Marco Polo (2014)

Ultimately, once viewers overcome the sluggish pace there’s something for everyone with Marco Polo. History lovers will enjoy Googling along with the series as historical names and battles are introduced while martial arts fans will appreciate the intricately choreographed fight scenes. Although the series isn’t as riveting as “Game of Thrones,” strong performances and impeccable visuals make it worthy of a watch on a slow and rainy afternoon.

Marco Polo's pilot blows. The premise is stale, a riff on the Western-white-guilt stranger-in-a-strange-land-goes-native genre.... Somewhere in the middle of episode 2, though, Marco Polo becomes surprisingly watchable. The filmmaking becomes bolder.

Beautiful but dull, at least in the early going.

Marco Polo flits between storytelling styles without completely tying them together as successfully as "Game of Thrones" does.... By the fifth and sixth episodes the action picks up, the intrigue deepens and the stakes some higher.

The lavishly produced, and reportedly mega-expensive, Marco Polo can be a feast for the eyes, even when the overripe dialogue ("Treachery grows well in the fertile soil of contempt I tilled") and uneven performances feel dramatically undernourished.

Shot primarily in Kazakhstan and Malaysia, the series is richly atmospheric, lavishly produced, and artfully rendered. But you may find that the whole is less than the sum of its parts. It doesn't work nearly as well as drama as it does as sheer spectacle.

Good-looking--also lethargic, languid, listless and a little bit lifeless--at least in the early going.

Marco Polo doesn’t stack up to the political maneuverings and bloody battles within the Seven Kingdoms, and so often resembles George R.R. Martin fan-fiction, it seems wiser to revisit the superior show.

Every so often the production does wake up, with a sudden brawl or assassination attempt--these scenes at least have energy and sometimes emotion--before settling back into a state of mildly agitated, interwoven intrigue.

Creatively, it’s just a middling mess--something so average that a basic cable channel could have duplicated it without all the foreign travel for about $84 million less.

There is a lot of violence in it, and a whole lot of nudity, and there are superb performances, all of which are undermined by ponderously self-important writing and direction.

While Marco Polo possesses scope, scale and an inordinate amount of exposed skin, the series exhibits only a sporadic pulse. That leaves a property that can be fun taken strictly on its own terms, but deficient in the binge-worthy qualities upon which Netflix’s distribution system has relied.

A dull period drama without characters to care about or a narrative in which to invest.

Clearly what Netflix hopes you'll see a big-bucks, prestige entertainment along the lines of that HBO fantasy epic, but in truth, Marco is far closer to one of those cheesy international syndicated adventures.

The show is vacant and uninspiring, so much so that I'd rather fill my imaginary home with ball utensils than watch Marco Polo.

It would have been nice to see someone take the successful “Game of Thrones” formula and expand on or enhance it, but Marco Polo ends up skeletonizing it.... The show’s most egregious flaw, though, is its exploitation of female characters.

The first hour is a deadly dull slog. Viewers get plopped into the action without much effort to provide context and then there are flashbacks to confuse matters further.

Making Marco Polo dumb fun would be just as legitimate as making it weighty historical realism. But the show tries to be both (sort of, though producers freely admit to playing with facts and the timeline), lurching between modes without warning.

The show suffers from a profound lack of momentum and meaning, with plots and subplots that are stiff and predictable.