so.
just watched #thenoeldiary on #netflix w justin hartley of #thisisus fame.
pretty hollow telling of what might have been a very affecting story of redemption.
mainly bcz it tries to tell the story of a woman looking for her biomom, a pregnant black teenager, centering the story of the broken white family whe saves by just being there.
pretty sure the focus is bcz the vehicle is to star hartley who produces. but it just guts any impact the denoument would have.
by disemboweling the story to center hartleys character, every exposition and plot twist rings hollow. even w such talented (and here, wasted) actors like bonne bedelia and james remar cannot make their characters feel like fully-fleshed people.
worst, they waste essence atkins in the eponymical role w less than 5m of screentime and the lamest voiceover in history.
reader, i tried to like this.
but it was 100m of struggle.
and the struggle failed.