Softwing Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

SoftInloveRox Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

Kidskycom It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

tieman64 "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti An HBO TV series written and created by Mike White, "Enlightened" stars Laura Dern as Amy Jellico. Amy works within the marketing department of Abaddon Industries, the company aptly named after the Biblical "Abaddon" (a bottomless pit and place of destruction)."Enlightened" opens with Amy quite literally losing her mind. Driven insane by bastardly bosses and crummy corporate credos, Amy escapes to a "spiritual retreat" in which she learns "hippie values" and in which she has idyllic visions of sparkling waters and floating turtles. Why, Amy thinks, can't the whole world be like this? As such, Amy returns to Abaddon with a new evangel; she will impose upon the world a new reality, a new way of thinking, a new ethos! Everyone else thinks Amy's nuts. Toward the end of its first season, "Enlightened" becomes a comical political tract. Howard Zinn for the "Sex and the City" generation, Amy becomes a revolutionary outfitted in Prada and knock-off Gucci. Amy's original corporate values – a kind of Randian social Darwinism which trumpets extreme individualism and in which the only ethical precepts are those which sanction cutthroat competition – are thus swiftly replaced by more "enlightened" values (love, peace, respect, community, environmental concerns etc). Because Amy's scatterbrained and a little bit confused, these values are ill-defined and only superficially understood by Amy herself. Indeed, Amy initially treats these values as fashion accessories, little trinkets and badges of honour to be worn and displayed. Soon, Amy begins to display all the behavioural patterns of a cult-member, the poor girl clinging to these values in an attempt to be "born again" a "better", "saner" more "humane" person. White even goes to lengths to portray Amy as being hypocritical, vindictive and often angry. So what's great about "Enlightned" is that it portrays Amy's "enlightenment" as being a form of "instability". Her "enlightenment" is not a rational ideological choice, but rather the accidental byproduct of social rejection, social violence, personal stupidity, emotional wounds and of various self-defence mechanisms. In short, it is the world which radicalizes Amy and which then deems her insane for being radical. At the same time, White makes it clear that Amy's "craziness" is in fact a type of beautiful sanity. It is only in the eyes of an insane world that Amy appears a crackpot. As such, Amy is aggressively demonized, mocked and belittled by her "sane" co-workers, all of whom have been fully colonised by Abaddon's logic, jargon and values. These "sane" co-workers, of course, are slowly revealed to be deluded nuts. Or as George Orwell ironically pointed out in "1984": "Sanity is statistical. It is merely a question of learning to think as they thought." Abaddon wants you thinking like Abaddon thinks."Enlightened's" second season watches as Amy attempts to reform Abaddon Industries. She attempts to implement a form of "green", "compassionate" and "sustainable capitalism", which are of course oxymora. When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom profit that loses, and, as activist Lucia Ortiz once said, asking "capitalism to transition to a Green Economy is like asking a tiger to become a vegetarian". Amy's wishes are thus a systemic impossibility; any system predicated upon exponential growth (in production, energy consumption, market expansion, interest based money creation etc) must ignore a variety of ecological, moral and social concerns just to stay alive. Already, for example, Earth Overshoot Day - the day on which we've used more of the planet's resources than it's able to replenish in a year — is steadily arriving earlier and earlier; it now takes an Earth and a half to support our current rate of resource extraction. By mid-century, under "modest" projections for population growth, we will need three Earths (about 85 percent of the world's population lives in countries that are overusing what they're able to replenish).So Amy is ultimately unable to slay Abaddon. Amy and a LA Times reporter (Dermot Mulroney) may run an expose on the company, but her values and its are incompatible and there can never be meaningful reconciliation."Enlightened" finds Laura Dern doing her best work outside of David Lynch. Her character – a wholly original creation - is a roaring mass of contradictions and conflicting emotions, all of which Dern expertly conveys. Unfortunately White's series is a good five or six episodes too long, contains far too much padding and White would arguably have done better to adopt a more comedic tone. Indvidiaul episodes were directed by a number of well-known auteurs, including Jonathan Demme, Nicole Holofcener and White himself.8.5/10 – Daring and sophisticated. See White's "Year of the Dog", which sketches a similarly complex portrait of animal right's activism.

