An excerpt from Reals’ script review for True Lies 2 (Unproduced) by Jeff Eastin which will be available 08/24/18:
What Needs Work
— Pg. 1 – Already some massive walls of text and dialogue. This was written some time ago, but this style won’t cut it now and, if I was a studio reader and this was anything other than a sequel, I probably would have skipped right over this script.
— Pg. 3 – I think this script is trying to do what this year’s The Incredibles 2 is doing: switching the typical male and female roles. I just hope Incredibles had a little more finesse when they did it.
— Also, why do the characters need to be named Harry and Helen? Reading their convo I had to stop and double check who the speaker was once or twice. I know the names are a holdover from the first one, but come on!
— Pg. 7 – This has been all dialogue for seven pages now. With no action or anything really to break it up. That amounts to around seven minutes of screentime with two (and then three) characters sitting around and talking at each other. Which is visually boring.
— Pg. 15 – There is a lot of dialogue! Like, far too much for an action/comedy script.
— Pg.19 – I don’t remember Helen getting promoted to the head of the FBI at the end of the first one. It seems like a lot of time has passed and a whole lot has happened off-screen before we pick up here. Which, to me, is a mistake. I would rather see Helen rise to the top while Harry has to accept that his wife is now a working spy/FBI Agent and he is going to have to learn to work with her/accept her new role.
— Pg. 20 – I’ve also noticed several misspellings and grammar issues so far. Just because you were hired to write a sequel doesn’t mean you can be lazy or just knock something out.
— Pg. 22 – What was the plan here? Steal priceless art/artifacts and… hope your wife won’t catch you so you can rub it in her face? Kind of a dick move.
— Pg. 27 – 28 – KFC is some weird product placement.
— Pg. 35 – Is the FBI really being reduced to finding the KFC secret recipe thieves? Don’t they have anything at all better to do?
— Pg. 37 – It also took me awhile to realize that Gib and Albert are the same person.
— Pg. 48 – Is Albert family? It just seems weird they would take him on a family vacation…
— Pg. 50 – There is a distinct lack of action in this action/comedy script. That is not good. In a horror script, the one thing the reader knows is that there should be some element of horror/fear. In an action script, you must have action, otherwise it fails at a fundamental level.
— Pg. 52 – We have now had the same conversation between Albert and Harry – that Harry is unhappy that he is stuck at home – multiple times. Don’t do this. Trim the fat whenever possible. Especially for a conversation like this, we only need to hear it once!
— Pg. 53 – Good lord, there is almost half a page of just description here. Don’t do this.
— Pg. 62 – We are taking too long to get nowhere.
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