Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog; The Doctor Is In!

The doctor is in. If you haven’t seen “Dr. Horrible’s Sing along blog“, you’ve missed one of the truly great entertainment experiences available on the internet. In fact, It’s only available on the internet (although it can be purchased through Itunes, and will be made available on DVD according to horrible sources). “Dr. Horrible’s sing along blog” is a professionally produced movie short, just under fourty five minutes long, presented in three acts. It’s a musical, and a very good one at that. Dr. Horrible is played by Neil Patrick Harris of “Doogie Howser M.D.” fame (not his finest hour but we all start somewhere). He does a wonderful job with the part, definitely making it his own. He sings his musical numbers with such skill that he makes it look easy. The duets with Felicia Day, who plays Penny his secret love, are most decidedly not easy. This is how you know when someone is good; they make what they’re doing look simple. Of course, every evil, mad scientist needs a nemesis, and the Dr. has his own. Captain Hammer, played superbly by Nathan Fillion [FireFly, One Life To Live], is the doc’s pain in the…… well, you know.

It’s definetly worth mentioning that all the singing is done by the actors, with the exception of a couple of backup vocals.

I want to say a word about Felicia Day. She has created a web series called The Guild made up of short episodes and released only on the internet. It is incredibly well written, very funny and intelligent. She writes and produces it with donations of time and funds by professionals, friends, and fans. The series is about a group of online gamers that take part in a long running massively epic role playing game. None of them has an actual social life or sense of the real world, and their only interaction with each other is through speakers, keyboards, microphones and headsets; when they finally meet, they don’t know quite how to take the reality of their mundane existences. The characters are incredibly well written and developed, and this is another web release that should not be missed.

On with Dr. Horrible ………

Dr. Horrible can be seen in the video section of Teamtuxedo

or:

on Hulu in either normal size or full screen.

Dr. Horrible tells the tale of a super-villain apprentice, working on his “PhD in horribleness”. He’s not very good at it, and gets his horrible inventions built, well, not quite right. For example, his transmatter device that was supposed to transport a gold bar to him from a bank vault, produced a baggie of chocolate milk-like fluid instead of gold. Bummer.

He has submitted an application to the local evil union, called, what else? “The evil league of evil”, run by an evil horse. He thinks he wants to be a villain more than anything else, and is sure that being accepted into the league will finally help him be happy. What he doesn’t realize is that he is basically nothing more than an insecure person trying to get a handle on who and what he really is. He knows on some level that he isn’t really evil, refusing a conflict with another wannabe in a park because kids might get hurt, and resisting a demand from the evil league that he kill someone.

He’s lonely, and meets Penny, an innocent young woman in the local laundry mat. He develops a terrible crush on her, but just doesn’t quite have the social skills to talk to her. During an evil deed that the Dr. perpetrates to get into the league, Penny’s life is inadvertently put in peril.

Enter the super hero. He’s just plain cheesy, and that’s his best quality. He is really the evil dude, because he is shallow, self serving, abusive, and an all around not-nice-guy that tries to pass himself off as a really heroic one of a kind super-person. Unlike Dr. Horrible, he is quite confident in his superiority over every other person on earth, and in his view, he has to try very hard at barely hiding it. He’s also oblivious to the fact that he is totally inappropriate and mean spirited.

Dr. Horrible barely saves Penny’s life at the last second, and quite by accident, Captain Hammer gets the credit. She is enamored of the captain, and the Dr. feels the sting of wrongful rejection.

Penny works in a homeless shelter and she is collecting signatures on a petition to get the city to give to the shelter a building that is soon to be demolished to make room for a parking lot. Captain Hammer arranges this for her, and humiliates her in the dedication ceremony. Dr. Horrible shows up, uses his freeze ray on the Captain, but poor Penny…..

Oh wait, I better not tell you any more. You’ll just have to go see it

Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along blog was produced, directed, personally funded, and co written by Joss Whedon. His two brothers, and soon-to-be sister in law co wrote the script, and scored the music. It was written during the writers strike without the interference of union restrictions, and without the involvement of a studio. Since it was an internet production and was only released on a website, the unions had no jurisdiction or power over the production. This is the future of entertainment, to be specific, movie, television, and music. Dr. Horrible is a first-in-class, way ahead of it’s time. I really hope it spells the end of the strangle hold that the entertainment unions have enjoyed for much to long.

This is a must see folks. Do not miss this gem!

Denigris