Nine Perfect Strangers

An ensemble that both highlights these characters’ strengths and humanizes their weaknesses. Leading the charge is Nicole Kidman in a role practically designed for her. ... The result is a show that’s as addicting and delightfully soapy as HBO’s summer hit The White Lotus.

A cocktail of emotions which shows off its supremely talented cast, the Hulu series successfully steps out of the shadows of Big Little Lies and The Undoing and continually hits you with its increasingly chaotic and claustrophobic storylines.

This eight-part melodrama never quite settles in a tone, in part because the clientele is such a mixed bag of soap opera cliches. ... Strangers, with its hallucinatory trippiness, is more about the surreal. [30 Aug - 12 Sep 2021, p.14]

With a mini-reunion of key players from "Big Little Lies" at its core, Nine Perfect Strangers combines a book by Liane Moriarty with Nicole Kidman and writer-producer David E. Kelley, then surrounds them with an equally impressive cast. The series is another one of those riddles wrapped in a mystery, managing to pique interest while remaining stingy about disgorging big truths, much less little lies.

David E. Kelley, the busy scripter who can go as high (“The Practice”) as he can go low (“The Crazy Ones”); “Nine Perfect Strangers” (co-written with John-Henry Butterworth) falls somewhere in the middle of his reach, at times lifted to the upper-middle by the performances. Watching this set of actors submit to Masha’s smoothies is a lot of fun, as is their obligation to go “forest bathing,” forgo cellphones, and explore their most tender emotional depths.

The ensemble is large enough that if one isn’t particularly engaged by the character on-screen, one simply has to wait five minutes for the weather to change. ... One wishes for more Kidman: Not a bigger performance, which seems impossible, but one that more firmly holds the show’s center. ... While we may crave more Masha, there’s interest, still, in watching characters place themselves in her thrall.

While there is a sameness to all three of Kidman’s most recent TV/streaming projects, there’s no denying they’re addictive soaps. “Nine Perfect Strangers” benefits tremendously from Hall playing against type and the presence of McCarthy, who is so good in dramatic roles that she ought to consider passing on more of the blah comedies she’s starred in of late.

Experience “Nine Perfect Strangers” is as an appreciation of a perfect cast. Looking deeper than that reveals its flaws. It lacks the mystery or social commentary of something like “The White Lotus” (another Summer 2021 hit about damaged people on a beautiful vacation) but the people gathered here find enough truthful grace notes about the human condition to justify the trip.

It is probably distasteful to suggest that a series about the desperate patrons of a wellbeing retreat has lost the plot. In this case I am not sure it had one in the first place.

This handsome-looking show suffers from distractingly busy storytelling and lacks the satirical bite of its peers, but is carried by the sheer magnetism of its starry ensemble.

The plot is just chewy enough for its eight-hour length, and the emotional stakes are reassuringly low. In a world of increasingly appalling, fast-moving headlines, it may be the perfect time to release a drama that doesn’t move like a whirlwind nor feel too convincing.

The series, as it cycles through satire, horror, and prestige psychodrama, can’t quite decide whether the wellness industry is a virulent scam or a desperately needed curative for broken souls. ... Nine Perfect Strangers connects only occasionally with its characters as human beings.

It can't quite decide whether it's a parody of the wellness industry or a thriller, a comedy or a drama.

[Nine Perfect Strangers] takes its unwitting visitors on a more metaphysical ride than its predecessors, which is equal parts intriguing and frustrating.

Director Jonathan Levine tries a little of everything, errantly, which is very different from what Mike White manages within the comic and dramatic strains of “The White Lotus.” Instead of casting a spell, it settles for air quotes around its characters.

"Nine Perfect Strangers" is a clumsy star-driven project that, scene to scene, is never quite sure what it is. ... Hopefully there's an answer tucked into the final episodes, which were not provided for review. Whether or not you care enough to stick around that long, that's another story.

While Nine Perfect Strangers may be a serviceable popcorn binge, it’s difficult to imagine that the series will leave any sort of long-lasting impression on its audience.

Kelley and the "Nine" writers struggle to fit everything they want to say and do into the episodes. Clunky exposition, hazy flashbacks, excessive nudity and drug-induced drama do not make up for a lack of confidence and clarity in storytelling. And despite the best efforts of the cast, particularly Cannavale, Boone and Jacinto, the dialogue often falls flat in their mouths.

