Where I Watched It: paramount Plus

English Audio Description?: No

After just writing a really long and somewhat positive review on the future of audio description with My Year Of Dicks, I’m back again with a Paramount Plus original that actually didn’t even have audio description. This little turd was floating in the shuffling featured section up at the top, and I figured… hey,IMDB says it’s got the girl from Top Gun Maverick, so I’ll give it a try.

Once again, this film reminded me that I need to watch less shitty films that serve no purpose other than to churn out bland content for these streaming services with the least amount of effort possible. This film started so abruptly that I felt like I was actually watching a commercial for an upcoming Paramount Plus thing. I couldn’t imagine a film starting like this, seemingly with no logos, opening credits, or anything we normally expect. It just felt like it was already in progress.

While i was able to make out the Notting hill of this all, I was also a bit lost, because despite the fact that I can speak some Spanish slowly, I’m not a Spanish speaker, and there are characters and scenes that I’m sure had subtitles, but we blind folk get noise. Not to be disrespectful to any specific language or culture, but often when you don’t speak it, and there’s not even a visual cue to accompany it, it all sounds like Martian languages from Star Wars.

The thing is, even when this film came back in, it wasn’t funny. It wants to be funny. There are a few comedic stalwarts in the supporting cast mostly known for comedy. but this film is not actually funny. It’s also not original, and feels like it’s the derivative composite of every 90’s romcom.

But the biggest failure here is Paramount Plus, the same streaming service that cannot seem to figure out how to import the already existing audio description tracks for Showtime programming, a service that has been integrated fully since the beginning of September. I spent months talking to everyone I possibly could, but I cannot stress how little this company cares about accessibility. It’s almost to an aggressive stance. Since then, I was waiting for the day Let The Right One In would have audio description so I could watch it properly. It was easier for them to just remove the fucking thing from their service than provide the existing audio description. Later, they let some dude from home record audio description for Tulsa King, and there’s the 4th episode of Wolf Pack, whose audio description track is, with my best guess, a corrupted audio file.

So, with a profound dislike for this film, and it’s streaming service trying desperately to scare blind people away from its service by challenging hulu for “worst of”, I’m feeling pretty good about this grade.

Sorry Phoenix. You will rise again.

Final Grade: D-