art-heist romantic thriller, stream it or skip it: ‘a round of applause’ on netflix, a strange dramedy about a couple and their nihilist kid through the decades, stream it or skip it: ‘ashes’ on netflix, a turkish erotic thriller that arrives just in time for valentine’s day.

Netflix says In Good Hands 2 is “the sequel to the 2022 hit In Good Hands ,” which, well, duh, it’s right there in the title, but what exactly does “hit” mean? Did it nudge its way into the Netflix Top 10 ? Did it earn an international audience? Was it widely watched in its native country, Turkey? Who knows. Yet some Netflix bean counter determined that it got enough eyeballs on it to justify investing in a sequel despite the fact that the first film’s plot killed off its protagonist – it was the story of a single mother with a terminal illness who tracks down her caddish ex and drops the bomb that he’s the biological father of her six-year-old son. The movie was a somewhat watchable melodrama with some wacky buts, but wasn’t quite worthy of a recommendation, so here’s hoping this continuation of the story rights the ship a bit.

IN GOOD HANDS 2 : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Melisa died a year ago, and her son and his father are living sadly every after. Young Can (Mert Ege Ak) lives with his dad, Firat (Kaan Urgancioglu), and the kid has pretty much everything he could ever want – materially speaking, anyway. And even that has its limitations, because out in Can’s elaborate backyard clubhouse, the kid’s building a time machine so he can go back and tell his mother he loves her in the hopes that doing so will cure her and she won’t die. Please note, this might be heartbreaking if it wasn’t such a capitalization-necessary Hokey Movie Premise, but all we can do is soldier on. Can and Firat are struggling. The kid acts out at school and the other students tease him. Meanwhile, Firat deals with his emotions by participating in a not-particularly-funny running joke that requires him to drink way too much and wake up on the lawn the next morning. There’s affection between Firat and Can, but the kid has yet to call him “Dad.” He’s just not there yet, and that’s understandable.

Our two dudes are sitting in a cafe one day when they meet Sezen (Melisa Pamuk). Actually, let me rephrase that – they’re being loud and annoying her and she tells them off in a rather assholish manner that involves telling Can that time machines don’t exist. A rather audacious introduction it seems, but movie characters like this don’t just drop in with their hard pragmatism then drop out. No, she turns up later when Firat is blasted-drunk at a bar and she gets him out of there before he further embarrasses himself. They form a connection because she used to be like Firat, but now is a teetotaler; on top of that, she’s sad because she misses her brother, who went to college in the States, and if that’s not quite as bad as losing the mother of your child to terminal illness, well, close enough, I guess. Firat and Sezen go out on a little date and when they end up taking their clothes off back at her place, he sees a scar on her back and they share their sadnesses. Everyone has scars, y’know, be they literal or symbolic.

Meanwhile, we can’t help but wonder what’s up with Can when the screenplay isn’t interested in h- er, I mean, while Firat is going out drinking and dating and suchlike. Well, I think he’s being babysat by Melisa’s friend Fatos (Ezgi Senler), a character from the previous film who exists in this film to do whatever it needs her to do, because she apparently doesn’t have a job or a life of her own? At least she occasionally says almost-funny things. Anyway, Can isn’t so sure about letting a new mother figure into his life – again, he’s just not there yet, and that’s understandable – until the ridiculous scene where Sezen visits him at school and douses his bully with a hose. I mean, the bully just stands there and lets himself be drenched instead of, you know, moving out of the way. So Sezen’s winning over Can a bit. But what about Firat’s drinking, and his insecurity, and the mother issues the screenplay tosses in haphazardly? He’s got lots of stuff to work through, and one can’t help but wonder another thing: Will this movie include the scene where the alcoholic participates in the ceremonial Dumping Of The Booze Bottles? NO SPOILERS but, yeah, probably. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I dunno, people were wise enough not to make Terms of Endearment 2 or Sweet December or Dying Younger (or Dying Even Younger ).

