hey what's going on everybody and welcome back to my channel movie files ellie back again with
a brand new hulu original tv series review for the first three episodes of the new drama by the
name of nine perfect strangers which by the time this video is out the first three episodes will be
available to stream on hulu on august 18th now i got the opportunity to check it out early and i'm
really excited to let you all know what i thought of the first three episodes if i'll be back to
watch on the week-to-week basis and to review it for you all and more importantly i'm letting
you all know if it's worth checking out in this spoiler-free review before we break it all down do
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if you all enjoyed this spoiler free review of the first three episodes of nine perfect strangers
make sure to like and share the video it helps out the channel a lot but i also appreciate the
support and in the comments section let's talk about this show let me know if you were excited
for it and once you've seen the first episode the second episode or even the third episode what you
think about it do you have a favorite episode of the three is there a particular character you're
really rooting for or really can connect to or let's talk about the opposite are you not enjoying
the show will you not be back to watch more of it let's discuss it all in the comments below
so my goal in this video is to obviously share my spoiler free thoughts of the first three episodes
let you know my pros my cons will i be back to watch on a week-to-week basis but like i said
more importantly let you all know if it's worth pressing play on hulu when it drops on august 18th
all in this spoiler-free breakdown so with all that being said let's talk a little bit about
who's behind the scenes and what this show's all about the story follows nine strangers from the
city who gather for a 10-day retreat at tranquilm house a health and wellness resort which promises
to transform and heal his guests who stay there however the resort is not what it seems to be
and the guests are about to discover many sequels about each other but also the resort's host marsha
the show was created by davey e kelly and based on a novel and all eight episodes will be directed
by jonathan levine and each episode will drop on wednesday on hulu so let's talk a little bit about
my expectations for the show so number one i was very excited to see that david e kelly was behind
this show i'm a big fan of his work but more in particularly when he works with nicole kidman
whether it be big little lies or most recently last year on hbo the undoing i love when they
collaborate so you're giving me a great creator you're giving me a great actress and nicole kidman
and then you stack this cast with all stars i mean michael shannon samara weaving melissa mccartney
i mean the list goes on this is a really stacked cast i was intrigued by the trailer it was kind
of giving me a little bit of like mid-summer vibes as well as it was a show on hbo i've
been reviewing for the last month by the name of the white lotus so there were some similarities
there but i just want to see okay what's this cass after offer what's the big mystery that
david e kelly and nicole kim and had off their sleeve so i was pretty excited for the show so
we're gonna break down each episode again no spoilers but just my my pros my cons and like
i said about in this video you'll know if i recommend you all to check it out so let's
talk about episode one which was titled random acts of mayhem in the synopsis reads promise
total transformation nine very different people arrive to tranquillam house a subdued retreat run
by the mysterious wellness guru by the name of marsha so what i liked about this first episode it
pretty much establishes what you would expect in a pilot type of episode with this premise you have
nine different people from nine different walks of life we have a family led by michael shannon
who's dealing with grief we have a ex-athlete we have a celebrity couple to a certain extent like
a social media celebrity couple we have you know a book writer melissa mccartney and just uh we have
a lot of broken pieces right all these people have they seem to have money because this retreat seems
very expensive so they all have money but they kind of use their money they use their lifestyles
kind of like a front because behind that front are pretty broken people so i kind of love how
the first episode establishes that everyone's kind of on on their kind of defense and they're
kind of on their guard they don't want to make it seem like they're broken so everyone's kind of
pointing blame and kind of being like oh why are you here oh i'm somewhat better than you i'm more
stable than you knowing that this person has a lot of backstory and more baggage than the person
you're talking to so i kind of like how each one of the characters are kind of unique in a sense
they come from these different varieties different backgrounds again we have a family we have a bunch
of single people we have some people that are married so i kind of love the diversity within
this group but one of the things that really did kind of stand out to me is when a ghost's retreat
that is beautiful and there's this they have a health plan they have their little work they have
hikes that they have planned but there seems to be this kind of dark secret that the employees
and then we finally meet you know marcia played by nicole kidman who i'll talk about here in a second
but there seems to be something that they're hiding it seems like they're there's more than
meets the eye with this retreat which brings me to marsha who is the lead of this retreat
and you kind of find out a little bit about her and her methods and she kind of believes that in
death is birth and she kind of really wants to put pain to these people so they can face pain
to kind of face their demons it seems that nature so she has this kind of weird backstory she's from
russia which you know speaking of criticisms i'll just kind of jump right into i like the aspect of
