While it might be slightly too inside to connect with folks who aren’t obssesed with Hollywood, the show is still good fun.
PLOT: A studio exec (Seth Rogen) who finds himself promoted to the top slot at the studio has to juggle his wish to make great films with the pressures of his new job.
REVIEW: What professions are most often depicted in movies and TV? Certainly, doctors, lawyers, cops (and criminals). To that, I’d add the Hollywood exec. Pretty much ever since they started making movies, Hollywood has been doing films about their business, with many of them classic tales, like the first two versions of A Star is Born (the latter two took on the even sexier music industry instead), Singing in the Rain, The Last Tycoon, The Player, Swimming With Sharks, and – on the small screen – the too quickly cancelled Action, and Entourage among others.
Yet, it can’t be denied that those earlier versions, even if they were at times scathingly critical, also adhered to the romance of the business. All involved aimed to make great movies (well, not on Action – and maybe that’s why it was cancelled). In Seth Rogen’s The Studio, which he created with his long-time collaborator Evan Goldberg, no one cares about making good movies. They want to make A LOT money and protect their jobs.
It might be that Rogen and Goldberg, having spent their fair amount of time in the Hollywood trenches, have a particularly jaundiced view of the town. Seth Rogen’s Matt Remick says he wants to make great movies, but within moments, he’s selling out all of his scruples to secure his role at the top of the chain. In The Studio, or at least its early episodes, no one cares about making anything good, with much of the first episode centring around Matt’s attempt to make Kool-Aid the movie at the behest of his new boss, Bryan Cranston’s studio CEO.
The show is packed to the gills with cameos, with Martin Scorsese having a significant role playing himself, as he tries to launch a Jonestown film (a project he actually flirted with in real life), plus there’s Charlize Theron, Paul Dano, Steve Buscemi, and many more. Clearly, Rogen has a deep bench of people from which to pull.
However, The Studio could wind up being a little too venal for its own good, as, at least in the early episodes, there’s no one you root for at least a little – something which is a tried and true format on British TV but is less proven in the U.S (with Veep being a notable – long-running – exception). Sure, Succession, The Sopranos, and many others centered around bad people, but you still cared about them. At least early on, Rogen’s Matt is such a bottom-feeder that you’ll be rooting for his downfall within moments of meeting him.
That said, The Studio is funny, especially if you know the business a little bit. Scorsese pokes fun at his massive running times and budgets, while Nicholas Stoller shows up as himself to pitch an animated version of Kool-Aid that, God Forbid, sounds like the kind of tepid fare that would actually get made. Ike Barinholtz is a blast as Matt’s coked-up best friend/ adversary at the studio, while Katherine Hahn is at her best as the studio’s foul-mouthed chief marketer. Catherine O’Hara also enters late in the pilot as the studio exec thrown over by Matt to make it to the top.
My only caveat is that The Studio, as funny as it is, is also quite depressing as with it, Rogen really does seem to be saying that Hollywood, as it once was, is over and that if good movies do get made anymore, it’s a bit of a miracle. Given his place in the industry, he would know. God help us, loyal film fans.
Originally published at https://www.joblo.com/the-studio-sxsw-review/