Performance Worth Watching: I liked Pamut’s performance in this movie – her charismatic screen presence transcends the lackluster material at times, but the hose scene (and frankly most of the third act) are too much of an uphill climb for anyone. 

Memorable Dialogue: Can gets literal and metaphorical when he confronts Firat: “You stink when you drink.”

Sex and Skin: None, really. The Revealing Of The Scars scene is very, very tame.

Our Take: The first movie had to drop in a whopper of an eyeroller of a soap-operatic third-act twist, and the sequel follows the same formula. I didn’t buy any of this implausible, sentimental drippery, and neither will you. Prior to that, In Good Hands 2 showed good intentions, establishing a dynamic that emphasized character development over plot, enough to encourage us to weather irritating scenes of child precociousness and overexaggerated drunkenness. There were moments where Firat, Can and Sezen felt like real people with real problems instead of movie characters with contrived problems, but ultimately, director Ketche and writer Hakan Bonomo (who also collaborated on the first film) opt for bloated melodrama instead of anything resembling reality.

Perhaps the film tries to do too much, incorporating romance into a father-son story, indulging a substance-abuse subplot, hinting at and eventually exploring Sezen’s trauma, dropping in Firat’s mother for a couple of scenes and doing whatever it does with the Fatos character (which is essentially nothing; her potential functionality as comic relief never yields any fruit). It’s admirable how Ketche aims for a poignant blend of comedy and drama, but seems uncertain as to how to achieve that. Does it want to be wacky? Does it want to be sexy? Does it want to explore ideas about grief, loss and redemption? The film’s ostensibly about Firat’s struggle to see himself as a worthy father, but that core idea is unfocused, and torpedoed by cliches (by the time we reach the moment where he delivers a drunken speech at a birthday party, you’ll be emotionally tuning out). Perhaps a more stripped-down approach would have worked, but In Good Hands 2 suffers the same fate as its predecessor: its many elements never come together as a watchable whole.  

Our Call: Second verse, pretty much the same as the first. SKIP IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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In ‘Eric,’ Benedict Cumberbatch is a dad angry at everyone as he searches for his missing son

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“Eric,” a limited series premiering Thursday on Netflix, stars Benedict Cumberbatch, wearing an American accent, as Vincent Anderson, a Jim Henson-brand puppeteer, if Henson had had severe mental health issues, a drinking and drugs problem and, on top of that, was just kind of an angry, egotistical jerk. Henson is mentioned in passing, so we are not supposed to confuse the two, Vincent’s beard notwithstanding. (Coincidentally, Disney+ is premiering Ron Howard’s documentary “Jim Henson: Idea Man” on Friday, which will make that distance clear.)

The setting is 1980s New York City, in its graffiti ’n’ garbage prime, and to be fair, Vincent is only one jerk among many. There are crooked politicians, crooked cops, crooked garbagemen, dodgy street people, human traffickers and drug dealers. Vincent’s parents, who are rich, are also jerks. The Big Apple, baby! (For balance, there’s a good parent, a good cop and a good street person.)

The engine of the plot, written by Abi Morgan (who created the fine British media drama “The Hour” ), is the disappearance of Vincent’s son, 9-year-old Edgar (Ivan Morris Howe), which sets Vincent, his wife, Cassie (Gaby Hoffmann), and missing-persons detective Michael Ledroit (McKinley Belcher III) — Black, gay and closeted in a homophobic environment — on toward their intertwined individual destinies. It’s not a spoiler to mention that Edgar is on a trajectory of his own.

Vincent is the brains behind “Good Day Sunshine,” a decade-old puppet-populated TV show, set in a park in an idealized inverse of the city. (It is not funky like “Sesame Street.”) Ratings are slipping and the fate of the show, which exhorts children to “be good, be kind, be brave, be different,” seems to depend entirely on Vincent coming up with a new puppet that, says producer Lennie (Dan Fogler), will somehow “bridge the gap between the preschoolers and the elementary kids,” because “that’s where the cool kids are.” (Kindergarten, apparently.)

