Review of Veronica Mars (2014) by Mary J — 15 Mar 2014

To be completely honest, this is not the movie you're probably going to care about if you're not already a fan of the show. If you remember this is the project that set Kickstarter records and it's very much fan fueled and written with that perspective.

That being said, I love the show. It was so much more than the teen dramas that were on the time in the way that it channeled every single thing I love about Film Noir with a little bit of class warfare thrown in for good measure. They didn't reinvent the wheel here. Veronica is still Veronica even as she's trying to get a "real" job in New York, but returning to Neptune only returns her to (all) old habits with a snap of the fingers. The writing is as witty as it always is, the characters are as vibrant as they always were.

A couple of kind of negatives: The mystery felt rushed. It was fairly obvious that this is a formula that was set up over entire seasons and putting it into such a short period of time left out some of the nuances that we usually get from Rob Thomas. Now, this next thing didn't bug me as much last night, but as I think about it more I wish it had been done differently, the majority of the cast (with the exception of Keith, Logan and Veronica) are kind of diminished to very minor supporting characters. For a show that relied so much of it's strength on the relationships built, it would have been nice to see bigger roles for Wallace, Mac and Weevil instead of the very minor roles almost as plot devices they ended up serving.

Overall though, it was exactly what we MARSmallows wanted. It was closure and it felt complete (even with a few unanswered questions lingering at the end). It may have been years in the making, but, Rob Thomas, we forgive you for leaving us hanging all this time.