everyone kind of you know holding up all their baggage and not giving everything off in the
first episode but one things about marsha she has a a russian accent she's from russia and i love
nicole kidman but the accent does not work for me at all i know this is based on a novel i assume
the character in the book because i haven't read the book has a russian accent or comes from russia
they should not have gave nicole kidman the accent at all because she's literally one scene she has
it the next thing she doesn't and it goes on and off on and off it's very kind of annoying but
that's one of my my nitpicks and criticism with the first episode but also this show has this
weird sense of comedy that the comedic beats don't really work for me so far at least in
the first episode and i'll talk about episode two and three but melissa mccartney i'm a big
fan of her work but i think that she is kind of given the responsibility to kind of bring in her
melissa mccartney isms and kind of be the straight woman but has the comedic beats that you could
respect from her and i don't think it's blending well at least within the first episode for me it
didn't blend well with this mysterious aspect that the show's kind of giving you in regards to what's
really going on behind the scenes so the first episode it didn't hook me we do end the episode
with learning a little bit about marsha kind of her backstory and what came to be how she came
up with this tranquillium idea and this island and this resort but it still didn't have that hooking
narrative to me and none of the characters the one character that kind of stood out to me is michael
shannon's character and his family because they were dealing with grief they were probably the
most intriguing i'm a big fan of samara weaving i do not like what they did with her look and her
false teeth and again she's this kind of celebrity instagrammer who can't live without her phone i
get what they're doing with her look but she looks really crazy to me so the first episode i would
say i'm glad they gave us two other episodes because based on the first episode i don't
know if a lot of people will be checking into the show so first episode was a was an okay pilot but
let's talk a little bit about the second episode what happens to be called the critical path and
the synopsis on that one is as healing begins the guests begin to doubt the retreat's unconventional
methods it came from massages and relaxation not to face the morality so within the second episode
they're starting to see the the cracks behind the door right the retreats axing for their
blood they're taking their phones they can't eat certain things so people are starting to be like
wait we supposed to come here to relax we're not trying to you know rediscover ourselves
and there's this particular thing that they have to do in a second episode where they're burying
themselves and then again her whole method marcia being that in death comes birth so everyone at
right now is just kind of like what's going on i didn't sign up for this so everyone's kind of
on edge in the second episode but the thing that the second episode tries to do and i think they
don't do the best job by doing so there's so many characters there's literally nine main characters
that comes his retreat we have marsha she has her employees that have a little bit of backstory that
they're trying to establish and that's what the second episode tries to do which tries to give you
at least half of the crew's backstory and i don't feel like it melded well within
the narrative because we're learning a little bit about marsha there's these like flashbacks of her
as a little girl and it's like okay what does that have to do with this current narrative so
it's kind of confusing on how the show is trying to establish these characters as well as again i
mentioned that not only are we focusing on the people at the retreat but also her employees
and they have like this weird relationship between marsha and them so it's just like
the blending of the drama and the mystery within the first two episodes really haven't resonated
with me yet and and the biggest thing too is like i mentioned there's this lingering thing of like
we have to be funny and it always involves melissa mccartney and bobby cannavale and their chemistry
they've worked together like three times last year and they they're trying to do like this thing with
this particular group of people again we have melissa mccartney who's this who's she's divorced
uh two times and by the way her husband's in this show for no reason i do not like that they put
her husband her real life husband in the show but they're trying to give us like this weird romance
between the two like they hate each other but we know where things are going to potentially head so
again the comedic beats really haven't stuck with me within the first two episodes and then
the second episode really kind of establishes again they were there to relax
and they kind of discovered that there's this process that marsha wants to implement that's
kind of accelerating how she wants them to interact with this resort and this method
that she's going by is something that i don't think that they morally speak into something
they would agree to so the second episode was a little bit better than the first but still
the comedic beasts really haven't worked for me and i'm still yet to kind of really see who these
characters are besides michael shannon and his family no one else is really kind of standing out
to me which brings me to the third and final episode which happened to be title earth day
and the synopsis of the third episode is forced to live off the land on earth day tension within
the group erupts as treatment intensifies and hunger pains start to set in so this is where
the episode we're starting again we're getting these little bit of tidbits of marsha she's being
mysteriously threatened by this outside threat we really don't know where that storyline is going
