Netflix might have a lot to offer, but critics aren't crazy about all of their originals.
Well, we beg to differ - in fact, there's a lot to love when it comes to some of the
streaming services less-than-critically acclaimed fair. Here's a reappraisal of the Netflix
series that critics were totally wrong about.
Vanity Fair posited that Girlboss might have been Netflix's first "truly terrible show":
a smug summation of millenials at their worst, embodied by supposed heroine and wannabe mogul
Sophia Amoruso. It didn't help that the real-life Amoruso, CEO of online fashion retailer Nasty
Gal, was catching flak for her business practices as the show premiered. Girlboss wasn't just
bad, it was badly timed as well - according to critics, at least.
"Come on, Sophia. You can do this. You do not want a bad review. A bad review is death."
But the show, on its own, is a whip-smart delight. Critics slammed the fictionalized
Amoruso for being imperfect, accusing her character of being vapid and narcissistic.
The reality is simpler: this is a show about a person being as messy and fallible as people
often are. Audiences don't care if Amoruso makes mistakes - in fact, that's why they're
watching. We love it in Don Draper, we love it in Walter White, and we love it in Sophia
Amoruso. She's a brat? Sure. She's ruthless? Bring it on. We're not here for a lesson - we're
here for a story, and Girlboss delivers with drama and style to spare.
"Oh! Did I just detect the tiniest gleam of interest on your face?"
This impassioned biopic chronicles the controversial life and death of Madalyn Murray O'Hair, the
founder of American Atheists and the leader of the push to take prayer out of public schools.
"Well, you'd better start a-g-prayin', 'cause we're gonna take this all the way to
the Supreme Court if we have to."
Critics called it disjointed and unfocused, claiming that it ping-ponged crazily between
comedy, tragedy, and points in between. This isn't entirely untrue: The Most Hated Woman
in America plays fast and loose with the audience's expectations. But the reality is that O'Hair's
life, which included legal victories, family drama, and an untimely and violent death,
was just as bizarre and prone to wild shifts.
Anchored by Melissa Leo's stirring performance, it is a film as utterly unique as its subject,
a journey from deep love to towering pride and all that comes from the collision of those
two fundamental forces. O'Hair resists categorization: she is neither the triumphant crusader nor
the sneering witch. This movie honors that, and chooses to live in the volatile in-between
where she can be the person she was: frustrating, contradictory, and driven by unshakable conviction.
Chloë Grace Moretz plays Susannah Cahalan in this terrifying descent into medical turmoil,
based on the real-life Cahalan's battle with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis . Her symptoms
are harrowing and sudden, sending her into periods of rage, paranoia, and extreme sensitivity
that seem to have no cause. Doctors suggest all manner of incorrect diagnoses as Cahalan
sinks further and further into abject suffering, grabbing desperately at remedies for exhaustion,
schizophrenia, and sleep deprivation.
"You gotta get me outta here. I don't belong here. And they're all saying bad stuff about
me."
Critics claimed the movie relied too heavily on clichés… which means they're probably
ignoring the fact that Cahalan's story really did end with an eleventh-hour deus ex machina:
the moment the right doctor identified the illness ravaging her brain and the relatively
straightforward road to recovery it led her on.
"You're going to be just fine. I've found you."
Beyond this, however, is Moretz's underrated performance, which veers wildly as her character's
brain careens more and more off-track.
Brain on Fire ends with an unlikely victory, but it's first and foremost a story about
illness: the way it can destabilize a life, the way it launches sufferers into a strange
and scary new world of uncertainty, and the way it can be solved by the unlikeliest confluence
of fate.
This adaptation of L. M. Montgomery's beloved Anne of Green Gables series has proved divisive
to say the least. Longtime fans and critics alike condemn its darkness; rather than leaving
Anne's traumatic childhood behind, it examines how her experiences might have shaped her
in the form of flashbacks and panic attacks. Moreover, characters like Gilbert Blythe,
Anne's love interest, and Matthew and Marilla, the brother and sister who become parents
to Anne, are given entirely original subplots of their own. Critics argue that these additions
are unnecessary at best, needlessly grim at worst. No one returns to Anne Shirley's adventures
for pathos, they argue. They want what they already love.
"You know too well the impact of an untimely death. Anne has suffered so much loss."
The vast majority of the series is faithful to Montgomery's
starry-eyed vision: Anne loses herself in the pleasures of friendship, raspberry cordial,
and teaching other orphans to read. This adaptation is merely interested in examining the hardships
that make the cheery moments possible.
"All we can do is our best, Marilla, regardless of what we know or don't know."
"That's true enough."
This chronicle of a 1930s Iowa farmers' strike was derided by critics for feeling overlong
and more than a little like homework. While it might not be everyone's cup of tea, for
the connoisseur of historical drama, Damnation is anything but dull. It's a brutal story,
to be sure, and it doesn't offer hope without reason. In a world crowded with happy-go-lucky
hobos riding trains to Rock Candy Mountain, there is need for a show as dark in tone as
Damnation.
"You seem to be shooting at your chickens."
"No. I'm shooting at that egg-stealing son of a b---- that's cowerin' in there with 'em.
Can't afford to lose more eggs!"
The writing is strong, the performances passionate, and the drama is rooted in a real American
struggle that echoes to this day. It is, in fact, very much in line with the American
tradition of flinty-eyed worker's stories. If it's grim, it's because it's telling the
truth, and there is always room for the truth in our adaptations of the past.
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