I came across The Critical Drinker early in 2019 via his YouTube channel. I thought that he was not only hilarious but also articulate and thoughtful in his reviews of films both new and old. His irreverence and stereotypical "Scottish drunk" approach to his reviews was very entertaining. I still laugh heartily at most of his videos.
But, then I discovered that The Drinker is actually published author Will Jordan and he is indeed Scottish. No wonder that, despite the drunkenness schtick in his videos, this guy was so articulate in his analysis - he's a writer. Given how entertaining I found his videos, I thought that I should at least give his first Ryan Drake novel "Redemption" a read. This would be my way of acknowledging The Drinker's work and also sending some dosh his way. I couldn't put the book down. It is a page-turning thriller from front to back. Perhaps my most entertaining read of 2019 (and I read lots of books).
I've also picked up the second and third books in the Ryan Drake series, "Sacrifice" and "Betrayal", and was not disappointed by these entertaining and well-structured stories. Will Jordan knows how to structure a three-part series with multiple character arcs while also avoiding predictability and cliché. Perhaps he should have been hired by Disney to write the three episodes of their Star Wars saga...
In light of the fact that they didn't though, The Drinker has put together two well-thought out and entertaining video reviews on the latest installment, The Rise of Skywalker. I laughed out loud on several occasions during the first video, given the sheer ridiculousness of what is being described. Yet, by the end of the second video (especially in the last two minutes where The Drinker gives some heart felt advice to the suits at the Disney Corporation), I felt a tremendous change in tone - a serious plea for big corporate studios and their leaders to get their egos, greed, and creative bankruptcy in check and stop messing around with stories that are classic and timeless. I talked briefly about something similar in my last post. Which begs the question, was Disney Star Wars at all necessary in the first place?
Here are the two reviews:
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