| Hulu | Release Date (Streaming): May 2, 2024 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
11
Mixed:
3
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
PolygonMay 8, 2024
It might be considered admirable how firmly Titley sticks to the facts, rather than trying to draw out a moral from the entire situation. But it leaves the story feeling more like a quirky, isolated human-interest story than a watershed moment in the development of exploitative, stunt-driven reality television.
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May 1, 2024
A chronicle of a media phenomenon, a reality-TV landmark and a psychological nightmare packaged as entertainment, The Contestant is the type of documentary where you’re aware that what you’re witnessing is 100-percent true, and you still can’t quite wrap your brain around what you’re seeing.
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May 2, 2024
Titley consistently anchors her unfolding chronicle to the kind of backstage emotional truths often hidden from the audience, and in the process, she crafts something halfway between sensationalist exposé and intimate confessional — a remedy to reality TV based on its own format — co-authored by her subjects
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The Film StageMay 1, 2024
The Contestant provides a breezy chronology of one of television’s mostly baffling shows, as well as an entertaining, and sometimes painfully affecting, portrait of a man who, after years of using comedy as a means of self-defense, didn’t seem to know himself whether he was waving or drowning.
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