Pendell

Still amazing how Adam Sandler ripped off the 1994 R.L. Stine short story / 1997 Goosebumps TV episode "Click" - about a boy who acquires a special "universal remote" that can control anything - for his 2006 movie "Click" about a man who acquires a special "universal remote" that can control anything.

like it started off pretty mid but has pretty consistently gotten more and more interesting, clever, and fun with each successive episode. It embraces the silly convoluted macguffins and oddball plots of the original books with lots of wacky ideas and visuals, the teenagers are actually fairly well written, being believably human characters while still being annoying and dumb in the ways you'd expect teenagers to be, and the arc the show has been building, while not particularly original, is quite fun to see play out. Justin Long gets to play two characters simultaneously and you can tell he's just having a whole lot of fun with the role, and the rest of the cast seem to be enjoying themselves too.

I actually don't hate this. Now, omitting the original 90s Goosebumps theme is still a sin I find difficult to forgive, but it seems the show attempts to pay penance for that sin by having a pretty solid soundtrack of pop songs spanning a couple decades - actually used rather sparingly and appropriately instead of haphazardly tossed around. And the color palette... well... is certainly a color palette. But I can't blame this specific show for the industry-wide trend of washed out grey-ass movies and shows. It would have been nice to see it break that mold, and might have allowed it to stand out a little more in the current landscape, but the bland color palette doesn't ruin it.

Would actually recommend, which I didn't expect to be saying about Disney+/Hulu-exclusive streaming show Goosebumps (2023).

Also the final episode is titled "Welcome to HorrorLand" and let me tell you as a kid who was all about the Goosebumps: HorrorLand spinoff books I am Actually Eager to see that.

Having watched up to episode 3, Justin Long is definitely the best part of Goosebumps (2023) so far. It does have a good amount of creativity overall, some funny gags, decent visual effects. Too bad it takes itself just a little too seriously for its concept and has the color palette of dried mud. Also the intro does not feature the original theme music in any way so that's a major ding. I'd have been fine with a "spooky, atmospheric" reorchestration of the original notes, but they didn't even do that, because those notes are hard to play seriously, and this show wants to be taken super seriously. Especially after the events of episode 3, there's a little bit of tonal clash happening there...