It`s not hard to draw up comparisons when you`re talking about Netflix`s Umbrella Academy. Its ten episode season is going to call to mind all sorts of things--FX`s surrealist X-Men show Legion for one, Wes Anderson films for another, some Bryan Fuller-flavored flair with just a dash of Tim Burton--and while those comparisons are all earned in their own ways, none of them do the full picture justice. The bottom line is Umbrella Academy really is just that weird--which probably isn`t a huge surprise to anyone who`s read the multi-part comic book source material by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba. There was no way this show was ever going to angle for your typical superhero fair, which is really what makes it so much fun.In lieu of villain punching or day saving, this is a superhero show with full on dance montages, hidden in-scene title card reveals, and CGI effects that are just-this-side of retro. The story hopscotches back and forth between past, present and future, sometimes by way of literal time travel, sometimes by way of flashbacks. There`s a talking chimpanzee in a suit who wears a monocle and a robot nanny called `Mom` who resembles a prototypical 1950s housewife (designed by a man, naturally). It can be a lot to keep track of, but don`t let that put you off--Umbrella Academy throws a lot at the wall, but most everything sticks.It`s difficult to really distill exactly what the show is about in any specific sense without giving too much away, but here`s the short version. It`s set in a world where several dozen children were born around the world at the same time on the same day to women who were, until that moment, not pregnant. An eccentric billionaire adventurer named Reginald Hargreeves adopted seven--they turned out to have superpowers, and he molded them into a sort of trainee superhero team called--you guessed it--the Umbrella Academy. There`s Luther (Tom Hopper), a muscle bound strong man with a leadership complex; Diego (David Castaneda), a Batman-li ...
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