Star

The writers are in no hurry to speed up the trio’s rise to celebrity, though, and if your taste aligns with Daniels’ brand of saucy escapism, you may want this ride to last as long as possible.

The three episodes I've seen are, like Star herself, a little rough, with a tangle of plotlines and some clunky dialogue. But there is plenty to care about, even if I'm not convinced this girl group has what it takes.

It's all very gritty and unglamorous. Well, as unglamorous as a show interspersed with musical numbers can be. And the musical numbers are very entertaining. But Star is filled with lowest-common denominator dialogue.

If the acting is often raw and the plotting messy, that seems about right. It's too soon for this Star to be polished. [5-18 Dec 2016, p.23]

A prime-time soap that wants to be harder-edged than “Empire,” but instead manages to be less fun.

The musical numbers are the best part of Star, and all three of the young leads seem to have singing talent as well as fresh faces. ... The negative to that is that none of the three is much of an actress, and their weak performances can't give the show the weight or momentum it needs. Awkward dialogue and cliched plots are additional problems.

Star works on a superficial level as a story of showbiz dreams, but its power lies in subverting that fantasy.

Star is the erratic follow-up to Daniels’ onetime monster hit Empire.

It’s a very tentative introduction, made all the more surprising by the fact that Daniels wrote and directed it from his own treatment. It doesn’t foster much confidence, let alone interest, in a series when even its creator is unsure of how to flesh out that world.

Pick through that mess, and even the biggest Daniels skeptic will find a fierce commitment to progressive social issues; a knack for writing showcases for actresses of color that are so often slighted by Hollywood; and a kind of Shakespeare-meets-camp delight for dialogue that is as operatic as it is silly--though only effective about as often as you’d expect with that kind of ambition.

Like Empire, Star is a mess of the first order. It’s just a far less entertaining one.

Moving past Daniels' sometimes tin ear for dialogue--or insistence on saddling actors with clumsy soap dialogue in scenes that are staged as naturalistic--wouldn't hurt the actors, because it's hard to find praise for Destiny, O'Grady or Demorest, each struggling with broad or inconsistent character introductions.

Perhaps Star will evolve and hit some higher notes in future episodes. But its premiere hour is mostly a patchwork quilt of fairly effective performance segments and threadbare storylines.

Unfortunately, Star subverts everything with hollow heaviness and familiar cynicism.

If Daniels had put more emphasis on the polish of his artifice and gave the show’s aesthetic the same bombast that it’s tawdry, openly cheesy dialogue gives the story, Star might have proven to be a subversive, infuriated series. It’s overall look, however, is more chintzy than anything else, wrecked with soft focus and lazy, unconvincing you-are-there camerawork.

Star feels kind of junky, an everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink concoction made worse by bad dialogue too often delivered poorly.

Unfortunately, Star suffers from stilted dialogue and a narrative so sloppy it overshadows the show’s more redeeming qualities. Not even Golden Globe winner Queen Latifah can save this mess.

It lacks any character as vital and vivid as Taraji P. Henson’s Cookie. The dialogue is overwrought, and frequently tells us the very things we’re seeing on screen. The trio of aspiring stars are plucky, but they’re not very interesting, and neither is the music they sing.

Star is a lot of different things that add up to little that’s worth the time investment. After a few episodes, you may be inclined to reach the same conclusion that Big Boi, who makes a cameo appearance in episode three, eventually does: “You know what? Too much drama, I’m outta here.”

What Star doesn’t have is a Cookie--a Taraji P. Henson to come in and light a fire that would draw your attention away from the general tackiness of the show. It needs a star.

Almost as if they can tell that the scripts for the three episodes of Star screened for press are just no good, these young stars try to overcompensate by going into overacting mode.

The premiere is so poorly written. .... The performances aren’t enough to overcome the problems with the show.

There’s not much depth or discipline in this sloppy story, so less talented cast members either flounder or oversell the material they’ve been given, and some characters veer toward cartoonish stereotypes. The show also is saddled with a derivative murder mystery straight out of an uninspired procedural.

They can sing, but not well enough to make you forget the sub-Lifetime made-for-TV-movie dialogue, whiplash plotting and utterly laughable dramatic moments.

Even the cotton-candy fantasy “Glee” had more depth and reality to it than this show.

The plot is half-baked, melodramatic, obvious and confusing.

For the most part, Lee Daniels traffics in tawdry messes. With Star, his latest TV project for Fox, he is at his tawdriest and messiest.

Star is a pallid gender-switch imitation of ["Empire"], with acting and writing less reminiscent of its ostensible inspiration than the movie "Showgirls."