The case is known and studied in business and innovation schools. In 2000, the founder of Netflix approached a senior manager of Blockbuster to offer him to become a partner and implement a revolutionary idea: rent video remotely. The man from the big video store chain declined the offer. The rest is familiar ground.
Part of that story – actually the fall of a giant– is revived in the series blockbusters.
Ironically, the production of ten half-hour episodes goes -of course- to Netflix. When Blockbuster went bankrupt in 2010, only one store survived thanks to the initiative of the then manager and then owner. The fictional story centers on a man named Tim (Randall Park), who attempts the seemingly impossible: to keep his company from going out of business.
Ideas for avoiding the inevitable
After a call from a regional manager, who tells him they are “the only store in the world”, Tim starts to juggle. He tries a block party and other ideas which invariably fail. “I haven’t seen you in a long time,” one of the employees says to a client. “You know. I do what everyone else does: I watch movies on Netflix”, replies the man.
That opening works as an excuse to make an important point about nostalgia; about what we lose when we stop going to the video store and talking face to face with someone to recommend a film even if we are in the 5G era. But creator Vanessa Ramos He just missteps when it comes to telling this and other stories What is being offered.
On the one hand, it gives life to a series of stereotypical characters without spark, despite the attempts at a few jokes and obligatory references to films. Tim is a good guy through and through: he has a huge heart and treats his employees like true friends, except one that he is secretly in love with.
The rest of the staff is made up of a frustrated film student, a woman who loves Mexican soap operas, a teenage couple and the neighbor, who is also Tim’s friend and abuses his kindness.
no spirit no way out
The problem does not even lie in the contradictory speech of “saving the place” in the mouth of the manager – now owner of the only survivor – of the company which had thousands of shops around the world and which meant the death of many neighborhood video stores . Nor in the repeated reference to Michigan when the last location is in Oregon.
These details are minor in the face of a comedy without wit or exit in the situations it poses. blockbusters It has flat characters, who are co-workers – all of them – with big hearts and who get into trouble when their ranch burns down. It is sentimental and, at times, very basic in their dialogues and situations.
The creator advances the story as if revisiting the theme of human connections in the digital age were something simple. As if the sitcom were a genre without a history, which can be resolved with a few jokes. As if Netflix wanted revenge on Blockbuster for that refusal.
File
blockbusters
Qualification: Bad.
protagonists: Melissa Fumero, Randall Park and Tyler Alvarez. Creator: Vanessa Ramos. Broadcast: Netflix. Duration: Ten half-hour episodes.
WD extension
Source: Clarin
