I'm a Virgo

After trying - and failing miserably - to copy Charlie Kaufman with Sorry to Bother You, Boots Riley tries even harder to impress critics and intellectuals and to excite regular audiences. Failure, again. I'm a Virgo is a messy compilation of half-baked ideas and things Mr. Riley always wanted to say - or hear characters say. There is a naive and very basic lecture about what's wrong with the economy, there is a depressed super hero looking for a super villain, there are supporting characters that suddenly get a lot of screen time ... There is a lot going on, but it feels random and somehow not original. Probably, because all of it has been seen in other shows or films. Mr. Riley's eclecticism would be fine if there would be just a little more to this collection of inspirations by others. But there isn't. I'm a Virgo is shallow and has not once managed to surprise me. Nevertheless, the show's pretentious creator seems to consider himself enormously sophisticated and inventive, which translates into the exaggerating of the predictable twists and turns. But after all, he is mostly processing ideas of other people that inspired him. Here, however, the ideas are annoying and incoherent, it all results in disappointment. Nevertheless, some actors have managed to deliver convincing performances, like Carmen Ejogo, Mike Epps, Allius Barnes and Walton Goggins.