Review: Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog (Part 1)

After finally being able to see Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, I can sum it up it one easy word….fun. It has a sarcastic wit about it, just like with anything Joss Whedon creates. This is obviously no different.

The best bit of casting the Whedon brothers made is with the title role itself — Dr. Horrible. Neil Patrick Harris has been doing a lot of great work recently on "How I Met Your Mother", the Harold and Kumar flicks and now as Billy a.k.a Dr. Horrible.

More after the bump.

Harris is convincing as the nerdy, shy guy who can't seem to work up the nerve to speak to Penny (Felicia Day). The song that he sings while he's in the laundromat trying to talk her might be the best song of part one.

The only real problem with the musical that I have is that the first part is only 13 minutes long, and there's really not enough time to establish the characters. Whedon and company chose to go from learning about Billy and Penny for the first 5 minutes to Billy getting ready to impress the evil league by rigging a courier van.

While Billy is getting ready to take the van on a test drive, or whatever he's going to do with a friggin' courier van, his arch-nemesis comes into the picture….Captain Hammer. Even though Hammer is only in the last two and half minutes, Nathan Fillion seems to be a great choice as the egotistical force of justice. He appears extremely full of himself, all the while saving Penny and causing Dr. Horrible to cry foul, because he stopped the van from hitting her in the first place…..but Hammer isn't listening. He's too busy singing to Penny, and her to him.

For thirteen minutes, part one is a lot to take in. There are four songs, all of which have there own uniqueness. I don't know how much Whedon and Co. spent on this "event" (as he calls it), but in the first thirteen minutes they had Fillion ontop of a moving van, and they had at least three different sets, including one outside. So kudos for the full effort there.

My only other squabble about Dr. Horrible is the poor planning that went into the website aspect of the show. I didn't actually get to see this until the day after it debuted, because I (along with many, many others…including international viewers) couldn't get on the site, let alone view the video. For all the word-of-mouth that they got for the event, you would think they would think they would get a bunch of viewers…..so maybe it would've been better to pay a little more money to be on a high-powered server than the regular web host they chose. And yes, I looked into it.

Complaining about their business decisions aside, the show itself was (like I said) fun. I'm looking forward to part two, which gets posted Thursday, so I should see it by Friday afternoon. Look for a review around then.