Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog Review

Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog is a 43 minute film created for the Internet. It tells the story of an upcoming villain Dr. Horrible, he is  applying to be a part of a secret evil society run by a horse but struggles with his desire to be evil. He battles his arch nemesis Captain Hammer who conveniently has stolen the heart of the Dr.'s long time crush penny. Penny is a girl he sees at the laundry-mat twice a week but he has only recently worked up the courage to talk to her. Penny is a good girl who is always doing volunteer work for the community. Dr. Horrible starts to feel like maybe he should try to be good if he wants to win her over.  The Evil League of Evil tells Dr. horrible he needs to prove his evilness by killing in order to join them; this is a problem for him at first because he has lately been fighting off his inner good. He questions whether he could really kill someone, and if he really even wants to. He eventually attempts to kill his nemesis Captain Hammer but ultimately fails and accidentally kills his secret love Penny. This tragic irony gets him into the League but he will never truly be happy. I thought the film was entertaining and did a good job at compressing a complex story into 43 minutes. Act 1 was pretty funny with the blogs and the stupidity of posting your secret plans online. It gave a good background of who the villain really was and a taste of what his everyday life is like. Act 2 really got the story moving, the songs were clever and kept me interested. The theme of the “hero” Captain Hammer really being arrogant and selfish makes the audience feel more for the villain even though he was evil. This is a good twist from the normal superhero story and made the story more interesting. I thought the fact that Dr. horrible was confused between good and evil throughout the movie made the ironic ending appropriate. I applaud the director for ending the movie with a tragedy and not having Dr. horrible become good and save the day. It had a slow start but overall it was entertaining and witty, I give it a 7 out of 10.