The subculture Netflix created is an obsessive one. Binge watching television shows is too often a hollow activity that serves a purpose no higher than avoiding the responsibility of your own life for several hours, but sometime you get nice surprise like cult Young Adult series Veronica Mars. I've obsessively binge watched the entire thing earlier this year many late blooming fans I'm sure, but Veronica Mars was so good that it was the type of thing that left a void in my life. I had a period of morning after finishing the series. Fortunately for me, my new found addiction couldn't have come at a better time since the Kickstarter-funded movie came out last year. Veronica and her friends had one more lap to offer me.
Ten years after the events of the series, Veronica (Kristen Bell) now lives in New York with Piz (Chris Lowell), which she technically has been dating all this time. She now has a degree in psychology, is about to pass the bar exam and is undergoing the interview process with big law firms. Her happily ever after is going pretty much like we all thought it would go until she hears on the news that old high school memory Carrie Bishop (Andrea Estella, because Leighton Meester turned down a comeback) turned up dead and her old flame, the one, the only Logan Echolls (Jason Dohring) is suspected of the murder. Turns out that Veronica has left unfinished business in Neptune and it caught up to her at the other end of the continent.
So, is Veronica Mars: the movie any different from the series? Does it have anything to add to the already rich (and somewhat perfect legacy of the show?) Yes and no. It is a notch darker. By that I don't mean that anybody is wearing leather or combat boots, but that everybody has reached adult age now and that their lives are tainted by failures, broken dreams and a burden of responsibility they didn't have in high school. The characters still look the almost the same at their 10 years reunion as the show keeps true to its philosophy of calling out false appearances and hollow personalities of California and it's as deceptively brutal as ever.
Othewise, it's just a really long episode of the show, really and would we have it any other way? Veronica Mars didn't blow me away at all by its nature, but fulfilled every one of my expectations. One thing I thought was nice was the cohesiveness, both intrinsically and as part of the overall Veronica Mars product. Too often, the series have been undermined by focus groups, which lead to inexplicable narrative choices that frustrated the fans. I don't want to spoil anything, but let's say the series rights a lot of wrongs, here. Showrunner and director Rob Thomas wraps up a handful of loose ends that are a decade old and it felt great, like I could finally have some closure. He left the door opened for sequels, but if the series ended with the events of Veronica Mars: the movie, it would be perfect, too.
Veronica Mars was very enjoyable. Perhaps it wasn't as daring as it could've been because the movie was crowdsourced Rob Thomas tried to please as many backers as possible, but it fulfilled its obligation of giving his iconic character a memorable victory lap. Of course, Veronica Mars is not dead. She will live for the foreseeable future in the novels of Rob Thomas, which seems like a natural evolution for her and the idea of getting into them makes me pretty giddy, whatever the critics might say. Veronica Mars is a fun movie that both features a character cast evolution and the inevitable fate of the people of Neptune. It doesn't draw outside the lines or overstay its welcome, it's straight, honest and it's at least as much fun as the series was in its best moments, except it's only 105 minutes long.
