Pam & Tommy

“Pam & Tommy” is funny, emotional, and an incisive look at a story many still believe they know. James and Stan are astounding, with the former completely transforming herself physically and utilizing that to show Anderson as the fully realized person she was never allowed to be.

Pam & Tommy is far more than a sniveling, pervy time machine revisiting a salacious sex scandal that’s been mocked for decades. But the genius is that it is also that: sniveling, pervy, and canny about the scandal and the mockery that piqued all of our attention in the first place.

To say that “Pam & Tommy” transcends its source material wouldn’t be giving it close to enough credit. ... The opening episodes, in which Rand is so mistreated and Tommy so loathsome, evolves into something much deeper and richer than an exploitation flick about good-looking stupid people. ... It’s all about Ms. James, though, who disappears inside the role of Pamela Anderson and makes her something epic.

An incisive, occasionally heartbreaking, and often laugh-out-loud funny exploration of the volatile relationship between former Baywatch star Pamela Anderson and Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee and the global scandal that followed in the wake their very private, very adult home video being leaked. And to be clear, the series is fantastic, anchored by transformative performances from stars Lily James and Sebastian Stan, as well as a crystal-clear sense of purpose.

The eight episodes bring together a tumultuous rock star, an iconic model/actress, and the dawn of the internet for a captivating story told with such energy and pop that it comes as a shock, when it reminds you what a violation actually occurred.

Unexpectedly exhilarating. ... Lily James and Sebastian Stan are sensational as Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee. [14 - 27 Feb 2022, p.6]

It commits to its comedic peaks with the same gritty energy it devotes to emotional lows, inviting us to ride the couple's champagne and ecstasy-driven hedonism as it portrays their love, however hastily realized, as genuine.

The eight-episode Hulu miniseries, which premieres Wednesday, is fast-paced and entertaining, as it gives us the couple’s whirlwind romance and their absurd excesses. ... But “Pam & Tommy” offers a consistent layer of cultural criticism just below the surface, the bass underneath all the catchier high notes.

Filled with outrageous supporting characters and a quirkiness that befits the subjects, “Pam & Tommy” thrives on the performances of its two leads.

A warm, funny, intelligent and rather moving drama, with astonishing performances from Lily James as Anderson and Sebastian Stan as Lee.

The first three episodes capture the intoxicating aura of the couple’s early days of giddy romance, as well as Rand’s docile yet fundamentally destructive ambition to ruin it all – it is all superlatively entertaining.

Goofy as “Pam & Tommy” can be — and despite its periodic struggles to add a #MeToo frame to the sex tape story — it’s still clever enough to be a worthwhile escape.

As a dramatization of events that have slipped into history, “Pam & Tommy” is part of a crowded genre. But its curiosity and sensitivity toward its subjects set it apart. ... James’ Pam is an outright triumph, both of acting and of special-effects makeup. ... The Rogen story, about the contractor who cracked the couple’s safe to pilfer the tape, can’t find its tone over much running time.

Pam & Tommy repeatedly acknowledges the unfair toll the sale of the tape took on Anderson’s life, even as it’s wildly entertaining most of the time. Pamela Anderson never got to have a Jane Fonda-esque second act, and maybe couldn’t have even if Rand Gauthier had never entered her husband’s life. But here, she at least gets her story retold in a far kinder and more endearing way.

Lily James has put in the performance of her career in this compelling, crazier-than-fiction miniseries. But what of the cost to the real Pamela?

"Pam & Tommy" doesn't make fun of them or their relationship, but shows it for what it is: a match made in the stars. James' physical transformation is astounding (she's aided considerably by prosthetics), and she finds the warmth within Pam, the naïve small town girl with dreams that perhaps outweighed her talents. Stan is clearly going for it in the role of Tommy, and he softens some of the rocker's harder features and less desirable traits; he makes him lovable.

There are some moments in Hulu’s “Pam & Tommy” that will make viewers take notice one way or another, but early episodes of this limited series are fairly hum-drum when they’re not way over-the-top. Then it improves, becoming more nuanced in later episodes.

On balance, though, the series is still well worth watching, and not just for the parts designed to get all the attention -- namely, the ones that would warrant delivering it in a plain brown wrapper.

Despite its lightweight protagonists, is an accurate reflection of the sexual and cultural mores of just a generation ago.

Some might feel like the show exploits Pamela Anderson all over again, but it’s clearly meant as a reclamation of a story from the tabloids to the real people involved. At its best, it allows people to finally see Pam and Tommy, exposed.

Pam & Tommy turns a notorious media moment into a captivating, if undeniably tawdry, exploration of the price of celebrity in a culture where the complete loss of privacy is considered the price of fame.

“Pam & Tommy” isn’t consistent in its tone or arguments, but it is consistently entertaining.

