Roush Review: Hooray for Hollyweird in Brilliant ‘Studio’ Satire
Review
The Studio
No one loves cinema more than Matt Remick. “Film is my life,” he gushes.
Tough luck, then, that when Matt lands his dream promotion to head a legendary Hollywood studio, he’s immediately informed by Continental Studios’ crass CEO (Bryan Cranston having a field day), “We don’t make films. We make movies that people want to pay to see!” To which Matt stammeringly responds, “I am as bottom-line oriented as anyone in this town.”
And thus does Matt begin drinking the Tinseltown Kool-Aid, quite literally, submerging his celluloid idealism into a dark pit of soul-crushing compromise, fatuous flattery, and endless humiliation in an unflinchingly brilliant satire that could be subtitled “Honey, I Shrunk the Ego!” Apple TV+ has another winner in The Studio, starring Seth Rogen (also co-creator, also co-director with Evan Goldberg of each episode) as Matt, one of the most hapless heroes of a cringe comedy since The Office‘s Michael Scott showed us the way.
Matt is so eager to be liked and respected that he creates his own pitfalls, in an early example showing up uninvited on a movie set to fawningly observe director Sarah Polley as she executes an ambitious long take (known as a “oner”) in a horrific slapstick farce that is itself filmed in one long, uninterrupted continuous shot. The movie-on-movie love continues in an episode that parodies film noir clichés (including Matt’s own voice-over narration) when he plays gumshoe to find a missing reel of film from director Olivia Wilde‘s Chinatown homage. (He brags that shooting on film is more expensive than digital, in his desire for Continental to be regarded as the most filmmaker-friendly and talent-friendly studio in Hollywood — an ambition that inevitably backfires.)
Luminaries including Martin Scorsese and Ron Howard are among the many famous figures who appear as unflattering versions of themselves in squirm-inducing scenarios, while the Good Sport Award goes to Netflix boss Ted Sarandos. He performs a memorable cameo on a rival streamer in the series’ most excruciatingly hilarious episode, set at the Golden Globes, where Matt is neurotically anxious to be thanked on camera. Doesn’t he realize this is a thankless job?
But let’s give thanks where it’s due, to a first-rate supporting cast led by the sublime Catherine O’Hara as the executive who Matt replaced (and who’s making a bitter bonanza from her production-deal parachute), Kathryn Hahn as an explosively cynical marketing barracuda, Ike Barinholtz as Matt’s right-hand VP of production, and Chase Sui Wonders as an assistant he promotes into the creative ranks — such as they are.
Watching this crew torture themselves into a woke frenzy while fretting over racial insensitivities in casting Kool-Aid: The Movie (“the perfect storm of nostalgia, kitsch, irony, and stupidity”) is as absurd as it sounds. But having just walked past a poster for A Minecraft Movie the other day, can we really accuse The Studio of going over the top?
In Hollywood, there’s no such thing.
The Studio, Series Premiere (two episodes), Wednesday, March 26, Apple TV+
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