Is Netflix's Limited Series 'Maniac' Any Good? Here's What The Reviews Are Saying
Put Emma Stone and Jonah Hill in a show created by Patrick Somerville ("The Leftovers") and directed by Cary Fukunaga ("True Detective" season one) — Netflix clearly hopes this combination of talent will make "Maniac" (all 10 episodes streaming on September 21) a must-watch hit of the fall TV season. Here's what the reviews say:
Stone And Hill Play Two Patients Who Get Caught Up In A Weird Drug Trial — And Each Other's (Un)real Lives
The unconventional narrative follows two New Yorkers, Annie Landsberg (Emma Stone) and Owen Milgram (Jonah Hill), who volunteer to participate in a pharmaceutical trial that purports to permanently cure them of all mental-health problems. During the study, a series of drugs push them to explore various corners of their subconscious while exhuming traumas they have tried their best to bury.
[Vulture]
By using a supercomputer to isolate, confront, and accept those traumatic memories in the subconscious mind, the hope is to bring the participants a joy they can otherwise never achieve. Unfortunately, things pretty quickly go awry, as one of the doctors in the study, Fujita (Sonoya Mizuno) tells her collaborator (James Mantleray, played by Justin Theroux): "We have a serious problem. I think our computer is horribly depressed."
[Collider]
Even The 'Normal,' Probably-Not-A-Dream Setting Of 'Maniac' Is Loaded With Satirical Touches
Early on, "Maniac" establishes a baseline tone of frisky, shabby oddity: We're in a near future, or an alternate present, in a New York City that feels as close to the 1970s as it does to the 2020s.
[Variety]
For example, practically everything runs on computers, but the computers look about as advanced as the ones in the movie "WarGames." Instead of the Statue of Liberty as we know it, New York Harbor is occupied by what a tour guide calls "the Statue of Extra Liberty." These kinds of paradoxical details are part of what makes the world of this series so fascinating.
[Vulture]
A bit "Mr. Robot," a bit "Black Mirror," "Maniac" evokes an ad-drenched universe full of dicey cure-alls, sold to remedy the alienation this world creates — a place just adjacent to our own.
Stone Pulls All The Weight For Herself And Her Co-Star
As proven years ago by "Superbad," Hill and Stone make a solid double act, but it is the latter who really owns this ten-part mini-series. Whether playing the abrasive Annie, or any of her "reflections", she pulls you past all the superficial bizarrities of Somerfield's psychedelic multiverse and grips you with a powerful emotionality[…] She's also very funny, and Hill clearly needs her around; whenever their characters are separated, you pine for her return.
[Empire]
Hill's Owen is mired enough in his condition that he often speaks in a monotone, but when he becomes other versions of himself during treatment, he shows loving, menacing, or totally goofy sides. Stone has no trouble at all dancing between the heartbreak of Annie's confrontations with Ellie, the ludicrousness of becoming an elf in a pseudo-Shire embedded in her subconscious ("Fantasy is my least favorite genre," Annie complains), or a sexy assassin with a southern accent who knows her way around a firearm.
[Vulture]
[Stone] does more than keep up; she drives the dramatic journey.
Mizuno And Theroux's Scientists May Be The Show's More Memorable Pairing
Sonoya Mizuno ("Crazy Rich Asians"), meanwhile, plays things intriguingly close to the vest as Dr. Fujita, the engineer who built the artificial intelligence that runs the project. It's never clear how much she really knows and how much is just an incredible poker face behind her omnipresent cigarette.
She's counterbalanced by Theroux, who plays fellow scientist Dr. James K. Mantleray like a screwball comedy character living through a Freudian nightmare. Theroux has been handsome ever since he stopped aging twenty years ago — and in Maniac he's a manboy built out of flopsweat, coming constantly undone like the outrageous toupee Mantleray can barely hide.
Fans Of Idea-Rich, Messy TV Will Find Plenty To Love…
"Maniac" is more than an exercise in switcheroos of form and tone. It also considers the psychological barriers that prevent human beings from shedding their baggage, and the factors that bond two people to each other. Because of its surprises and its interest in the relationship dynamic between Annie and Owen, "Maniac" could easily serve as a binge-watch companion piece to another of this season's streaming TV delights, Amazon's "Forever."
[Vulture]
Substance-wise, it never quite adds up to as much as it aspires to, but it's just so weird, gorgeous, surprising and, yes, fun that the hollowness ultimately didn't bother me that much. (Think: "Legion" Season One as opposed to "Legion" Season Two.) The emperor's new clothes may be invisible, but goddamn do they look good on him.
… But If Digressions And Unanswered Questions Are Deal Breakers For You, Steer Clear
"Maniac" is as much fun as getting your head examined. The miserable Netflix miniseries, debuting Sept. 21, could only have been made in 2018. Movie stars, elaborate set pieces, a big-looking budget, indescribable concept, every genre imaginable wrapped up into a sci-fi fantasy romcom dramedic spoof plus feels: Think how far TV had to evolve to produce ponderous dreck like this.
Once in a while, there's a touching idea, like the notion that a person might be addicted to the worst day of his life. But, as "Maniac" approaches its finale, it starts to feel like a show that's less about consciousness or technology than it is about TV writing — a dreamscape about how hard it is to make serialized stories make sense.
When "Maniac" is good, it's funny, affecting, and fascinating; when it's not good, it's like having a conversation with a student in a Psych 101 class who wants to tell you about a dream they had last night and what it might mean.
[Collider]
TL;DR
For those looking to study a TV show, look no further. For those looking to fall in love, well, there's no pill for that.
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