For a decent amount of time, I found this… documentary?… pretty decent. But the longer it went, the more shallow, repetitive, and disorganized it felt.

The flick is hosted by Rob Lowe and his iffy script as he goes through a variety of clichés we see in Hollywood movies. It introduces a cliché, gives us some talking heads talking about it, maybe a little history, and then shows a handful of examples from a variety of movies.

It hits on most of the major clichés the jump scare, the rogue cop (who has to turn in his badge and his gun), the Meet Cute, the Manic Pixie Dreamgirl, The White Savior, etc. It also hits on some lesser known clichés which were a little more fun… like the grocery bag with the baguette in it. I’m sure there are dozens of clichés they skipped though. I mean, no mention of “we’ve got company”?

This was all mostly harmless and I’d have been happy to sit back with a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster and enjoy it on a three star level. Sure, as a movie fan, I already know most of this… and if you watch enough movies, so do you. Maybe there’s some of the broad-stroke history they cover that might be news… but it’s doubtful.

But the movie only runs about an hour and it massively runs out of steam about half-way through. There’s no real organization to any of this, no driving structure, and very little actual insight. Yes, it’s cute to be reminded of clichés but kind of so what? Some topics could be their own full-length film but are shortened to the same length as every other cliché. There just wasn’t enough meat on the bones.

It’s not the worst hour to spend on Netflix, that’s for sure. It’s still mostly harmless but I, for one, got pretty bored watching it. Yes, almost none of the info or clichés presented were at all a surprise. And, yes, there were clichés they missed. But given the way the flick was presented, I wouldn’t have wanted to sit through another half hour to cover them.

Score: 74