Filmic Friday 327: It's Not A Mall

This week on "what did I just watch, no seriously?!"...

Once upon a time, someone decided that there needed to be a musical sitcom, that it needed to be set at a shopping plaza, and that it needed to co-star Allison Mack as a chipmunk-voiced child. Predictably, something that sounds that fever-dreamed and nonsensical did not make it very hard of you'd have immediately known what I was talking about. Since you probably don't (unless you're my partner, who showed it to me, or you're part of a very small subset of Internet People), let me tell you about Shangri-La Plaza.

This show was created and run by the guy who played adult Michael Myers in the original Halloween, Nick Castle, along with Mark Mueller. You might not recognize Mueller's name, but he's the only reason I sat through the show. See, Mueller is the guy who wrote the themes to Duck Tales and Rescue Rangers. As you might have guessed, the show has an incredible theme song.

If only it weren't utterly destroyed by the cast, only three of whom (Melora Hardin from The Office, Carmen Lundy who sang jazz, and Broadway staple Terrence Mann) could sing, but who only get... okay songs.

Speaking of the songs, except for the theme, most of them are choppy little songlets that just appear and vanish as soon as they begin. It's... It's not good guys. One or two songs actually get off the ground - one about making donuts poorly is Lundy's big piece. The rest are basically sing-spoken and it's not that great to be honest.

And the story! What a half-imagined thing! Basically, Hardin and Mack are a mother and daughter who have inherited a donut shop on Shangri-La Plaza, but Hardin wants to ditch it and move to Paris with her kid for a fresh start. That's the story. It doesn't show up until about 1/3 of the way through the pilot! Instead, we open with a pair of mechanic brothers who, unfortunately, are our romantic leads.

Oh, and if you're wondering why there's a slightly racist street punk Chorus like a modern-vintage Shakespeare play, I don't have answers. I can, however, tell you they took one of the world's best tapdancers at the time and put his character on crutches.

Now, if you're wondering how this "show" went, I'm going to paste it in here for you so you don't have to clutter up your YouTube recommendations extra hard by both looking for and watching it. "Enjoy".

Final note: Allison Mack went from being obnoxious here to being kinda cute in Smallville to being a legit monster thrall in a monster cult. That is all.

Go Enjoy Something! (Preferably something better)
FC


Oh, and:

Arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor.
Black Lives Matter.
The current method of policing America cannot, on the whole, be rehabilitate, therefore it should be completely overhauled and funds largely redistributed over multiple highly-regulated organizations who are hyper-specialized while being dispatched by a highly-regulated dispatch office so that we don't have armed and fearful officers beating in the heads of mentally ill people on "wellness checks" or shooting unarmed social workers for no reason.