Lady in the Lake

I wish the disparate pieces in Lady in the Lake came together a bit better, that it worked as an essay and a tone poem and a thriller on equal terms. But I still found its aspirations, unevenly fulfilled, to be admirable.

Jewish housewife Natalie Portman and Black activist Moses Ingram, both terrific, fight to stand on their own in racially torn 1960s Baltimore. Too bad that this admirably ambitious series is never more substantial than a valiant effort, a haunting story haltingly told.

It bites off so much more than it can chew that it’s no surprise when it chokes during its finale.

The Apple TV+ “Lady in the Lake” is so busy sending messages it loses its grip on what might have been a first-rate crime story.

As a viewer, you end up with a show that looks great, but ultimately trips up on the mechanics of basic storytelling.

The Cleo-focused material in the miniseries’ first half is dynamite. It’s Portman who’s the problem.

Lady in the Lake could have been good. But instead, like Maddie’s peers’ half-hearted search for the ladies in the lake, the series itself only skims the melodramatic surface, failing to actually investigate the legitimate, meaningful humanity that lies just within, content with what they’ve found and never quite going deep enough to hit anything that feels like truth.

With no authentic mystery, suspense, or thrills, ‘Lake’ becomes a character portrait of two women trying to navigate their complex lives and the way they overlap, but it’s too scattered to engross and a little tedious.

Throughout, Har’el does not succeed in reconciling her noirish period mystery with her elaborate, musical-style social-justice fable. Her “Lady in the Lake” is a shiny, attractive bauble, but its artificiality wears you down.

It screams “prestige”: a top-notch star in Natalie Portman, high production values, a lofty tone. But it’s deathly slow, devoid of suspense, and ultimately just a vehicle for Portman to look beautiful in a series of 1960s outfits.