Stranger Things

The series is fun, scary and a perfect tribute to the era, including the spot-on hairdos and clothes.

The real star is Brown, who brings the enigmatic and ill-used Eleven to heart-wrenching life almost without benefit of dialogue. Her face flickers with wonder, woe and menace, often in the same scene, in a way that even cynics who make a point of rooting for horror-movie monsters will not be able to resist.

The rooting interests are many and varied in a drama that’s held together by the strength of its convictions and characters.

Balancing style and substance is always challenging for a series like Stranger Things, but the show is perfectly calibrated. It feels like watching a show produced during the era in which it’s set, but with the craft of today’s prestige television.

Over the course of the eight hours, the story and characters take on enough life of their own so that the references don't feel self-indulgent, and so that the series can be appreciated even if you don't know the plot of E.T. or the title font of Stephen King's early novels (a huge influence on the show's own opening credits) by heart.

There are some genuine scares in here but some heartfelt beats, too, along the way to the bloody climax.

I found the genre blending of pre-teen adventure with mild horror refreshingly unique.

This is astoundingly efficient storytelling, eight hours that pass in a blink, with even minor characters getting sharp dialogue, dark humor, or moments of pathos.

You'll turn on the first episode and mysteriously find yourself sitting in the same spot on your couch eight episodes later, never having moved an inch.

Stranger Things might be a hodgepodge of lots of other things, but there’s a sincerity to it that’s hard to fake. And in its appropriations of those other things, it somehow becomes something new that rises above its collage-like origins.

For the most part, and in absolute defiance of the odds, Stranger Things honors its source material in the best way possible: By telling a sweet ’n’ scary story in which monsters are real but so are the transformative powers of love and fealty.

It’s not homage as much as it is a recreation of a classic 1980s’ film stretched into eight episodes, a deeply satisfying series that’s all the more entertaining for anyone who grew up in the 1980s.

Harder is capturing the tone of another era. The Duffers manage that quite well, too, thanks to a fine sense of restraint that increasingly seems a lost art these days. There are a few good shocks here, but mostly there is patience. None of it would work without solid acting, and the series has that in abundance.

It starts a little slow, but builds speed and tension at a remarkable, consistent pace--every episode is more entertaining than the one before.

The nostalgic tone of Stranger Things succeeds less from discrete moment to moment than as an overall ambience; in synthy music, vivid shooting style, and deeply earnest performances, the show is committed to selling you a sort of story that doesn’t exist in mainstream pop culture anymore.

Matt Duffer and Ross Duffer, brothers and the show’s creators, have done their homework when it comes to ’80s cinema. Whether you’re a fan of John Carpenter’s “The Thing” or “The Goonies” is more your speed, there’s plenty to like in Stranger Things.

Thanks to Ryder and her ability to make you tear up over rainbow Christmas lights, the show’s ultimate resolution resonates far more emotionally than it does cerebrally.

Stranger Things tries to strike a tricky balance between going fully meta and creating a piece of paranoid, magical, terrifying realism that can stand shoulder to shoulder with the works of Spielberg, Stephen King, John Carpenter, and Wes Craven that it so overtly references. At times, it wobbles in that effort. But it manages to right itself pretty quickly by effectively hooking us into its central mystery and so evocatively conjuring up a not-so-long-ago yesteryear when walkie-talkie conversations were our Snapchat and what’s now considered free-range parenting was just called parenting.

You care what happens to the characters in Stranger Things because they're written authentically and they're cast exceptionally, especially when it comes to the kids.

The Duffers captured the vibe quite nicely, tell a story that doesn’t seem watered down and emerge with a series that could be the summer’s equivalent of a large popcorn with plenty of butter and a kidney-busting keg of Coke.

This promising drama often has ambiguous and even sad things on its mind, and the familiar contours of its plot are most effective when they serve as a cover for somewhat deeper explorations.

Stranger Things never establishes itself as anything more than a reminder of what was, instead of a celebration of past and present.

Even as ’80s pastiche, there’s little unique about Stranger Things--the plot and novelty are stretched thin at eight hours. But it gathers momentum in episode 4 and generates pleasure in the convergence of various story lines.

What I like most about Stranger Things is the way the Duffer Brothers never short-shrift the emotional content of the show in favor of thrills and CGI. ... [Ryder's] hysteria can be grating. At points, she’s almost a parody of a crazed mother, one that might fit in more on a different, more comedic show.

As with J.J. Abrams’ ode to Spielberg, Super 8, Stranger Things is extremely watchable and a little empty, a paean to the Duffer brothers’ own youth masquerading as a compliment to a master.

Unless your name is Stephen King or Steven Spielberg, there’s only so much new anyone can bring to this potluck supper. The Duffers don’t bring much new. They do bring a large degree of enthusiasm, however.

Nothing here feels particularly new, except for the compelling way the Duffers have put it all together--and even that can’t fix some plot holes and deliberate obfuscation that make Stranger Things a clumsier ride than it needs to be.

If only it all felt just a bit faster.

There’s a higher bar for original stories--even homages--to clear when it comes to incorporating the lessons Hollywood has learned recently about depicting female characters who are as layered as their male counterparts. For all its charms, Stranger Things doesn’t quite meet that standard.

Stranger Things ends up being an entertaining and impassioned throwback to the time when friendly aliens were all the craze, but there’s a consistent sense that a far more imaginative and daring series hiding behind the monsters, whether they be human or otherwise.

Stranger Things is competently crafted, but exists as little more than the pointless sum of its spare parts.

It's agreeable popcorn fare, though like many Netflix originals, might have had twice the impact at half the length. [11-24 Jul 2016, p.17]