Coastal Elites

Coastal Elites offers enough talent, laughs, pathos and outright venting to warrant watching it.

Coastal Elites wears its heart on its political sleeve, and the disdain for President Trump and all that he represents in this HBO special is searing and palpable. Yet while the five monologues presented don't seek to convert anyone, they do encapsulate the rage and confusion Trump's election unleashed within the zip codes that conservatives dismiss, while elevating shot-during-quarantine TV to new heights.

There is artistry to savor in “Coastal Elites,” as the actors surf on Rudnick’s script, which spends just enough time with each of them and which contains a number of clever punchlines. ... Each of the actors holds attention expertly, ranging through emotions seamlessly, with Roach making only a few cuts within each monologue.

Clever, spartan stories.

Even in the more uneven and discursive monologues, the performers take care of business. ... It is very difficult, however, to make such politically toxic recent history work as comic truth with a serious dimension. “Coastal Elites” manages it just enough.

The special’s true value as a showcase for a handful of terrifically shaded performances gradually emerges through the occasional overwritten staginess. Still, the relentless march of five separate monologues all about the maddeningly implacable evils each character faces in this America of COVID and Trump is, as stated, a lot to take in in one sitting.

With a stellar cast of four current Emmy nominees and a past winner, in performances shot in quarantine, these hysterical if uneven showcases have the impact of soul-bearing catharsis. [31 Aug - 13 Sep 2020, p.7]

Call them liberals, Democrats, anti-Trumpers or just plain fed up. They’re losing their minds and this awkward, uneven, funny and sometimes moving program from satirist and playwright Paul Rudnick and director Jay Roach (“Recount,” “Bombshell”) attempts to capture the progressive zeitgeist. ... Sharynn Tarrows (Dever) is exhausted after a 14-hour shift, and her testimony is so moving it redeems some of the weaker aspects of “Coastal Elites.”

Rudnick's efforts to evolve "Coastal Elites" from a live stage production a montage of quarantine solo performances for HBO are apparent even so, and the actors' handle that pivot as expertly as one can. But in making this necessary transition the casualty is the sense of commiseration a "Coastal Elites" audience might have gotten from being in the company of likeminded souls indulging in an evening of theater.

An uneven, at times suffocating set of sanctimony from screenwriter and novelist Paul Rudnick.

Sharp though some of the writing is, “Coastal Elites” never challenges the moral superiority of its characters, and so they mostly come off as predictable, making predictable points.

“Coastal Elites” consists of five separate monologues, all delivered straight to camera by some of our finest actors, who unfortunately are sunk by the material despite the strength of their performances.

Coastal Elites is both cathartic and insufferable. It’s provocative and annoying. It’s full of clever insight, yet it also might as well be a banshee cry in an echo chamber.

Coastal Elites’ flaws begin with its uninspired screenplay and blandly written ensemble. ... Even with the A-listers populating its cast, Coastal Elite’s monologues are profoundly boring.

Too often infuriatingly loud, overplays too many dramatic beats and takes what should have been a series of intimate monologues and makes them cartoonish. Directed with no real sense of volume control by Jay Roach from a script of wildly varying quality by Paul Rudnick, Coastal Elites is airing as a 90-minute feature on HBO, some acting exercises loosely bound in a pandemic sausage casing.

“Coastal Elites” isn’t nearly introspective enough to get past its semi-ironic title to say anything new about the people or feelings it’s trying to examine. ... Watching “Coastal Elites,” it’s strange to know that it so insistently labels itself a satire when it’s so painfully earnest in practice.

A film that’s well-intentioned but unlikely to have much impact.

Meant to be a satire of the rich, "elite" political Left, the series makes fun of them but offers an infantilizing imagining of conservatives from a liberal point of view. ... Stories of the pandemic are half-baked and feel tacked on in "Coastal," which otherwise is more interested in political debate. But the special is misguided in its exploration of the crisis we are living through. Dever's monologue is entirely about COVID, and while the actress is accomplished in her delivery, the script is egregiously shallow.