Ricochet wrote:EXTRA: For any cinephiles out there, Sorrentino's English-language work so far ranks as the piece of garbage fire that was This Must Be the Place and Youth, which, apart from having a couple of dumb scenes, the stuff of Tommy Wiseau's creative sessions, I rather considered it too disliked by the general critics. (If anyone is paying attention to the new The XX album and their song Lips, the sample from there belongs to an original piece by David Lang... which was heavily featured in Youth, btw
/trivia)
So far, I get the vibe that YPope is mostly accepted as both ridiculous and yet enjoyable.
It's like House of Cards but set in the highest rungs of the Catholic Church, and also 100 times better.
The first shot of the show is Jude Law emerging from a mountain of naked babies followed by him giving a speech about the benefits of masturbation and abortion. Then he wakes up, and screams at his servants for not instantly bringing him a Cherry Coke Zero, which is the only thing he drinks. He also gets a pet kangaroo, who he lets live in the Vatican gardens.
The final scene of the pilot is Young Pope admitting that he doesn't even believe in God, and smirking at the camera, proving that the immortal question: "Is the Pope Catholic?" can be answered multiple ways.
Also Diane Keaton is in it for some reason, playing a nun who wears T-Shirts that say "I'm A Virgin (But This Is An Old T-Shirt)," along with James Cromwell, who will unfortunately never top his performance in American Horror Story: Asylum.
It's the most purely fun and enjoyable viewing experience I've had in a while, which probably says more about me than anything else.
Then again, I thought This Must Be The Place and Youth were both pretty great films, so maybe Mr. Sorrentino's 21st-Century-Fellini-wannabe charms just speak to me.