Could this be the fastest money Joss Whedon has ever made?Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog—the web-only project that the Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Firefly creator wrote and filmed during the writers’ strike for a little more then $100,000—is part superhero spoof, part Broadway musical, and part internet lark, but mostly it’s an illustration of how profitable Kevin Kelly’s “1,000 True Fans” concept can be when it’s put into action. The entire three-part miniseries (which runs about 43 minutes in total) is available through iTunes for about $6, and with Whedon’s army of nerdy fanboys and nerdy-but-cute fangirls numbering in the millions, this thing could wind up being one of the most profitable film projects of 2008.
The hero of our story is Dr. Horrible (Neil Patrick Harris), a would-be supervillain who brazenly announces his criminal plans on his website, but can barely choke out two words to Penny (The Guild’s Felicia Day), the cute girl he has a crush on at the laundromat. Then, during an attempt to steal a shipment of “wonderflonium”—the missing ingredient in his freeze ray—a terrible thing happens: not only does Dr. Horrible’s nemesis, the square-jawed Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion), intervene, but he sweeps Penny off her feet and steals her heart before Dr. Horrible can even, like, ask her if she wants to have coffee together sometime.
The script has been constructed from 100% pure Whedonium: the irreverent take on genre conventions (the script refers to heroes and villains with names like Conflict Diamond, Fake Thomas Jefferson, and Bad Horse, “the thoroughbred of sin”); the pitch-perfect ear for the agonies of adolescent romance; the quirky comic dialogue that makes characters trailing off at the end of their sentences as funny as a punchline; the ability to turn on a dime from comedy to drama. Like, really shocking drama. I mean... not to give away the ending, but if Dr. Horrible’s musical numbers remind you of the arias from Sweeney Todd, the resemblance was probably not accidental.
Whedon has, of course, written a musical before: the “Once More, With Feeling” episode of Buffy, in which the residents of Sunnydale were afflicted with a curse that caused them to periodically break into song (songs that, just like in a Broadway musical, forced them to speak their innermost thoughts aloud), was arguably that series’ high point. If anything, the songs in Dr. Horrible are even catchier and cleverer, from Captain Hammer’s hilariously condescending tribute to ordinary citizens (“Everyone’s a hero in their own way/In their own, not-quite-heroic way!”), to the cheer-up song Penny sings to Dr. Horrible, not realizing his evil true identity, to Dr. Horrible’s ode to his freeze ray. Comparisons to Stephen Sondheim are apt—Whedon definitely piles up the internal rhymes, and Dr. Horrible’s climactic song of triumph even borrows a key melody from “Lesson 8,” from Sunday in the Park With George.
The on-the-cheap production values, if anything, only add to the series’ appeal—how refreshing it is, after the scene in The Dark Knight where Morgan Freeman lingers over the “titanium tri-weave alloy” of Christian Bale’s Batsuit, to watch something like Dr. Horrible, in which Nathan Fillion’s superhero costume consists of nothing more than a pair of vinyl gloves and a t-shirt with a hammer on it? Of course, Fillion does a superb job of selling the character—he bring just the right tone of self-satisfied boobery to lines like, “Do I know you from the gym? Oh wait—I don’t go to the gym! I’m naturally like this!”
Felicia Day, meanwhile, is a worthy addition to Whedon’s gallery of adorable nerdygirls, and Neil Patrick Harris gives the best performance of his career as Dr. Horrible—if at first the character looks like nothing more than a minor villain from The Tick, just stick around until that final shot and the cut to black.
Apparently a fourth episode and a DVD release (featuring a musical audio commentary called Commentary!) are all forthcoming, but I say don’t wait. You need something horrible in your life right this minute.
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