Angels in America

:

Season 1
  • Network: HBO
  • Series Premiere Date: Dec 7, 2003
User Score
9.0

Universal acclaim- based on 17 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 15 out of 17
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 17
  3. Negative: 0 out of 17
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User Reviews

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  1. juliankennedy23
    Jun 16, 2014
    6
    Angels in America: 6/10: This play must have had a greater impact in the nineties then the miniseries has now. It also probably worked better as a play. That said this is one of the most creative filming of a theater piece one is likely to see.

    Mike Nichols deserves great praise for making the stage bound fly with great imagination. He over reaches occasionally but the effect is    Angels in America: 6/10: This play must have had a greater impact in the nineties then the miniseries has now. It also probably worked better as a play. That said this is one of the most creative filming of a theater piece one is likely to see.

    Mike Nichols deserves great praise for making the stage bound fly with great imagination. He over reaches occasionally but the effect is memorizing. Al Pacino Meryl Streep and Justin Kirk shine. While the brilliant Jeffery Wright simply steals every scene he is in with his presence. Mary Louise Parker and relative newcomer Patrick Wilson are saddled with a disposable story that doesn't really fit in with the rest of the play (Poor Mr. Wilson simply disappears for the last third or so of the miniseries while his characters mother played by Meryl Streep takes center stage.)

    Pacino's Roy Cohn is hammy and not nearly as evil as the original play probably made him (while Cohn has been more forgotten than redeemed since the play first came out his nemesis Ethel Rosenberg (Streep again) reputation has suffered greatly in the past ten years. While Pacino is very good Streep is simply brilliant in the very well written role of a Mormon mother lost in New York. Her character simply surprises both the other characters and the audience by not sticking to our preconceived notions.

    Two actors however do suffer. Emma Thompson simply doesn't make a good angel. She certainly isn't helped that the angel moves around like a flying Peter Pan in a junior high school production. As a result the angel scenes simply don't work.

    The other problematic performance is Ben Shenkman as Louis. One quickly has sympathy for every character that suffers with this insufferable character. No one has sympathy for the audience who suffers screen time with this horrible persona. The character is simply evil. That self centered, banal evil one finds in real life. This is of course fine in a film but Shenkman the actor doesn't seem to realize how repellent his characters actions are and instead pulls out Jewish stereotypes rather than real emotions in his scenes. Compare this to Pacino's entertaining vision of evil in the persona of Mr. Cohn.

    Creative and surprisingly fun Angels in America runs a little long (as a miniseries is wont to do) but is worth a look.    … Expand
  2. Cyanurea
    Jul 5, 2018
    9
    There are some weaknesses with the translation of this work from stage to screen, but this adaption nonetheless retains the heart of the original play: one of the best explorations of love and loss I have ever seen.
  3. JeBjBo
    Dec 1, 2022
    10
    A (mostly*) timeless masterpiece. I can't even describe this adequately, you'll have to experience it for yourself.

    *The epilogue feels very 1990/1.

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
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No score yet - based on 2 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 2
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 2
  3. Negative: 0 out of 2
  1. Time
    Reviewed by: James Poniewozik
    Jul 1, 2013
    100
    The key to Angels is that it is realistic and fantastic at once--a miraculous event in mundane circumstances, like a biblical visitation--and Nichols' movie-series is appropriately epic and gritty.
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  2. People Weekly
    Reviewed by: Terry Kelleher
    Jun 28, 2013
    100
    It's searching, witty, lacerating, poetic, profound—and, yes, overstuffed.
    Read full review