Those of us old enough to remember the ceremony of renting a film at the weekend may be curious to see what nostalgia Blockbuster (Netflix) is able to conjure up. It hangs its coat, loosely, on the story told by the 2020 documentary The Last Blockbuster, about the final US outpost of the rental chain, but instead turns it into a gentle workplace sitcom so softly spoken you practically have to lean in to hear what it is saying.
That’s a shame, because nostalgia aside, there is plenty of material that could have turned this into a potentially fresh prospect. Boss Timmy (Randall Park) has worked at his local Blockbuster since high school, and now owns the store. In the first episode, as the corporate overlords finally go bust, Timmy’s store becomes “the last Blockbuster on Earth”. It stands in a once-thriving strip mall – is now a good time to admit that until shamefully recently, I thought a strip mall contained late-night establishments of a certain nature, rather than being a strip of shops? – where most of the other businesses have shut down. Everyone who works at the Blockbuster, and its few remaining customers, are pining for human connection and community, lost to working-class America in the era of late-stage capitalism.