Vincent doesn’t like this idea, or any idea not his own, one bit, and cannot help making his displeasure known, in barely veiled or extremely open terms. (He is especially disturbed by the thought that any of his characters might beatbox, which is a poor reading of the times.)

But this is not a story about children’s television, though the details of the production and the puppetry are convincing enough. It’s a mystery wrapped in a family drama wrapped ina police procedural, tricked out with fantasy element and social issues. These include the AIDS epidemic, the unequal treatment by police and media of Black victims of crime, gentrification at the expense of the poor, homelessness and the sexual exploitation of minors, with a dramatically gratuitous, if historically accurate, nod to “the free Black Americans and the immigrant Irish and German populations” who were moved from their homes to build Central Park thrown in at nearly the last moment. All that and a full platter of red herrings.

In the mystery ‘Eric,’ desperation and decline manifest into a life-size monster puppet

In the Netflix miniseries, Benedict Cumberbatch and Gaby Hoffmann play a troubled couple whose son goes missing, and a detective, played by McKinley Belcher III, has to unravel the disappearance.

May 26, 2024

Before his disappearance, Edgar, who is known around the studio and has precocious art skills, drew up plans for a new “walk-around” puppet, a furry blue monster he calls Eric — a blend of a Maurice Sendak Wild Thing , Sulley from “Monsters, Inc.” and the Muppets’ Sweetums — in hopes it will help save “Good Day Sunshine.” Later, discovering Edgar’s drawings, which he had frightened his son out of showing him, Vincent begins both to build the puppet in hopes that putting Eric on television will bring Edgar back, and to hallucinate its presence as a hectoring, critical constant companion.

I say “hallucinate” — and there are passing references to some kind of breakdown in Vincent’s past — but imaginary companions are always functionally real on the screen. Eric is invisible to the world, though never to us; Vincent gets some looks when he speaks to him, usually in irritation, but no one suggests that what he really ought to see is a doctor.

Viewing a man in pain, we are surely meant to feel for Vincent at least a little, but he’s so consistently annoying across so many hours, so rude not only to the suits in power but to the people on his team, that you may have trouble empathizing. (That is not how Henson did it.) “How do you have everything that you have going on in your life and you still make people struggle to have basic sympathy for you?” asks Lennie, speaking for at least one viewer. The sorry state of his marriage is obviously mostly his fault — and incidentally responsible for Edgar’s disappearance, when he sets off alone, unsupervised, as his parents bicker.

Serving as a temperamental counterweight to Vincent is Det. Ledroit, a straight-up good guy who, when not working overtime to find Edgar, is taking care of his partner as he dies from AIDS-related illness. And he’s determined to investigate a possible connection with the earlier disappearance, from the same neighborhood, of an older Black child, whose mother (Adepero Oduye, in one of the subtlest of the series’ many fine performances) haunts police headquarters, looking for help and expecting none. (Oddly, no one suggests a ransom request might be forthcoming, though Vincent is famous and his father is a wealthy developer.)

Cumberbatch has Vincent turned up to high most of the time, but he’s surrounded by quieter performances from a first-rate cast. I especially liked Bamar Kane as Yuusuf, who lives in the subway tunnels underground, and is perhaps Morgan’s least predictable character; Erika Soto as Tina, a sympathetic New York Police Department secretary; the always magnificent Clarke Peters as George, the super of Vincent’s building; and Wade Allain-Marcus as Gator, who runs a club called Lux, suspiciously located between Edgar’s home and his school, that stands generically for the excesses of 1980s Manhattan nightlife and where many characters will encounter significant plot points.

For a series with puppets, a missing child and a father in need of redemption, there are only a couple of possible endings, however twisted the route, that won’t have you cursing the six hours you spent getting there — as sentimental and simplistic as that finish may be. And “Eric” goes there, boldly.

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Robert Lloyd has been a Los Angeles Times television critic since 2003.

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