‘I Saw The TV Glow’ Review – A Snoozeworthy Transgender Allegory Featuring Limp Bizkit (Yes, Really)

It was just a couple of weeks ago that I said that if there are three or four more movies that are worse than the film Babes, we’re in deep trouble for 2024. Believe it or not, not even a month after making that statement, we now officially have a movie that is way worse, I Saw the TV Glow.

Justice Smith is the worst actor working in Hollywood today, and I’m not saying that for the sole purpose of attaining clicks. Even before the actor officially came out as gay, his obsessive screaming and crying in movies such as Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom already put him on the list of one of the least favorable actors in Hollywood.

Since then, Smith has been in a series of films that have showcased the audience the absolute worst qualities of the human being on every conceivable level, much like the actor’s equally terrible The American Society of Magical Negroes — a film that not only went into overdrive by antagonizing race relations between black people and white people here in the United States of America, but a film that marred itself even further by allowing this uncharismatic actor to go on a five minute monologue about how hard it is to be a black man in America, coming from someone who’s arguably less black than the Cash Me Outside girl.

I saw the TV Glow is guaranteed to have Justice Smith added to the Mark and Avoid list, as far as actors go moving forward. This film is a pseudo-intellectual, psychological horror film about two outcasts who found camaraderie by watching an obscure television show that’s just as demented as they are.

Maddy is the town’s lesbian who’s pretty much cut off from anything that can be qualified as a functioning relationship with another human being. And to join Maddy in her misery train is her ‘friend’ Owen, who was a weird little black kid who was so afraid to speak it’s almost as if he’s afraid of getting beat up by everyone in a five mile radius.

The two bond by watching a show called The Pink Opaque. However, calling their relationship a friendship will be an insult to anyone who meets the bare minimum of actually liking one another.

On the same day that the show was canceled, Maddy suddenly disappears. And what happens next is so stupid that I have to tell you in order for you to believe that I’m not making this up. If you don’t know anything about this film, the writer and director of this movie, Jane Schoenbrun, is a trans woman.

So it shouldn’t shock anyone to discover that this film is actually an allegory for transgender people. If you weren’t told this, going into the movie, nothing about this film is going to make a lick of sense. But if you were told this before watching it, even less of the film makes sense on a basic level.

I Saw the TV Glow is not a movie. There’s no plot, there’s no storyline, there’s no dialogue, and you’re presented with two protagonists who barely meet the minimum qualifications to even be considered characters. When you mix all of this in a pot, you are left with a film that gives you 100 minutes of you asking yourself, why did I watch this movie? And, what the hell did I just watch?

Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine are the two real-life gay actors who don’t even pretend, for a single second, to have any chemistry; either romantically or on a basic platonic level. Lundy-Paine is your typical moody lesbian who thinks the entire world is against her, yet she doesn’t even realize that her intensive narcissism is the exact reason why she doesn’t have anyone that she can qualify as a friend.

Similarly, at this point in his career, Justice Smith is the gay inoffensive ‘black man’ that Hollywood calls when you want someone who makes Ryan Gosling look like Malcolm X; non-threatening, effeminate, and neurotic are the only qualities that you’re ever going to get out of Justice Smith, and that is the only reason why his star is on the rise in modern Hollywood.

The deeper you get into this emotional trauma memory disguised as a feature movie, the more baffled you are destined to be. Spoiler alert, because I’m pretty sure none of you guys plan on actually watching this movie anyway, but it turns out that the television show that the characters have been watching this entire time is their true reality.

Owen and Maddy are actually the two lesbians they have been watching on television the entire time. Understanding the context that this is a film that is an allegory to a man’s transition into becoming a woman, the only thing left to say, by the time that Fred Durst from Limp Bizkit shows up in this movie is: what the f—k?

I Saw the TV Glow is one of the most boring films to have ever been crafted by the brain of a human being. At this point, I would unironically rather watch ‘Ass: The Movie’ than sit through another two hours of a mind-numbing attempt at a story from someone who needs therapy, Jesus, or a combination of both.

I’ve said it once and I will say it again, if there are two or three more movies this year that are worse than this film, Hollywood may very well be in critical condition.

NEXT: ‘Bad Boys: Ride Or Die’ Review – A Sometimes Entertaining Cash Grab From Sony