Review of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) by Jennykat570 — 26 Nov 2018

I was excited for this after the Coens' excellent True Grit, but it came as a huge disappointment. These are the problems:

- Like a lot of Netflix original content, it looked and felt cheap. It tries to come out strong with a fairly action-packed initial story, but that can't cover for the penny pinching that gradually creeps in, like long stretches that take place in a single location, or long stretches with minimal dialogue (which requires fewer takes to shoot). I wasn't surprised to learn this was initial planned as a TV show, it has a very TV-grade feel to it (though TBH even Netflix's shows look cheap compared to other studios').

- It doesn't ever make a good case for why it exists, other than to let the Coens do their usual (and rather tired) black comedy/satire/melodrama shtick. Netflix is clearly hoping that the Coen name and a few A-list actors (who mostly have minor roles with minimal dialogue) will singlehandedly sell the movie, but that's not how this works. If this were a Wes Anderson movie it would be The Darjeeling Limited.

- As others have noted, it is slow, dull, and full of the usual cliched, portentous, and sophomoric "meditations on life and death" (ugh) typical of postmodern Westerns. Most of the stories coast by on absurdist novelty without emotionally engaging the audience; the one exception is "The Girl Who Got Rattled", which is easily the best part of the movie and the only part that actually succeeds at the basics of storytelling.

- It's a bit tough to criticize the plot or characters because there almost weren't any. The vignettes are supposed to make you feel amused or somber for a few seconds, then to be forgotten forever as the next one queues up. In that sense I guess it really is a true-blue Netflix product, given how much they promote binge watching of trashy content.