Review: In Ryan Murphy’s 'Hollywood,' the old studio system gets a rousingly revisionist wake-up call
” collaborator Ian Brennan, “Hollywood” is a pure fantasy writ as large as the iconic hillside sign that serves as this story’s big, fat metaphor. About halfway through, it will dawn on a viewer that the most provocative part of “Hollywood” is not its sauciness; it’s that the show fully intends to hand out happy endings the way Oprah used to give away cars.“Hollywood” opens with a wide-eyed Midwesterner, Jack Castello , who returns from the war and moves to L.A.
“Hollywood” has an unsuccessfully nuanced degree of ambivalence about Ernie’s operation, in which sex work is portrayed as a means to an end, and which the series all but rousingly endorses — while at the same time deploring the old ways of perverted agents, casting-couch ogres and gruelingly strict beauty standards.
“Hollywood” is more than just a personality parade, however, and it’s soon clear that Murphy, Brennan and company have something better in mind for LuPone than just minks, turbans and moods. It’s a toss-up as to who has more fun with their roles — her or Parsons. Both are terrific, while everyone else just seems boundlessly high on the fumes of putting on a show. There’s plenty of razzle-dazzle in “Hollywood” that keeps it humming along, even as it overpreaches.
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