quite yet again that's a pretty uh mystery like okay what's her backstory what why did she end up
how she ended up and who was the person that did this and who's this person that's texting her so
there's a little bit of mystery there but then the the group is starting to get restless as
i mentioned it's titled earth day and there's tension within the group because they haven't
been eating they haven't been doing their proper routine so they are given the tasks where the men
and women have to go out on the land and they're doing this kind of group kind of thing because
something happens with one of the members attacks another member and they have to do like this thing
that gets them on the same page and that was kind of wacky and silly but then they they go off to
their separate ways the women are kind of having their thing and having their conversation and a
little bit of their demons are coming out and particularly with melissa mccartney's character
she feels like she's just kind of stuck in a rut she really doesn't have anyone to lean on if
she were to pass she doesn't think that anyone would miss her and on the reverse side of that
we have the men who are like starving at this point and one of the characters does something
very kind of brutal to a particular animal i'll just say that and kind of leaves them to
kind of connect with each other it was a weird third episode and again the group dynamic i
have yet besides michael shannon who again has a standout moment in his third episode
with his family and kind of what what they're dealing with there's really no one in this cast
that's standing out to me besides michael shannon i will say melissa mccartney is my least favorite
character of the show the marcia character they we keep getting these little flashbacks on and
off again that really hasn't really stuck into this main story we we meet a little bit of the
outside as far as the the members that work for the tranquilm house but i really don't know where
that's going and then again i mentioned a samara weavings character and her husband
they're not that interesting to me we have luke evans who is without getting to his story he's
just a pretentious [ __ ] and just being an [ __ ] to everyone just for the sake of it we really
don't know why he's doing that we have regina hall who i'm a big fan of who has this really
like kind of in and out temper and kind of does these weird things in the show that really just
like it's just a really weird and kind of lackluster character and it's just to kind of
wrap up my thoughts since the first three episodes none of the episodes really had a hook to me every
everyone tried every each episode tries to end on this like mysterious aspect of it but it's just
like i don't care and that's the thing i don't care about any of these characters besides michael
shannon his wife and his daughter who's dealing with his grief they're like the only interesting
family the only interesting character so far everyone else is just kind of like underwhelming
i feel like the script is probably the weakest element of the show so far on top of the comedy
that really hasn't worked again com is very subjective but i don't find this show to be funny
at all again it tries to give you this mysterious kind of mid-summer i mentioned the white lotus
which does with essentially they're almost almost the same show we have a group of people going out
to an island and try to go on vacation but the white lotus was just so much more clever and
better in the writing and the performances and i actually care for the characters
i can't say that about nine perfect stranger so far that's based on the first three episodes which
each episode is almost about 45 50 minutes and within those 45-50 minutes i feel like we're just
moving along and not really gathering much information about these characters so
wrapping up this review here i gotta say i'm a little bit disappointed by the show because i
was really excited for this mysterious kind of drama but i have yet to kind of see the mystery
shine out i've yet to see the drama shine out the show is more of a comedy drama than it is
like a straight up drama and the comedy has not really worked for me at all so i have enough
faith in david e kelly and nicole kidman and the creators behind the show that maybe they'll start
to pick up momentum in the fourth episode but again based on the first three episodes i don't
think this is like a must-see event that i was hoping that it would be so with all that being
said if you guys really don't have much to watch or much to look forward to as far as tv or movies
maybe give it a watch and if so let me know what you all thought of it again i'm gonna give the
fourth episode a watch just because i am a fan of this town and i think that maybe they just
haven't found his footing and it is eight episodes so again maybe the first half isn't as good as the
second half maybe the second half the remaining episodes four through eight really kind of pick
up the steam and pick up this momentum but based on these first three episodes i'm a
little disappointed but that's just my thoughts on the first three episodes of nine perfect strangers
let me know what you all thought of your pros your cons will you be back to watch this on a
week-to-week basis i'm gonna watch episode four and if episodes four is good then i'll probably
do this on a week-to-week basis but right now i don't think this is a show that's worth
kind of doing a week-to-week breakdown because it's really not a lot to break down with these
four these three episodes i've seen so far but who knows maybe episode four is fantastic but let me
know what you all thought of your pros your cons and will you be back to watch this on the weekly
basis and more importantly do you want me to review it if if you all want me to i will because
i'm a person that likes to please my audience and i appreciate all you guys support so if you stuck
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hope you all enjoyed this review hope you're staying safe and we'll see on the next video