Movie of the Day – Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

I am not a big fan of musicals.  Shocking I know, but honestly they just aren’t my thing.  I get the pageantry and spectacle of musicals but I am not much of a fan.  Perhaps I need nerdier musicals or plays to get me involved.  I fucking loved The Evil Dead musical which I saw several months back, but that has more to do with my love of The Evil Dead than anything else, also the blood splatter aspect.  So while I was a bit timid about Joss Whedon’s latest venture, I perked up after learning he creating a web series with Neil Patrick Harris, Felecia Day, and Nathan Fillion.  That is like a perfect storm of geekdom all rolled into one and I wasn’t even finished reading the release notes.  The fact that movie is going to center around the exploits of a wannabe supervillain, I am hooked.  Now given the fact that this is a music, considering Joss and the other Whedon brothers were all collaborating on this project meant that I was gonna a pop culture, smartly written, geeky musical.  All those things combined mean I am going to love the hell out this.

So the story of Dr. Horrible follows a supervillain trying to make it up the ranks of villains in order to become part of the Evil League of Evil.  He chronicles his day to day routines through a video blog with some wonderful musical acts accompanying his blogs.  We learn that Dr. Horrible (Neil Patrick Harris) has a main superhero whom he battles with , Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion), and that he also has a certain eye for a girl named Penny (Felicia Day…swoon) whom he can never just get the nerve to ask her out. After a failed heist, Dr. Horrible realizes that he is now fighting for the affection of Penny from Captain Hammer.  Dr. Horrible must find a way, once and for all, to rid himself of Captain Hammer and win Penny’s affection.

The series was broken up into three acts the each scene in the show having a musical numbers.  The musical scenes are incredibly fun to watch.  The styling of the music is poppy but it propels the story and opens up certain emotional cues in the characters.  Dr. Horrible has a more somber tone as he is foiled again and again by Captain Hammer and longs for the affection of Penny.  Captain Hammer is a more cocksure and strident style of singing since he the premier hero.  Penny has a more whimsical tones since she embodies innocence within the story.  All the musical numbers just blend so well together and, after watching the series over and over, start to sing along with the blog.

Aside from the catchy tunes, I loved this series because of the collaboration of all things geeky.  The cameo’s and actor collaboration stem from a lot of Whedon’s previous projects.  You got actors and actresses from Buffy, Angel, and Firefly all coming together during that Writer’s Strike in 2008.  So with no backing from studio’s,  Whedon self financed this project and used a growing medium to create something that they can call their own and give back to the fans.  You can see and hear the fun that they had coming up with this project through their finished work.  I don’t think you can watch this and not feel something good.  You have to have fun with this sort of series since it is a music about a villain wanting to get into a league where the head honcho is a villain named “Bad Horse” whom is actually a horse.

If you aren’t a fan of musicals, give this one a shot.  It’s fun, catchy, nerdy, and other adjectives.  Laugh at the situation and jokes, enjoy the musical numbers, and appreciate that this was created out of nothing.  If the writer’s strike didn’t happen, we may have not gotten Dr. Horrible at all.  This is for nerds by nerds.  Nerd on I guess.