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Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is amazing. It's the tale of Billy a.k.a. Dr. Horrible, played by Neil Patrick Harris, who is a budding supervillain who's trying to get into the Evil League of Evil, along with his henchman Moist. Dr. Horrible is a genius who wants to change society's ills by breaking it down and building it back up again from scratch, but as much as that he wants to impress the girl he's seen at the laundromat every week for the past several months. However, there's a few snags, which are recorded in Dr. Horrible's online video blog, which is the basis for this 50-minute retelling of the basic supervillain story, done up soooo right.
Let me get this out of the way. The basic story? Awful. We've seen it a million times. Everything goes down just like you think it will as soon as you have the basic outline of the tale, but it's the telling that makes it the best use of an hour you've got today.
(And it has to be today, if you want to see it for free - tomorrow, Sunday, July 19th, the blog comes down, and you have to pay $4 or $5 to get a nice little DVD of the tale.)
Writer/producer Joss Whedon nails it. The writing is only half the show, though, but it's a big half - the story isn't anything special, but the way it's laid out, from Dr. Horrible's viewpoint, with natural, perfect dialog and completely believable characters along with excellent pacing tells a story that every villain knows by heart. But it wouldn't be worth a thing if the actors weren't up to the task, and Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser, M.D.), Nathan Fillon (Firefly), and Felicia Day (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) nail roles that are not only obviously close to their hearts but apparently a lot of fun to act as.
I can't stress this enough. Take an hour, today, get something to snack on, and go watch the flick. It'll only take an hour (as long as you're on broadband. If you're on dialup, you might consider sacrificing today's bandwidth to this..) and you will not regret it in the least.
Remember. Today. Maybe not now, but by midnight!