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The Herald Scotland
13-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Too Much review: Hipster comedy fails to hit the mark
*** Lena Dunham's much-anticipated comedy rocks up with a suitably starry supporting cast. Stephen Fry, Richard E Grant, Naomi Watts, Andrew 'Hot Priest' Scott - everyone wants a piece of Too Much, just as they did Girls, the writer-actor-director's series about twentysomething New Yorkers. Dunham has worked since Girls ended eight years ago, but nothing has had the same impact. So no pressure then as she sends this ten-parter out into the world. Good news: it is a triumph. Bad news: but only in part. The brilliant section is bookended by material so unfunny and irritating I had to scream into a cushion for fear of alarming the dog. Megan Stalter stars as Jessica, a TV producer from Brooklyn who has hit brick walls in her career and love life. Offered a temporary transfer to the firm's London office, Anglophile Jessica cannot resist. She's expecting to find Austenesque estates and Notting Hill chic, but the reality is a rented flat on a council estate and chilly workmates who think the loud American is too much. Felix (Will Sharpe), a grungy but posh indie singer Jessica meets in a pub, likes her lust for life and prefers not to look beyond the bravado. Read more While Salter (Hacks) and Sharpe (The White Lotus) are good individually, they take a long time to convince as a couple. She tries too hard while he goes the opposite way. The rest of the cast turn the kookiness up to 11 and act like they are in a remake of Love Actually. Grim old London gets a cutesy makeover, complete with cheery ambulance staff, and there's even a comedy dog, gawd help us. The whole thing might have been bearable with a laugh or two, but four episodes went by at a glacial pace and nothing. Then a miracle happened. The action moved from London to Brooklyn eight years ago. The first scene was a family dinner, with Dunham as Jessica's sister, Rita Wilson as her mother and Rhea Perlman (Taxi, Cheers) as her grandmother. It was like a switch had flipped and what had been black and white was now a riot of colour. There was a story too, and what a tale it turned out to be - every scene beautifully written, brimming with insight, sad, funny and only too horribly believable. This was a five-star interlude in an otherwise three-star series. Far too soon we were back in London. It wasn't as bad as before, but it had no hope of matching what we had just seen. What went wrong? Was it the curse of streaming, trying to squeeze as many episodes as possible out of the material? Or Dunham straying too far from the world she knew, and captured so well, in Girls? It is no coincidence that everything perked up when she was on screen. That Lena Dunham, older, wiser, vulnerable, was far more interesting than the girls and boys back in London. That Lena Dunham is welcome any day. Just don't leave it so long between laughs next time.
The Herald Scotland
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Lena Dunham is back with a new comedy. It's a shame it's so irritating
*** Lena Dunham's much-anticipated comedy rocks up with a suitably starry supporting cast. Stephen Fry, Richard E Grant, Naomi Watts, Andrew 'Hot Priest' Scott - everyone wants a piece of Too Much, just as they did Girls, the writer-actor-director's series about twentysomething New Yorkers. Dunham has worked since Girls ended eight years ago, but nothing has had the same impact. So no pressure then as she sends this ten-parter out into the world. Good news: it is a triumph. Bad news: but only in part. The brilliant section is bookended by material so unfunny and irritating I had to scream into a cushion for fear of alarming the dog. Megan Stalter stars as Jessica, a TV producer from Brooklyn who has hit brick walls in her career and love life. Offered a temporary transfer to the firm's London office, Anglophile Jessica cannot resist. She's expecting to find Austenesque estates and Notting Hill chic, but the reality is a rented flat on a council estate and chilly workmates who think the loud American is too much. Felix (Will Sharpe), a grungy but posh indie singer Jessica meets in a pub, likes her lust for life and prefers not to look beyond the bravado. Read more While Salter (Hacks) and Sharpe (The White Lotus) are good individually, they take a long time to convince as a couple. She tries too hard while he goes the opposite way. The rest of the cast turn the kookiness up to 11 and act like they are in a remake of Love Actually. Grim old London gets a cutesy makeover, complete with cheery ambulance staff, and there's even a comedy dog, gawd help us. The whole thing might have been bearable with a laugh or two, but four episodes went by at a glacial pace and nothing. Then a miracle happened. The action moved from London to Brooklyn eight years ago. The first scene was a family dinner, with Dunham as Jessica's sister, Rita Wilson as her mother and Rhea Perlman (Taxi, Cheers) as her grandmother. It was like a switch had flipped and what had been black and white was now a riot of colour. There was a story too, and what a tale it turned out to be - every scene beautifully written, brimming with insight, sad, funny and only too horribly believable. This was a five-star interlude in an otherwise three-star series. Far too soon we were back in London. It wasn't as bad as before, but it had no hope of matching what we had just seen. What went wrong? Was it the curse of streaming, trying to squeeze as many episodes as possible out of the material? Or Dunham straying too far from the world she knew, and captured so well, in Girls? It is no coincidence that everything perked up when she was on screen. That Lena Dunham, older, wiser, vulnerable, was far more interesting than the girls and boys back in London. That Lena Dunham is welcome any day. Just don't leave it so long between laughs next time.
