tonycb

One of those films that I suspect suffers from not having an obvious niche. It's a classic coming of age / sex comedy, but firmly aimed at girls not boys and with an adult sensibility (adult in the sense of grown up, not a euphemism for porn).

It's a much better film than its rating suggests. The leads are superb and superbly well cast. Some of the side characters are a bit too two dimensional, but no more than lots of films with far bigger budgets. The writing is sharp, with the right dose of raunch without going over the top. It is also well acted.

It also avoids the modern tick box tropes (one person of colour: tick; one person who is non-binary: tick; etc).

I had read the Carreyrou book a while ago and there is a great documentary that showed the originals of much of the recreated footage of interviews.

Where it's a more or less faithful account from the book, it is excellent. Most of the incidents in the series - including the intimidation tactics - reconstruct real events. The series' portrait of George Shultz is less sympathetic than the one given by Tyler Shultz in interviews, and for reasons I don't understand they toned down the behaviour of the lawyers, particularly Boies.

The acting is also good. I confess to being surprised Amanda Seyfried could carry it off, but she did and made Holmes real. Episode 6 is magnificent. Naveen Andrews looks much less threatening than the real Sonny B.

Where the series struggles is the emphasis on Holmes as a woman. It means Holmes admiration for Thomas Edison, and how that might have inspired her behaviour is left out entirely. (Note Edison also lied for years about his lightbulb invention before finally getting one to work). This emphasis feels a bit strained in the first episode and goes badly wrong in the last.

Recommend watching it, but read the book too!

The first season introduces the characters and the "night agent" scenario. It's a more than decent watch, with good performances but a "the president is in danger" scenario that's a bit clichéd.

The second season starts a couple of levels above that with multiple lines of the story, fantastically characterised that draws out the conflicts and moral dubiousness of actions of even the most well meaning. The stars are beginning to show they are decent actors, not just plot ciphers, and its Iranian subplot is done as well as anything I have seen since Homeland.

Inexplicably at episode 8 this quality vanished. It feels as if it was hastily rewritten to allow a season 3 without proper work to report it. There are a couple of awful, clunky plot holes. Sad climax to what had so much promise.