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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
16
Mixed:
15
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews
Apr 30, 2020
ColliderApr 29, 2020
Season 1 Review:
It’s a wholly unique story that might not land with everyone – some viewers may find it hard to accept the show’s whimsical heightened reality along with its R-rated elements, and the show’s earnestness could be mistaken for naivety. But there can be wisdom in naivety, and I found it impossible not to smile with genuine joy every time the show’s many pieces fell so perfectly into place.
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Nov 30, 2020
Season 1 Review:
It’s an intentionally delicious and messy show, born to be binged, although a lot of the name-dropping – Tallulah Bankhead, Noel Coward -- may float right by some. No matter, its glittery blend of the tacky, corny and controversial, while lacking real weight, is an escapist balm.
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Apr 30, 2020
Season 1 Review:
"Hollywood" mostly manages to achieve a tricky balance of shifting tones. Although it occasionally meanders into melodrama and morality lessons, "Hollywood" is a mostly kicky story that imagines what would happen if old-fashioned pictures were a little more newfangled.
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Apr 29, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Murphy has always been better at big ideas than small details, and the sentimentality of the piece, coupled with the potency of many of the performances, after a while becomes infectious, making Hollywood’s weak spots easy to forgive. Eventually, the miniseries becomes a bit too self-congratulatory for its own good, even if its intentions are admirable.
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Apr 29, 2020
Apr 30, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Hollywood has its heart in the right place, and if you have a love for movies' Golden Age, there's a whole lot of meticulously shot nostalgia to savor. Still, rewriting history is always a thorny proposition, and producer Ryan Murphy's latest Netflix limited series doesn't earn unqualified hoorays.
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Movie NationMay 1, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Yes, it’s a mixed bag, but there’s heart in the “Hollywood can change the world, let’s try it” ethos. And there are laughs, none bigger than Jim Parsons, letting his contemptuous, foul-mouthed freak flag fly at every gorgeous “Greek god” who comes to his office for a “meeting,” a signing and a sexual transaction.
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Apr 29, 2020
Season 1 Review:
I left Hollywood feeling more entertained and uplifted than annoyed. Sometimes it's nice to see the good guys get a win, even if they haven't really earned it. (Kristen Baldwin's grade: B)
Something about Hollywood’s grinning simplicity — its crushing certainty that good people make good art that earns good money and is good for society — left me cold. (Darren Franich's grade: C)
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Apr 29, 2020
Season 1 Review:
It’s a fascinating blend of fact (or least stories based on factual characters) and fiction, and the performances from the cast of rising stars and reliable veterans are dazzling — but like many a motion picture, “Hollywood” can’t overcome script problems that surface about midway through the story.
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The TelegraphApr 29, 2020
Season 1 Review:
The show can’t find anything about 1947 it doesn’t shudder at and fix retroactively, fast-tracking these strides for representation that had to wait decades, in reality, to sneak in by the back door. The problem with this woke lens on the era is that it begs applause for itself. ... Still, it's legitimately touching along the way.
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Apr 29, 2020
Season 1 Review:
The early episodes of “Hollywood” are an entertaining mix of earnest inclusiveness and dishy wallow in showbiz lore. But, like those Murphy-produced TV series that went on too long, by the end, “Hollywood” is floating on so many alt-history good vibrations that it becomes less of a celebration, and more of a lecture.
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TV Guide MagazineMay 13, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Too bad the vehicle for their improbable success, based on the story of a woman who jumped off the Hollywood sign to her death, looks like a laughable dud. The grown-ups come off better, even when you know they know they're slumming. [11 - 24 May 2020, p.7]
Apr 30, 2020
Season 1 Review:
It’s this very sincerity, even generosity — its best features, really — that keep the series from being lifelike, and, indeed, can make it seem a little ridiculous. “Hollywood” is determined to deliver good outcomes to its characters; it’s a fixed game, and while it’s easy enough to watch, and to sympathize with its desire to liberate a repressive age, it has little urgency.
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Apr 29, 2020
Season 1 Review:
The show does sometimes achieve the righteous thrills it sets out to provide. But beyond the plot holes and absurd twists and preachy speeches that Murphy fans routinely forgive out of affection for his exuberant, propulsive, pluralistic fictions, it lionizes some questionable figures—like Ernie, who has made his living essentially duping desperate young men into sex work. And it makes enacting large-scale social change look too easy. ... Hollywood’s act of faith feels naive.
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Apr 29, 2020
Season 1 Review:
A consistently handsome, often moving, frequently sanctimonious erasure of the actual slow nature of Tinseltown progress in favor of something that's more a fairy tale than an alt-history. Much more so than Pose, a fundamentally hopeful show set against the unlikely backdrop of the AIDS epidemic, Hollywood too often comes across as simplistic and naive, though if it causes anyone to research the period depicted, there's value in that.
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May 1, 2020
Apr 30, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Even though their characters are poorly written, a few of the performers do manage to help matters with their energy and command. LuPone is never not fun to watch, Joe Mantello is beautifully restrained as a gay producer, and Holland Taylor is moving as a lonely casting director.
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Apr 29, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Some episodes, Hollywood is a sweetly placating Tinseltown fantasy. Others, it’s a grim nightmare about a bitter town and a bitter era. Those two halves never quite fuse together, leaving Hollywood stranded between its poles. It’s intermittently engaging, but often curiously off-putting, an undone dish of conflicting tastes.
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Apr 30, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Craven and corrupt, studios did ruin lives and stoke racism. But a seven-hour Velveeta-smothered corrective, along with a few nice performances and some genuinely awful ones (discretion is indeed the better part of valor on this last point, by the way)? Get me rewrite, kid. STAT. Overindulgent, overwrought, overdone.
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Apr 30, 2020
Season 1 Review:
Truly insulting stinkers are a special breed, though, and I’ll admit I have a weird fondness for them. There’s something pleasurable about trying to sift through the shambolic wreckage of The Witcher to figure out how it got to be this way; similarly, I would love to be able to stop watching Quibi and yet I gave it many, many hours of my time. This club is where Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood belongs.
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