Los Angeles Times
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
‘Jane Austen Wrecked My Life' is a winning romance in which real life sneaks up on the bookish
'Jane Austen Wrecked My Life' is a catchy, provocative title for writer-director Laura Piani's debut feature, but it is a bit of a misnomer. Her heroine, Agathe (Camille Rutherford), may harbor that fear deep inside, but it's never one she speaks aloud. A lonely clerk working at the famed Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris, she gets lost in the love notes left on the store's mirror and complains to her best friend and coworker Felix (Pablo Pauly) that she was born in the wrong century, unwilling to engage in casual 'digital' connection. Highly imaginative, Agathe perhaps believes she's alone because she won't settle for anything less than a Darcy. Good thing, then, that Felix, posing as her agent, sends off a few chapters of her fantasy-induced writing to the Jane Austen Residency. And who should pick up Agathe from the ferry but a handsome, prickly Englishman, Oliver (Charlie Anson), the great-great-great-great-grandnephew of Ms. Austen herself. She can't stand him. It's perfect. 'Jane Austen Wrecked My Life' is the kind of warm romance that will make any bookish dreamer swoon, as a thoroughly modern woman with old-fashioned ideas about love experiences her own Austenesque tumble. While Agathe initially identifies with the wilting old maid Anne from 'Persuasion,' her shyly budding connection with Oliver is more Elizabeth Bennet in 'Pride and Prejudice.' A pastoral English estate is the ideal setting for such a dilemma. The casting and performances are excellent for this contemporary, meta update: Rutherford is elegant but often awkward and fumbling as Agathe, while Anson conveys Oliver's passionate yearning behind his reserved, wounded exterior with just enough Hugh Grantian befuddlement. Pauly plays the impulsive charlatan with an irrepressible charm. But it isn't just the men that have Agathe in a tizzy. The film is equally as romantic about literature, writing and poetry as it is about such mundane issues as matters of the flesh. A lover of books, Agathe strives to be a writer but believes she isn't one because of her pesky writer's block. It's actually a dam against the flow of feelings — past traumas and heartbreaks — that she attempts to keep at bay. It's through writing that Agathe is able to crack her heart open, to share herself and to welcome in new opportunities. 'Writing is like ivy,' Oliver tells Agathe. 'It needs ruins to exist.' It's an assurance that her past hasn't broken her but has given her the necessary structure to let the words grow. The way the characters talk about what literature means to them — and what it means to put words down — will seduce the writerly among the viewers, these discussions even more enchanting than any declarations of love or ardent admiration. If you've read any Austen (or watched any of the films made from her novels), Piani's movie will be pleasantly predictable in its outcome, but that doesn't mean it's not an enjoyable journey. It's our expectations, both met and upended, that give the film its appealing cadence. It never lingers too long and is just sweet enough in its displays to avoid any saccharine aftertaste or eye-rolling sentiment. There's a salve-like quality to 'Jane Austen Wrecked My Life,' a balm for any battered romantic's soul. It may be utter fantasy, but it's the kind of escape you'll want to revisit again and again, like a favorite Austen novel. And, as it turns out, our main character is wrong. Jane Austen didn't wreck her life, rather, she opened it up to the possibilities that were right in front of her. Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.
