- Network: Netflix
- Series Premiere Date: Nov 3, 2022
Critic Reviews
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Nearly every character in Blockbuster exemplifies a version of this tension: adulthood and childhood, intersecting at awkward angles. That makes the show, like so many of its fellow workplace comedies, an apt reflection of its time. ... Blockbuster becomes not just a workplace comedy but also a family comedy and a buddy comedy. ... Blockbuster is comedy infused with loss, as a fact and as a looming threat. It is a show fit for a moment shaped by regressions.
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We like the cast of Blockbuster, especially Park, Fumero and Smoove. And Ramos has done enough time on successful workplace comedies to know how to make them work. What we see so far is underwhelming, but promising.
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Actually, every performer in Blockbuster elevates the weak writing, transforming the show from passable to pleasant enough. ... However, Blockbuster truly struggles with the laughs, in that there are barely any.
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The show isn’t bad, but it’s definitely familiar, with a cast of quirky characters who constitute a likable, if occasionally kooky workplace family. ... But these first 10 half-hour episodes are less interesting than “The Last Blockbuster,” Taylor Morden and Zeke Kamm’s documentary about how the Bend outlet came to be the last Blockbuster in America.
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There’s a lot of squandered potential here. The lack of focus on the customers is an easy win missed. And while the lack of a “big bad” may be refreshing but means the show lacks any sense of real peril or urgency. By the halfway mark we lose sight of the driving force of the show and slip into soapy silliness.
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The ubiquitous JB Smoove (Curb Your Enthusiasm) earns his keep as Timmy’s blustery buddy and strip-mall landlord, but otherwise, this seems less a blockbuster than, sadly, a relic. [7 - 20 Nov 2022, p.5]
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Though there are a few promising Brooklyn-style running jokes, Blockbuster is a well-meaning disappointment that can't quite justify its own existence.
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It’s a wonderful mix of skilled veterans and relative newcomers, but “Blockbuster” is an exercise in tiresome premises. ... Ironic, maybe. Funny? Eh.
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“Blockbuster’s” bouncy energy, one of the show’s defining elements is its fascination with the work of work — how people with incompatible personalities figure out ways to problem solve and exist side-by-side and maybe, just maybe, not be miserable while doing it. There is real comedy and drama in that, and yet too often “Blockbuster” struggles to land on either.
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“Blockbuster” is likeable enough thanks to a game cast, but in early episodes made available for review, it’s not all that funny.
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A cute, affable, and fairly forgettable workplace comedy that takes place inside the last remaining of the stores, and uses it mostly for general shenanigans that would work any other place.
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Without much idea of how to capitalize on its uniquely compelling premise, Blockbuster winds up a fairly standard-issue workplace sitcom dressed up in blue-and-yellow logos that might strike a chord with viewers of a certain age.
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Blockbuster is a series that is safe to a fault and never creates enough laughs over its 10 episodes to carve out a comedic identity of its own. It may tickle the fancy of those looking for a more straightforward sitcom, but it is hard to see it having much to offer those looking for something more clever.
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Blockbuster features some inspired supporting performances, with Madeleine Arthur, Olga Merediz, and Tyler Alvarez standing out as cast MVPs. But the extremely forced will-they-won’t-they dynamic between Park and Fumero never comes together, due to a fundamental lack of chemistry between the two. In addition, character dynamics, exposition, and thematic messages are all delivered with blunt-force dialogue.
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Maybe if Blockbuster leaned further into that meta self-awareness, there would be more about it to recommend. But the thing that makes it special, the connection to Blockbuster, is essentially ignored, resulting in a workplace comedy that isn’t particularly unique or memorable. Instead, there’s commentary about the differences between millennials and Gen Z that isn’t novel or clever.
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It could have just leaned all the way in and set this show in 1993, bringing the viewer back to a time when America’s future felt prosperous and safe. Now, Blockbuster is just another organization collapsing around us. Watching an ostensible comedy set inside it just isn’t funny.
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It feels as if it has taken the timid approach, rather than be bold. ... It feels like a sitcom from long ago, where gentle quips and mild slapstick were enough to fill half an hour of pre-watershed television.
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Blockbuster has potential to be a feelgood workplace comedy with a warm, nostalgic glow. Sadly, you can’t create alchemy via a Netflix algorithm. Its elements don’t add up and the result is frustratingly flimsy. ... It just isn’t funny.
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There’s no sense of anarchy in Blockbuster. Nor tension, not warmth; it’s a shallow, tiresome journey that isn’t courageous enough to dip its toes into the wacky, unhinged potential of working in an unsupervised relic.
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The final product’s attempts to find a halfway point between its obvious broadcast rhythms and new streaming home make clear the problems of trying to make the show fit on a platform that clearly doesn’t suit it — a clash that extends beyond how the show works (or doesn’t) on a granular comedic level, too.
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It’s as awkward a marriage of studio and subject matter as audiences likely imagined going in, and even its charming veteran comedians — Park, Fumero, and J.B. Smoove — can’t summon enough magic to make “Blockbuster” worth sitting through.
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“Blockbuster,” while far too ordinary to be actively offensive, is nonetheless made somehow more disappointing by its singular lack of ambition, content instead to be a clone of other, superior shows. The laughs are fleeting, the stories are forgettable, and its entire existence feels like one last indignity visited upon the defunct video store chain.
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Painfully obvious jokes made at the expense of painfully obvious targets abound. If you fed the jokes from any number of early-2000s sitcoms into an AI generator, it would probably spit out something resembling Blockbuster.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 3 out of 14
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Mixed: 3 out of 14
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Negative: 8 out of 14
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Nov 5, 2022This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view.
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Nov 3, 2022
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Nov 14, 2022Most of the jokes were used during the trailer. The acting is surprisingly bad, even given the genre and expectations I had going in.