It’s got a fine lineup of film stars and critics, but this tedious tour of movie tricks feels like an opportunity missed. What were they all thinking?
I have long made peace with the fact that I will never figure Netflix out. Maybe that is the point: Netflix, like the shining face of God, is not ever meant to be fully understood, just watched in awe from afar. But where once Netflix made sense – the first series of Orange is the New Black! The first three series of House of Cards! The mega-success of the Queer Eye reboot! – now some of the commissioning decisions seem to be made by a pulsing cluster of AI servers. This is why we have Nailed It!, for instance. Why He’s All That with Addison Rae exists. Season 5 of Arrested Development and that nine-movie Adam Sandler deal. These were designed by a robot in a lab to make me wistful for an era when the company sent out DVDs in little square envelopes in the post.
Anyway, Attack of the Hollywood Clichés! is up this week, and I do not know who it is for, why it got made (by Charlie Brooker no less), and who – beyond everyone who picked up a day-rate in its production – is benefiting. In short: it’s one of those talking-head hours Channel 4 always seemed to do so well, only with that added layer (and layer … and yet another layer) of Netflix/Hollywood gloss. Rob Lowe hosts, doing an absolutely incredible performance of Rob Lowe, spraying out high-sheen writer’s-room-polished comic lines with all the élan of a man giving his third best man’s speech of the weekend. There is a sparkling cast of talking heads – Florence Pugh is there! Andrew Garfield! Richard E Grant! – plus a stacked bench of imposingly intellectual film critics who have actually seen more than one Hitchcock film and have a lot to say about tropes. Whoever did the casting on this special did their job. Whoever did the interviews nailed it. Whoever cut this thing together ruined everything.
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