'The Studio' Review
The same feeling we get to receive a behind the scenes look into the entertainment business is a guilty pleasure viewing. Ballers tried to do it, Entourage started it, and now The Studio is here to bring it back. In the new Apple TV+ comedy streaming series, Seth Rogen stars as the head of a movie studio, Matt Remick where he tries to navigate the new ways of Hollywood.
Conformity is a big theme throughout the series premiere and is what the entertainment business thrives on for the higher-ups to keep their jobs. As Matt jumps from studio executive to studio head, he loses all ethics of what he envisioned the art he’d create and instead is tasked with taking a project about the Kool-Aid man off the ground.
The show's intimate moments are running away from the characters where you aren’t sure if you received good news or it was just imagined. Business in this fictional Hollywood world is conducted in what represents a medieval castle where decisions are made and everyone who isn’t an executive or does not have an actual job title lurks in the dark waiting for their two seconds of input and to agree on anything the bosses say.
Matt is now stuck in a place between art and commerce. He’s a guy who loves movies and has a fascination with old Hollywood. It’s still unclear who The Studio’s target audience is with a contemporary viewer possibly not getting old references to show business of the past which can be intentional. Patty Leigh (Catherine O’Hara) advises Matt on how to break bad news to Martin Scorsese, she references killing one of Warren Beatty’s movies back in 1988 and he never slept with her again or calls the character Griffin Mill played by Bryan Cranston a “Dime store Bob Evans”. O’Hara gives the damsel in distress performance we’ve seen before but also a firecracker who can take back the seat on the throne whenever she wants.
Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg created and directed the series, making it a point to show where the movie business is currently. FM radio is now a Spotify Orginal Podcast; an audio cameo from Matt Belloni’s Ringer podcast The Town. Disregarding Martin Scorsese’s vision for his Jamestown movie and having a hatred for Steve Buscemi’s talent while purposefully mispronouncing his name. Instead, a teaser trailer for the Kool-Aid film with the red pitcher himself doing a trending TikTok dance creates excitement.
Everyone is caught on the spot with Matt’s string of lies seeing him pull big numbers out of thin air to please his boss just as quickly to assign blame on his right-hand man, Sal Saperstein (Ike Barinholtz), who is hilarious. Watching Ike and Rogen in every scene together can be another streaming series on its own. Barinholtz is playing the same character from Neighbors which was due for more screen time.
For a two-episode premiere, The Studio leaves viewers with a fleshed-out scene in what could have been a part of episode one but made a meal out of 26 minutes to show Matt’s attempt at being a studio head in episode two. He and Sal visit the film set to watch the ‘oner’ sequence. The cast and crew are being nice to Matt and walking on eggshells when he doesn’t deem that necessary and just wants to watch art being created. Except he cannot help himself but pitch ideas to the director and ruin a day of shooting. The episode enters the film set like a tornado and leaves with optimism. It is high energy, fast-paced oner itself, holding your breath the whole way. Matt’s the final card on the pyramid in an already tense environment of creation that sends the whole deck of cards crashing down. We get a Rogen pratfall which never fails to make me laugh with his physical comedy just as much as his written word.
Decisions are made quickly. Lives and careers end right when they are about to begin. All the backstabbing shown in the entertainment business is done in the dark while new faces are put on in the light. The Studio is a satirical work of comedy and hopefully won’t be a show with a murder plot or any other recycled oversaturated television premise out there now but instead, a place where jokes, crude comments about celebrities, and hatred about the state of film today can fly and land safely. There is not a lot known as to what lies ahead for the series except we are aware Ray Liotta was well-endowed.
