Joe vs Carole

McKinnon and her co-producers must be credited for conveying the tale in as serious-minded a fashion as possible. In so doing they have achieved something the original Netflix documentary had little interest in attempting. Pushing past hillbilly cliches, they’ve succeeded in portraying Exotic and Baskin as living, breathing human beings.

John Cameron Mitchell and Kate McKinnon own “Joe vs. Carole” from the start. They turn middling and well-worn material into a deeply engaging human (and feline) drama.

If Tiger King was your version of the tale, Joe vs. Carole feels more like your parents' version of the story, sanitized and surface-level.

“Joe v Carole” is a victim of its own timing. Even in the hands of this skilled group of actors and behind-the-scenes personnel, it just feels … unnecessary.

Joe vs Carole is a lot to take in, as might have been expected. You can hardly call the source material understated. But it is bracing, fun and surprisingly measured. If the Tiger King saga has not lost its shine for you, there are worse ways to dip into its staggering twists and turns once more.

“Joe vs. Carole” is competently made and entertaining enough but having already sat through the first season of Netflix’s bloated “Tiger King,” “Joe vs. Carole” can’t help but feel like a rerun of something I already saw.

It isn't shocking or sensational any more, and it isn't that funny either. Why is it worth your while going over this well-trodden ground once again, and is it even fair to the show's real-life subjects to give them this black comedy treatment?

Joe vs. Carole simply doesn't contain enough fresh insight to justify its existence today — despite game performances by the stars.

Mitchell is commanding enough to make his half of the series worth the while. Even if “Joe vs. Carole” doesn’t have much new to say about Joe, Carole, or why the two of them tangled to such catastrophic ends, Mitchell does so much to flesh out his role that you can almost — almost — forget the incredible overexposure that’s otherwise made its origin story so rancid.

Despite some clever writing and decent performances, Joe Vs. Carole can’t really add to the craziness that the real-life Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin showed in Tiger King and all of its offshoots.

The filmmaking is not shallow—it can have some inspired, immersive usage of angles and framing—and the performances themselves are not lifeless, even if they’re playing something straight that was originally sold to us like a reality-altering joke. ... But why would you patronize something that now feels like a knock-off, when you can enjoy more from the real thing?

It's never ideal to arrive way too late to the party, and "Joe vs Carole" feels guilty of that, adapting the story of Netflix's "Tiger King," a.k.a. Joe Exotic, into a limited series that dutifully replicates those events without much bite. The attention might still be welcome for streaming service Peacock, but after a poorly received docu-sequel, this cat appears to have exhausted most of its lives.

Tiger King’s appeal – however misguided – was its proximity to reality, and the voyeuristic thrill of watching a convoluted and undeniably loopy story. Joe vs Carole merely photocopies it, resulting in something neither illuminating nor emotionally cathartic.

The amusement to be found in the incompatible but committed lead performances from Kate McKinnon and John Cameron Mitchell doesn’t last an hour, much less eight.

It doesn’t help matters that poor Mitchell and McKinnon are stuck trying to ground characters who only became interesting in the first place because they were ungrounded.