The show’s emotional epiphanies and dark twists are meant to really mean something. But it all tumbles out of the actors’ mouths in predetermined paragraphs, ones that speak to pain and regret and loss in broad generalizations. ... There is detail there, jumping off the pages of a pitch document. But in the execution, everything gets flattened into a bland statement about angry Americans whose modernity, self-involvement, and defensive crouches have alienated them from their true selves.

It’s certainly watchable — with that ensemble and such an alluring setting (it takes place in California but was filmed in bucolic Byron Bay in New South Wales, Australia), watchability is practically guaranteed. But somehow the show manages to feel too contrived and too thinly conceived at the same time.

Though the show’s tone veers dramatically depending on who is at the center of a scene, the individual performances are fun and lively enough to frequently cover up how hollow the whole endeavor feels. But Masha is a big problem. ... She is meant to be a mystery with a human being underneath, but only the former part comes across, which becomes frustrating the longer it takes to establish what Masha really wants.

A polished, enjoyable, virtuosically acted, but also frustratingly slow, superficial and uneven extended bottle episode of a prestige miniseries.

It’s a surprisingly wobbly, not-good performance from a great actress in a beautifully photographed and occasionally entertaining but mostly ridiculous and off-putting melodrama from some of the same folks (series co-developer David E. Kelley and author Liane Moriarty) who gave us “Big Little Lies.”

“Perfect Strangers” lacks “Lotus’ ” consistent satirical edge. Its tone veers from romantic comedy to “Big Little Lord of the Flies” bedlam to hallucinogenic horror.

If The White Lotus is 30 Rock, then Nine Perfect Strangers is Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip: not “good,” exactly, and definitely way overblown, but still watchable in its own strange way.

It could all have been so much better. The ensemble cast is great. ... But in episode two, nothing happens, and the show carries on this way. Only six of the eight episodes were made available for review, so perhaps the last two are a triumph. By that point, though, you’ll most likely have checked out.

The series has a dangerously low amount of stakes, as it slogs between so many different storylines that just hold the series’ curious evolution back. ... The story is tediously more driven by star power than it is narrative, and while that set-up has some hold, it doesn’t make large chunks particularly memorable, or tense. ... Their characters are of course flawed but don’t seem all that nuanced beyond a secret that eventually comes out.

Unlike The White Lotus, a series that is similarly hollow and filled with mega-stars, it's not even entertaining enough to make up for the fact that it is thematically mute. What a waste.

The protocol is one of the few story elements that provide any tension. ... Masha is one of the [Kidman]’s more flamboyant incarnations, and one of the wackier, but it can generate only so much fascination in a story intent on inducing disbelief and disengagement. ... One character asks another, having just enjoyed an audience with Masha. “Suffering,” comes the response. Viewers should take heed.

“Nine Perfect Strangers” is an unsatisfying stew of mystery and melodrama, with a few misplaced moments of sort-of comedy.

The cast of Nine Perfect Strangers is too good for the limited series to ever be unwatchable. But after seeing six of eight hour-long episodes, I’m pretty sure the biggest mystery has nothing to do with any of the damaged characters; it’s whether anybody involved realized that, by virtue of sheer bad timing, the thematically anemic show would inevitably be reduced to White Lotus for Dummies. ... It doesn’t help that the performances feel like they’re coming from at least a half-dozen different shows.

Over the course of three episodes, the circuitous narrative amounts to the guests wondering, on a seemingly never-ending loop, “Why are we here?” ... Three hours into the show, I do not know why ​​they are there, but I did stop caring about the answer in about half that time. It doesn’t help that the performances are all over the place. ... The story is so underwritten that no amount of Kidman’s signature eye-twitch acting could hypnotize you into caring.

The series’ raison d'etre is its reveals what the characters divulge about their histories and what Masha is doing to them without their knowledge. Unfortunately, nearly every one of these reveals is gimmicky, uninteresting or both; the effect is less a melting of hearts than the click of puzzle pieces falling into place. ... [Kidman's Masha] feels increasingly generic as the series chugs along, flattening from a female Keith Raniere to a life-size cardboard cutout of him.