“Piccoli Vivivi” is back and you shouldn’t miss it
“Piccoli Chivi” returns with the second season, entitled “The mysterious adventure” and it is a welcome return, certainly for those who appreciated the first season last year, one of the most beautiful surprises of the genre, capable of bringing back to life a must-see of the TV of the 90s, while making everything absolutely within the reach of the new audience. In this second season the horror is even more marked, giving great coherence to the whole, which will not fail to amaze you.
“Goosebumps: The Mysterious Adventure” – the plot
“Goosebumps: The Mysterious Adventure” is a story completely unrelated to the first season, which was so well received on Disney+. At the center this time there is a real generational clash, which mainly sees Anthony Brewer (David Schwimmer) as the protagonist, here a botanist who, after his divorce from his wife, decides to return to Gravesend, Brooklyn, the cradle of his youth, to assist his mother , suffering from senile dementia. Anthony has two twin children: Cece (Jayden Bartels) and Devin (Sam McCarthy), two teenagers who naturally never miss an opportunity to mess up or remind everyone that that age is problematic and unpredictable. As soon as they arrive in the Big Apple, they don’t take long to socialize with their peers, in particular with Alex (Francesca Noel), CJ (Elijah M. Cooper), Trey (Stony Blyden) and Frankie (Galilea La Salvia). They cannot imagine that their father hid from them what happened thirty years earlier to their brother and other peers, and that that same danger is now about to return and target them.
“Goosebumps” arrived on the small screen in the ’90s and was a truly global phenomenon, an incredible success, capable of bringing back to the center of everything the stories that RL Stine had conceived starting in the ’40s, which became a transgenerational success absolute. Horror in a basic, elementary form, cut with an ax for the teen audience, came back into vogue and in some ways anticipated what Wes Craven and others would later make protagonists on the big screen, with that nod to black comedy that already in the first season of “Piccoli Chivi”, last year, he had given something very interesting. Here there are many, many references and quotes to some of the most iconic volumes of the saga, harmoniously united by showrunners Nicholas Stoller and Rob Letterman, to create a tale that constantly looks in two directions: past and present. “Piccoli Chivi: The mysterious adventure” focuses on the generational clash, on the concept of evil as something that is inherited, chases you and that in the end you will have to face.
A new season more horror and less comedy
David Schwimmer was one of the iconic faces of “Friends”. The choice to make it the center of this horror story about strange carnivorous and sentient plants is consistent with the presence of another symbolic face of 90s TV: Ana Ortiz, here in the role of Detective Jen, this father’s former childhood friend a bit of a loser, scruffy, dealing with a huge amount of stress and problems. “Piccoli Chivi” is more connected to body horror, winks at Carpenter, the aforementioned Craven, Yuzna, without losing sight of the other slice of identity: that of the coming-of-age film. At the center there is a horror that the older generations have not faced, and now it is up to the new ones to deal with it. If this reference sounds in any way “political” to you, you are not even that off the mark, in fact today’s young people are as messed up as those of yesterday, but in addition they have to deal with a horror that since those optimistic 90s, now he chooses the children of the teenagers of the time as a new target. Which in itself is certainly a good point for reflection.
“Piccoli Chivi” has excellent special effects, photography and direction are certainly on point, perhaps the discordant note lies in the somewhat stereotyped representation of the young protagonists, all too imprisoned within the archetypes that we have already seen on other occasions: the nerd, the problematic girl, the bully and so on. But apart from this, the new season of “Piccoli Chivi” is really fun, well written, well balanced between the different components and knows how to excite both fans of the literary saga, of the former 90s TV series, and laypeople. Of course, it remains a product for a more adult target than the original one of the literary saga or the 90s series. This second season follows the structure of the first, but with a more gloomy atmosphere and certainly a greater ability to connect to the genre in the classic sense. Having an actor like David Schwimmer available is an additional weapon compared to the first season, if not for the ability to make the connection between the 90s and the 21st century even more central.
Rating: 7