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Critic Reviews
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Season 2 shows every sign of being as inspired and resonant as season 1.
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If their latest appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers as the Talking Heads parody band "Test Pattern" is any indication, Season Two isn't purely a high concept exercise in direct imitation, there will also be plenty of LOLs.
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Even viewers unfamiliar with the original works being parodied will find plenty to enjoy, but the show’s chief draw is undoubtedly tied to its source material. Every mini-movie has a strange humanity to it, looking to echo the heart of the subject, as well as the style.
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The War Room introduced us to the concept of corrupting-the-process campaign consultants as image-makers, and in its comic, half-hour way, Documentary Now!’s The Bunker--written with a pitch-perfect ear for 1990s blather by comic John Mulaney--does a fine job of distilling this feature-film message quite succinctly.
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Documentary Now! is made with love and care and will be a delight for Criterion Collection devotees and Hader and Armisen’s fans, but the material may be too rich to appeal to wider audiences, people who’ve never heard of the Demmes and Maysles of the world.
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The results can be a little fuzzy and tepid, as in the “Salesman” parody--the original, a poetic evocation of loneliness and failure, doesn’t lend itself so well to caricature. More successful are broader exercises in which the strategy is to recast the original along baser, more ridiculous lines.
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Can great art be fun, intelligent, and non-indulgent all at once? Documentary Now makes a solid case that it could very well be a comedy series that fits that bill, but the series’ ambitions remain just a bit too hit-and-miss to fully realize that promise.
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