- Title: Hazbin Hotel – Overture
- IMDb: link
What started out as an independent webcomic has now become a full-blown Amazon series. I had a very mixed reaction to the opening episode of the series that centers around Lucifer’s daughter Charlie (Erika Henningsen) and her plan to create a hotel within Hell to redeem sinners allowing them to eventually reach Heaven. I enjoy Charlie, and the look of the episode. The musical numbers were a bit more hit-and-miss for me (although the idea of singing about how glorious Hell is from a certain point of view is humorous).
My biggest problem with the episode was the obvious effort to make everything edgy and cool with overt adult humor only included to show just how adult it desperately wants to be (which has the effect of coming off more teenage than anything else). You can almost hear someone shouting, if you like Harley Quinn you will love this! Other than Charlie, none of the characters are all that likable and the characters from Heaven are even larger pieces of shit than those from Hell (a concept overused for so long it has become cliche at this point). More than once the presentation began to viscerally feel like nails on a chalkboard for me. Although I’ve seen the series garner support and praise elsewhere, Hazbin Hotel is not a place I would stay for any longer than necessary.