zetes The A.V. Club named this the best series of 2013, beating out popular favorite Breaking Bad and angering many readers who had never even heard of this obscure HBO series. It aired its first, 10 episode season in late 2011. Its second, 8 episode season aired at the beginning of 2013. A third season was planned, but HBO canceled it. Watching the first season, I was a little perplexed at where the praise had come from. Laura Dern is good in the lead, playing Amy Jellicoe, a woman working at a high position at a pharmaceutical company who gets fired after having an emotional breakdown. She goes to a New Age-y treatment facility in Hawaii and, six months later, returns to the company in a much lower position. She is a bit of a hippie, harping on her company's lack of ethics, which immediately gets her in trouble. I must say, the first season seems all like set-up with no pay off. If I were watching it on TV, especially if I had to wait the whole year for it to air its second season, I probably wouldn't have continued with it. But I bought both seasons at once, so eight more episodes weren't much of a commitment. And, man, that second season. It goes from a series that was decent but fairly unnotable to something truly special, something remarkably potent. Here is the pay-off in spades. The second season is so emotionally involving, so insightful into the human condition. Amy Jellicoe is a bit of a pill, but you really understand her and I really appreciated a character like her, one who is far less than perfect. The two best episodes of the series have at their center a secondary character. "Higher Power" focuses on Amy's ex-husband, Luke Wilson, as he himself goes to Amy's treatment facility and tries to get clean. Wilson has always been an undervalued actor who is often misused, and he's never been better than in this television episode. In "The Ghost Is Seen," series creator and head writer Mike White (whose directorial debut, Year of the Dog, explored similar themes to this series), who co-stars as Amy's lonely best friend at work, falls in love with Molly Shannon (who starred in Year of the Dog), while he simultaneously betrays her trust. Diane Ladd also co-stars as Amy's mother, and I loved her relationship with her daughter. It was unique in that she's severely disappointed with her daughter and kind of distrusts her.

Rogue-32 So here we have Mike White doing what he does best: spearheading a project that's one part subversive, one part cynical, one part hopeful and one part lethally and blackly comic.Enlightened works on many levels because of this but it's also this uber-quirky quality that turns a lot of people who don't have the patience or the understanding of what they're watching off.Dern's Amy Jellicoe character is not likable, which is a huge gamble from the get-go,especially for a female character; men on TV shows - as in real life - tend to be given far more leeway, to say the least. All the characters on the show are deeply flawed, of course, but these people are not caricatures, they're all three-dimensional and doing the best they can at their respective levels of consciousness.It's interesting how Amy, beginning in season one, had been trying to find some sort of inner peace but soon as she returns to work at her vile company, that intention flies out the window.Rather than quitting her job, as anyone who genuinely was seeking peace would most likely do, she stays and takes on a new, seemingly better, more 'important' ego identity: agent of change. This is hilarious to me, because in substituting one ego identity for another she is still as lost and as fragmented as she was in the very beginning, if not more so. I'm hoping that White understands this, because I'm not sure how enlightened he actually is(because the actual subject of the title has not been dealt with in anything but superficial terms), but either way it plays as good television.My favorite episode was the one in season two called The Ghost Is Seen, where White's basically sadsack character Tyler narrates instead of Amy, sharing with the audience about how he feels invisible, how he's lonely, how his life has been empty, until he meets Eileen, played beautifully by the always wonderful Molly Shannon. Ironically, of course - this is a Mike White show, remember - he's in the process of betraying her as they speak, breaking into her computer to get lethally damaging evidence against the company. This episode was brilliantly written and enacted, with White's voice-over narration being profoundly moving. I only hope he gets a chance for a third season; in light of all the garbage that gets renewed - like Girls, for instance - I think this show warrants another shot, at the very least. UPDATED 3/20/13: Cancelled. Too subversive for HBO, apparently. Not surprised.

Nathan L I must say that I was amazed of the quality of this show, the great actors, dialogs and script overall. To be honest, it is the first time I felt like not watching a TV show, but actually living it.Amy is a middle aged woman, trying to find herself after various failures : with work, partner, family... she's trying to do the right thing, to change though being the same in many ways.This show is very similar to what many people must have lived : looking for some kind of redemption. No matter what is your job, no matter your religion, sex, or financial situation. Many try to do better, to be better.Finally, Amy reminds us something important : that to live is not only about doing things, but also thinking about them.Outstanding Show.