3 hours ago
1
Oh, The Studio – how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Or at least allow me to gaze, rapt, from behind an ornamental palm tree as your vintage convertible hurtles towards yet another catastrophic Hollywood assignation.
The Emmy-winning creation of Seth Rogen and long-term writing partner Evan Goldberg, The Studio follows Matt Remick, an idealistic film executive who finds himself unexpectedly promoted to head of Continental Studios. “This could be my time!” he gasps, cock-a-hoop to find himself in charge of the company to which he has devoted the last 22 years of his life. He is, unfortunately, correct. “Film is my life,” he splutters during his tearfully grateful acceptance speech to CEO Griffin Mill (Bryan Cranston). Mill – an oleaginous sod with a spray tan the colour of a 70s ski lodge – smiles thinly. “At Continental, we don’t make films. We make movies. MOOOOVIEEEEES that people wanna PAY to see,” he explains, tightly, and Matt’s face proceeds to sink like a souffle. And it continues to sink over 10 exquisitely excruciating episodes, as his hopes for a new era of intelligent, auteur-helmed blockbusters are repeatedly marmalised by a system both frightened and angered by anything that can’t be deposited in a Swiss bank account.
Matt is played, perfectly, by Rogen, whose resemblance to a depressed Fozzie Bear is entering its imperial phase (I can’t be the only one who spent the series half-expecting Rogen to turn to camera after his latest clanger and say “wocka wocka,” sadly, in a neckerchief).
Matt is a well-meaning coward whose best intentions are fatally stymied by his need to be liked by celebrities. He is also only too aware that he is clinging to his new job by his fingertips; a schlubbily bearded echo of the scene in 1923’s Safety Last! in which Harold Lloyd dangles desperately from a clockface. (A reference that cinephile Matt would doubtless enthuse over, even if the ensuing pitying looks from his colleagues would only remind him, once again, that he is very much in The Wrong Job). Matt struggles to spin his many idiot plates, whether while attempting to cobble together a movie cast that won’t offend anyone or pretending to Ron Howard that he likes his new three-hour film (“Why do you keep lying?” “I don’t know!”).
Highlights? Matt, having accidentally destroyed Sarah Polley’s new movie, being chased off set by an incensed crew while shouting, “I’m trying to support women!” Cranston’s deliciously seedy throwback Mill and Kathryn Hahn as perpetually furious marketing maven Maya Mason. Antonio Sanchez’s breathless, clanking, jazz-elbowed panic attack of a score.
“But it’s not scathing enough!” bleat the naysayers, miffed at the prospect of another episode in which Matt falls over an expensive prop, or makes Martin Scorsese cry, or shouts at his own penis because it’s not weeing fast enough to allow him to return to a film set in time to inadvertently ruin yet another scene. Where are the razorblades, the grumblers ask; where is the satirical deathblow that will reduce Hollywood to a smoking ruin? To which The Studio says: phooey. It isn’t that kind of comedy. It knows Hollywood is circling the drain, but it still wants it to succeed; its deep and unironic affection for cinema ensuring that even when it’s pointing out the industry’s infinite hypocrisies, it still has enough warmth to power one of Continental Studio’s gamechanging blockbusters (eg Duhpocalypse: a satire about zombies with diarrhoea).
For all its fancy trimmings and celebrity cameos (Zac Efron! Charlize Theron!), The Studio isn’t doing anything new. Not really. But what it does do – beautifully calibrated farce; unapologetically niche in-jokes; men in tan leisure-suits shouting “I seem to be panicking all the time, man!” while Martin Scorsese sobs in the background – is more fun than almost anything else around.
Long may it panic, man.
