I'm not sure this counts as a "movie" since it's 40 minutes long and iTunes offers it in TV episodes, but it is certainly a wonderful film that somehow manages to relate to my life in a strange sort of way. And it's got Neil Patrick Harris.
I don't want to sound like a total whiner, but these past few days, weeks, months, what have you, have been so utterly and violently dull I can't even stand it. But just like Neil Patrick Harris (Dr. Horrible—I wonder if he has a first name. I'm sure it would be equally exotic, like Ricardo), I feel terribly judged by the masses and yet blessed by my dear friends, and all I'm trying to do right now is work through my greater dilemmas (SATs, AP testing, etc. I'm guessing that parallels to NPH's heist plannings and wonderflonium quest). Further, I'm without The One I Love, and all I can do is watch or occasionally talk to or watch other people talk to my dear equivalent of Penny. But the man version. I know that the person you have a crush on shouldn't be the one determining whether your life is dreary or not, and I couldn't agree more, but apparently, agreeing just isn't enough.
Of course, my life is perfectly lively and I laugh or smile or something every day, and I've got things whizzing by in flying colors and all that jazz. Maybe you've got that feeling before, too, though. It's like I've got this one huge modern art painting with so many different colors so that in some ways, it looks vibrant and beautiful and artistic and fancy, but in other ways, the canvas seems to have been painted a really ugly, monotone gray. In so many aspects, I'm having the time of my life, and in so many other aspects, I feel like a total whiner. Am I alone on this? Have I struck my mid-life crisis a bit on the early side?
Either way, that's almost how Dr. Horrible makes me feel. It makes me smile and laugh out loud (In "Brand New Day," I laughed really loud when NPH says "All the birds are singing that YOU'RE GOING TO DIE"). The fact that those three random cowboys come out and narrate Bad Horse (the head honcho)'s tongue-twisting, rhyming letter through song is very charming and comical (notice they also end the narrated phone call with "signed, Bad Horse"). NPH's incredible acting in general as well as his believability as this nerdy, awkward, painfully average super-villain is tickling, and Hammer Man is one of the few movie tools I can actually laugh at without being bitter. Even Penny, so calm and gentle, is comical herself, stumbling out of the garbage pile with only love in her eyes and freaking NPH out as she sneaks up on him to ask for signatures. I don't want to give it all away, but just as the ironic title suggests, this story is a beautifully written comedy with distinguished characters and an exceptional cast. All of this together makes such a colorful, enjoyable masterpiece.
If you haven't seen this movie, stop right there; there is definitely a spoiler coming up and I would so hate to ruin this for you. Okay, are you ready?
This movie's down side is most certainly the end. We are not granted a happy ending as one might expect, and the silliness all twists into a horrible, astounding, shocking conclusion that's quite nerve-racking, to say the least. Not to mention the whole thing with Penny being in love with the biggest tool known to man, and the fact that she still loves him even after she has seen his egotistical side. (People have layers–it's like there's a deeper layer that's completely different from what's on the surface. And then sometimes, there's even a third layer that thwarts the second one and is actually exactly like the top surface one.)
Recently, I've been bobbing up and down through all these layers that apparently my life has as well—the dull academic one, the one that yearns for The One I Love, and the happy one that sometimes seems so out of place that it sometimes feels like it's not even real.
That sounds so emo, but it's so true. Just like how you're not sure what to do at the end after Penny dies and NPH seems to transition into a being torn and decimated by love and consumed by the dark side. I have no idea what to make of it all, except sit there with my mouth open and take it all in.
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