Big Little Lies

Thanks to the stellar work of Vallee, Kelley and the top-flight cast, Big Little Lies, like its characters, delivers a high-sheen surface. But, unlike some self-consciously glum prestige TV dramas, Big Little Lies isn't afraid to be entertaining, mixing intimate, dark drama with sly social commentary. It's one of the best shows of this still-young year.

The series is so exquisitely conceived and structured--and so remarkably acted by a top-notch cast that includes two of Hollywood’s most resolute performers, Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon--that the soapy layer quickly rinses away in the first episode. What remains is a deeply absorbing, highly addictive murder mystery matched with a carefully considered psychological work-up of an elite community.

Big Little Lies is a tour de force, combining first-rate acting performances and excellent production values with elaborate story telling.

Yes, it can be mean, and yes, superficial, and yes, a little draggy (almost a whole episode about a kids’ party, really?). But the cast is fabulous, and the script by Kelley sparkles. A winner.

The lessons learned from Big Little Lies won’t be as easily shaken. They lie not in discovering the truth, but in searching for it. And this is one damn addictive search.

The catty comments of the Monterey hoi polloi do give the series a gossipy gloss but as directed by Wild and Dallas Buyer’s Club’s Jean-Marc Vallee, Big Little Lies is an empathic drama, a remarkably astute and deep series of character and relationship studies.

Big Little Lies offers a modern take that is consistently engaging and artistically rewarding. Narratively, it could have been one or two episodes shorter than its seven-episode length (the plot doubles back and spins its wheels a few times). But this world has been so fully-realized and perfectly calibrated by the cast and crew that you’ll probably wish it was one or two episodes longer.

An all-star cast--Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Alexander Skarsgard, Shailene Woodley and Laura Dern, all of whom live up to their advance billing--and an absorbing story (courtesy of TV vet David E. Kelley) that will keep you guessing each and every step of the way.

The basic structure is compelling enough--viewers don't even know who the identity of the murder victim is through much of the series, and the layered performances keep us in flux over who we'd like to kill off, and who we wish would do the killing.

Just when you worry the show is a pageant of ugly cliches about female rivalry, it gives you a poignant, nuanced scene to deepen the whole. ... Big Little Lies invests you in mysteries and the renewal and re-liberation of its women. Hopefully it can transcend to big little truths, too. [17 Feb 2017, p.50]

Big Little Lies is at its best when it plunges us into the trenches of the Monterey moms’ social warfare, fought on the battlefields of elementary-school functions and kids’ birthday parties... where words can cut almost as deeply as knives do.

Generous to its characters, even those who begin as clichés, the series becomes a reflection on trauma; at its best moments, it makes risky observations, especially about the dynamics of domestic abuse. Even when it doesn’t dig so deep, it’s still full of strong performances, including those by a terrific set of child actors.

Everyone has secrets, and, yes, lies. And a lot of Big Little Lies, from the to-kill-for ocean views to the kitchens, constitutes affluence porn. But there's honest emotion here, too, as well as small moments, like an unexpected one between Dern and Woodley late in the series, that help Big Little Lies float above the suds of soapy guilty pleasure.

Big Little Lies could have easily devolved into clichés, like the mean-girl moms in a sitcom. As constructed, though, the story advances at an almost lyrical pace, investing the air kisses and preoccupation with appearances with greater gravity and allowing the characters to gradually develop over the six previewed hours of this seven-episode run.

Throughout its seven episodes, the show shakes up an odd cocktail of social satire, splashy murder mystery, and absorbing emotional drama, and the result is strangely satisfying.

There’s a lot of melodramatic threatening. There are heated parent-teacher conferences so baldly unbelievable, you’ll have a hard time deciding which side deserves to be disciplined more. Still, the damn thing is irresistible. The performances crackle, and each of the lead women forges her own brand of indelible unhappiness.

The show could turn out to be soapy or campy, but instead it demonstrates the power and impact of family, community and friendship, how those bonds are just as meaningful and just as dramatic as any grand political or criminal enterprise. It doesn’t need dragons or mobsters or robots to stand as HBO’s best drama in years.

While there are definitely stretches where I had flashbacks to Downton Abbey--a show whose execution I admired, but whose substance I rarely enjoyed because I could never bring myself to care about the woes of the landed gentry--the work of the cast and Vallée are strong enough that I could mostly overcome my prejudice against the subject matter and enjoy the craft on display.

