For Stoners…By Stoners
Movie Show is a fake review program that combines vulgarity and impossible scenarios to get plenty of laughs. To crank up the absurdity, the show’s co-hosts are puppets. To add to that, it’s a public access TV show set in Modesto. The featurettes are introduced with super low budget graphics. There are shots of the studio that include the show’s producer and sound guy.
Written and directed by Adam Dubowsky and Alex Stone (who play the puppets Deb and Wade), the show is completely bonkers. They’re joined by fellow actor/writer/directors David Theune and Rory Scovel. Each episode features the puppets reviewing a few movies with commentary and guests tied to those films. The guests are never the invited actors and talent. They’re substituted out for a bizarre replacement. One movie writer is a pile of cocaine.
Wade is super casual, always late and unprepared. Deb, in contrast, studies hard, does her prep work, and is well organized. Her constant frustration with her co-host gives the puppets some fun dialogue and attitude. The ongoing trope is that the hosts almost never actually review anything. The movies facts are revealed by the guests or the goofy goings-on. As Stone says, the show “throws logic out the window and will be fun, silly, and weird.’”
The show definitely draws from tons of irreverent shows that have preceded it. It’s Wayne’s World meets The Happytime Murders. Stone and Dubowsky lean hard into the unpredictability of the show. There is no need for continuity in a show that is basically a hybrid cartoon.
Highlights include a sketch about why the characters in Halloween movies always have to transfer Michael Myers on Halloween night, the show’s ongoing rivalry with Cooking with Karen, and Wade’s coffee order.
The season starts off a little rocky but finds its stride a few episodes in. The “deleted scenes” skits are a welcome addition. Marty’s mom being totally into him in the Back to the Future episode is way over the top. The tourism commercial from the “mayor” of Amity Island is another good one.
Movie Show premiered the week of Thanksgiving in 2020. Season One has a total of 12 episodes, with the finale’ airing on February 18, 2021. Each episode runs roughly 22 minutes (standard for a half-hour network TV series.) The show is produced by Line by Line Productions.