Blockbuster Review: A Sitcom Running on Rented Nostalgia

If you fed the jokes from early-2000s sitcoms into an AI generator, it would probably spit out Blockbuster.

Blockbuster
Photo: Netflix

Netflix’s Blockbuster takes place in the last remaining Blockbuster store on the planet, as its hapless manager, Timmy (Randall Park), and his ragtag group of oddball employees try to keep the place alive. On paper, it seems like a promising premise for a pop culture-savvy sitcom in the mold of Community, with riffs on genre tropes and characters primed to trade movie references. Instead, it’s more like The Big Bang Theory for film nerds.

But it’s hard to overstate how uninspired the show’s level of pop commentary is, namely the manner in which it takes aim at low-hanging fruit: Michael Bay, Mumford & Sons, and people who choose to watch dubs over subs. Painfully obvious jokes made at the expense of painfully obvious targets abound. If you fed the jokes from any number of early-2000s sitcoms into an AI generator, it would probably spit out something resembling Blockbuster.

One of Timmy’s employees, Carlos (Tyler Alvarez), is an inspiring filmmaker who’s specifically sought out the chance to work in a video store so he can follow in the footsteps of his idol, Quentin Tarantino. He’s almost the platonic ideal of the film bro, providing the perfect target for gags about guys who build their entire identity around the movies they like.

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But throughout the series, we never get a sense of what sort of movies Carlos—or any other staff member at the store, for that matter—actually likes or why. One episode sees the store’s employees heartily recommending various Scary Movie sequels to customers, which perhaps tells you everything you need to know about Blockbuster’s idea of meta comedy.

And it’s not just the film references that fall flat, as the characters are involved in sublots that are the stuff of straightforward straightforward sitcom clichés, played without an ounce of self-awareness. From Timmy’s will-they-or-won’t-they romance with colleague Eliza (Melissa Fumero), to episodes where the employees are forced to throw a party to save the store, every story beat has seemingly been copied and pasted from the existing sitcom canon.

Of course, the sitcom genre thrives on familiarity, and the cast—including Kamaia Fairburn as Kayla, an “over it” Gen Z-er with a venomous (but not very funny) deadpan delivery—is clearly working hard to wring something out of Blockbuster’s lazy punchlines, but the series sticks too rigorously to its tired template. Most egregious is J.B. Smoove, as Kayla’s dad and Timmy’s best friend, who’s clearly designed to be the show’s charismatic cameo star but whose man-child shtick gets old before the credits on the opening episode have rolled.

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There’s something noxious about a Netflix series waxing nostalgic for the death of the video rental stores that the streaming boom helped kill. One corporation parading the corpse of another is unlikely to tug at heartstrings. Blockbuster is an unintentional reminder that we should be more careful about letting those strings become attached to corporations in the first place, no matter how much fun we had perusing their aisles looking for something to watch.

Score: 
 Cast: Randall Park, Melissa Fumero, Olga Merediz, Tyler Alvarez, Madeleine Arthur, J. B. Smoove, Kamaia Kairburn  Network: Netflix

Ross McIndoe

Ross McIndoe is a Glasgow-based freelancer who writes about movies and TV for The Quietus, Bright Wall/Dark Room, Wisecrack, and others.

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