The passive-aggression and the trivial battles build, and it begins to seem as though any of these characters could wind up being the murderer or the murdered. Big Little Lies will move you, and amuse you, all while it keeps you guessing.

Each story is equally compelling in very different ways, and makes Big Little Lies succeed at being satire about the privileged that doesn’t end up cartoonish like Desperate Housewives, even if that’s how most of the women of the series might define themselves.

There are times when you get so wrapped up in the private despair and public pettiness of Madeline, Renata, Celeste, Jane & Co. that when the series reminds itself to tend to its crime-puzzle elements, it suddenly seems less special. Big Little Lies is still a must-see because of its extraordinary actors, all of whom bring either new shadings to the sorts of characters they’ve played brilliantly before or show new sides of their talent.

It's sensational entertainment for adults eyes' only. [13-26 Feb 2017, p.19]

The show’s strength is that it makes the experience of inevitable catastrophe so watchable, like being enraptured by a car-crash in slow motion. You live with creeping dread, and so do the characters.

HBO made the first six episodes available for review, and they’re all entertaining.

The structure of Big Little Lies, virtually identical to that of the novel, makes getting into it a chore. ... Gorgeously shot, neatly directed and beautifully acted from start to finish, Big Little Lies is an achievement in almost every way.

Big Little Lies isn’t stitched tightly enough to be a truly great miniseries.

Whatever deeper point is being made here is obscured both by Lies' labored attempts to keep us guessing about the murder and, paradoxically enough, by the same star power that makes it worth watching in the first place. Still, assuming you're willing to sit through yet another story about the sad travails of rich, spoiled people, there is entertainment value to be found in the feuds and the gloss.

While a tale of restless discontent in a rich California coastal town offers an intriguing ride, it’s also a deliberate one. Think of it as a Sunday drive, at a leisurely pace that enables the passengers to absorb every detail of the scenery.

The murder looms over the entire series, which spends most of its time establishing motives. ... All of which will, presumably, be eclipsed by the unveiling of who committed murder most foul, and who got fouled. Thank goodness it's all based on a book, or it might have gone on forever.

Lots of times, they would baldly state what they were thinking or feeling, leaving nothing to the imagination, and even 6-year-old children were often deeply aware of their buried psychological motivations. The cast’s performances are good enough to compensate for much of this, but it’s still a bummer to get to the end of a juicy scene and have it conclude with dialogue that’s desperate to sum up everything that preceded it.

If not a triumphant return to form, Big Little Lies is the best new Kelley series in quite a while. It contains all of his considerable strengths (sharp and clever dialogue) and some his weaknesses (precious and labored moments). It is nothing less than fun, if never much more than that. But that's more than enough to keep you engaged and keep you watching.

While Big Little Lies isn’t a surefire winner, it’s still an intriguing step in the right direction.

Escape for a while into the world of these horrible, vapid people, and let the phenomenal performances by the likes of Kidman, Woodley, Dern, and especially Witherspoon delight and distract you. It’s their respective star turns that keep you from being bored by the otherwise monotonous show--which is a pretty ridiculous detractor for a thriller about a murder.

Too often the series fixates on Madeline’s entertaining but ultimately predictable passive-aggressive battles with another mom, Renata (Laura Dern). These mommy rivalries play like something out of a high-end prime-time soap.

In short, Big Little Lies is as glossy and superficially well-packaged as the very community it aims to skewer but ultimately guilty of the same corrosive emptiness. Though highly bingeable and at times bitingly funny, the series is also patently ridiculous and riddled with pernicious stereotypes of henpecked husbands and scheming mean-girl mothers who use their children as pawns.

Artful edits and an expertly curated soundtrack class the joint up a bit, but when Woodley and Dern go toe-to-toe, the only thing preventing things from going full-on Dynasty is the lack of an adjacent fountain.

Too bad its uptightness gets in the way of its potential for pleasure--even that of the guilty variety.

Just because it’s well-acted doesn’t mean Big Little Lies is worth enduring.

Turning the mystery into such a complete MacGuffin as a way to foreground the domestic drama might make sense if that drama were, say, interesting. But the real problem with Big Little Lies is that the women’s stories, however well acted and artfully photographed, are just a compendium of clichés about upper-middle-class angst.

The show plateaus as we wait to find who got killed and how, but it has its moments, mostly when Kelley teeters toward the comic side of his unsteady walk on that tightrope.