Like several of the other series in this genre, Pam & Tommy struggles to land on an ending. ... Still, until that point, its cultural excavation is entertaining and comically sexy and scary and sad, a bit provocative. It’s enough to satisfy that cultural-revisitation urge: the desire to be surprised by a story you thought you already knew.

This comical and absorbing Hulu​ miniseries charts the bizarre tale of the tape. But in enjoying this intriguing true story bejazzled with '90s nostalgia, are we just as complicit as those who stole, exploited and consumed that stolen tape in the first place?

Some viewers are going to love those first three episodes and then complain about the reduced pizzazz in the next five. And other viewers are going to get so turned off by how bro-y the first three episodes, all directed by Craig Gillespie, are that they won’t have the patience to get to the last five, all directed by women. ... James is giving a wonderful performance, making Pamela less of a caricature with each episode.

Pam & Tommy is at its best when it confronts the harsh realities of the tape, which was much more than just a pivotal moment in pop-culture history. ... But, thanks in part to the decision to split time between Pamela and Tommy and Rand, Pam & Tommy fails to really dig into any of these themes, nor does it explore the power dynamics of Hollywood in any meaningful way.

There's something outright gutless in the fairy-tale vision of the central relationship. It's a romance of musical serenades and goofy flourishes that barely acknowledges the marriage's harsher realities. Pam's heart is in the right place. I just wish it didn't waste so much time dicking around.

There’s almost certainly a solid, two-hour movie contained within these eight episodes. We just spend too much time on meandering subplots, and too much time enduring Tommy Lee’s increasingly insufferable antics.

To the show’s credit, when it actually sits down long enough to reckon with the innate misogyny of the sex tape’s appeal and the way it’s affected its subject, it succeeds mightily. But there are too many balls in the air, and its tongue is planted too firmly in cheek, to avoid sabotaging itself.

Critiquing Pam & Tommy as a single, unified work is hard because it’s such an awkward hybrid of genres and ideas. ... I enjoyed this show. It made me think about Anderson differently—as someone who’s survived extraordinary victimization and typecasting and who’s managed to redefine how she’s perceived. But the series, which so often feels like it’s trying to atone for our old mistakes, seems intent on pointing out ethical transgressions while looking right past the notable void at its own core.

“Pam & Tommy” is certainly watchable, if questionably structured.

Its pretensions to commentary on the Nineties are undermined by a curious mix of comedy, drama and period piece.

The series is worth watching for Lily James’s phenomenal, career-redefining turn as Pamela Anderson. However, the strengths of the series are ultimately undercut by its own wild ambitions. It wants to be a darkly comic true crime tale, a tragic love story, a cruel satire, and a reclamation of Pamela Anderson all at the same time. Ultimately, these divergent tones don’t come together in perfect harmony.

What the scene ultimately confirms is that Pam & Tommy is more interested in laughs than in drawing serious conclusions from the scandal and its role in catalysing modern celebrity culture. This true life sex caper is fabulously frisky. But also as tacky and insubstantial as one of Lee’s tattoos.

Whiplash settles in as the series vacillates in tone, trying all at once to be a crime thriller, a raunchy sex comedy, a critique of the media, and a reflection on a very famous woman's inner turmoil. It never figures out how to effectively tie those elements together, nor is it able to successfully make the case that Gauthier's story is just as important as Pamela's.

Rogen’s Gauthier is sketched out more confidently than any other character. The alluring, trashy chic aesthetic of “Pam & Tommy” is a smoke screen for a series that is reluctant to give its protagonists—the lovers it would purport to raise to a classical perch—any real depth.

Pam and Tommy — you know, the two victims of the crime — are sometimes disconcertingly sidelined in this retelling. Which is a shame because as the central couple, Lily James and Sebastian Stan dive into their roles with an enthusiasm I found hard to resist. ... Why “Pam & Tommy” chooses to frame Gauthier in a sympathetic light becomes a singularly if unintentionally interesting question underscoring the entire series.

Those two components—the humanist look at victims of a crime and the free-wheeling black comedy of witless perpetrators—are never successfully married. Each half has its merits, particularly in a handful of sharp performances, but the mighty, summative synthesis they are supposed to reach by the end arrives forced, sledgehammered over our heads.

Pam & Tommy is upbeat and entertaining, no question, but it is as superficial as a Baywatch titty calendar.

The best thing this frustrating crime caper has going for it is its cast. Sebastian “Winter Soldier” Stan captures the manic machismo of Mötley Crüe drummer Lee in full, chaotic flower. If Lily James, the British period drama stalwart, leans into Anderson’s breathy ditziness to an extent that feels slightly mean, at least she makes an astonishing physical transformation into the Baywatch star.

Perhaps the show could help change attitudes among those still seeking out intimate leaked images, but so far it seems too busy revelling in its own debauchery to say anything especially powerful.