This took me forever to finish. I started watching it before seeing The Secret Agent, and it provided a lot of additional color to that film. But had I gotten further in, I would've seen the real Mr Alexandre, as well as the blood bank. Missed opportunity there.

Really fell off fast, which is a shame. It even repeats a number of jokes from the prior entry.

Probably the best screen adaptation of a stage musical I've seen thus far. The dual nature of stage performance and “realistic” drama allows this to deliver many of the pleasures of stage performances while still taking advantage of the more elaborate staging/sets of a film.

Particular highs: the difference in audio quality within a single song when it switches between the stage-world and the real-world. All the excellent usage of mirrors and practical effects in the stage-world.

Can clearly see the way Satan Met A Lady learned lessons from this. The book was already pretty amusing, but this exaggerates so many of the character moments (especially between our engrossing duo of protagonists), at the expense of the mystery. And it's a good trade! Could've actually dropped more, since this pads the start of the film with events that precede Nick and Nora arriving in town.

Some of the line deliveries in this are genuinely hilarious, an almost pre-cursor to the ZAZ humor of Airplane! and Police Squad!.

Days after visiting the Tower Of The Sun, we came across a gacha machine selling “Taroman” figures. We didn’t comprehend it, but bought some right away.

This is a TV show from 2022 pretending to be a rebroadcast from 1987, complete with nostalgic interviews, never-existed product placement and commercials, and even a return of a child actor as an old man (wearing the exact same sweater). Incredible artifact.

I just don’t understand the appeal of this. Maybe you had to be there when it came out. But where reading the original book in 2026 is still remarkable for its dialogue and structure, this adaptation seems merely fine today.