On this week’s episode, Sonny Bunch (The Bulwark), Alyssa Rosenberg (The Washington Post), and Peter Suderman (Reason) discuss the rise of YouTube as a serious vector for televisual consumption. Then they review The Idea of You, a movie that doesn’t really work on any level yet has put up bonkers numbers for Prime Video. If you enjoyed the episode, please share it with a friend!
A programming note: No bonus episode this Friday thanks to the upcoming holiday, but that just gives you more reason to check out last Friday’s episode on the late, great Roger Corman.
The book was such garbage that I cannot imagine wasting my valuable time on a filmed version.
I found Idea of You to be mostly intolerable dreck. Felt like a vanity piece for both main actors. I fast forwarded over large chunks and then just stopped watching.
Like The Bulwark YouTube has been pretty helpful with the videos that I produce for my day job.
However, when it comes to movies YouTube is depressing. Very few people are trying to do Roger Corman type films. Or somebody’s own version of Megalopolis. Instead they are boring and uninteresting fan films based on established IP. Even worse is when they crowd fund to produce a $50,000 Robin fan film. It’s depressing. This episode depressed me.
My YouTube content consumption is much closer to high-quality public access TV than a replacement for prestige TV. I'd lump the Bulwark's YouTube page into the public access TV bucket (dudes, occasionally with Sarah Longwell and Mona Charen, chatting about stuff).
There's no world where it's viable for a network to commit 40 hours of TV to a car build, but damn if it doesn't make great background noise when you're doing other things.
It was a fun easy watch. No need to overthink it. Better than another dystopian zombie storyline.
Watched idea of you. Great escapism! In a Hollywood where every other actor like Jon hamm, whose ex wrote the movie , dumps his first wife for young flesh, it defiantly challenges the age gap bias for women. No wonder it’s a huge hit!
I'm with Lauren on this. Great Hollywood escapism flick!
High-end furnishings, beautiful jet-setters touring Europe while having steamy sex, peppered with high-amp concert footage. Age difference is just a background gimmick. It's about "the idea of you," not the reality: She gets the hot young guy, he gets the hot older mom.
Hard to think of something that'd be a bigger downer to the whole thing than a discussion of fertility. (But I agree that the "5 years later" ending was a clunker.)
Also you guys never mentioned it, but I loved that Selene and her 16-year-old daughter have such a close relationship -- a real change of pace from the sullen teen-age nastiness typically portrayed on screen.
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Your commentary would’ve been different. If you had asked a woman who was single and over 40 to join your discussion.