The Mosquito Coast

Theroux is perfect for this role and you’re going to like Allie Fox despite his numerous flaws. Part MacGyver, part David Attenborough and part charismatic public speaker Allie is enjoyable to watch, even as he puts his family through an endless series of challenging scenarios.

A fine lead performance from Justin Theroux, in addition to a story that’s been rejiggered just enough to make it more modern than its source material gives this new version of The Mosquito Coast a real chance to be the next talked-about series.

Season 1 isn’t quite there yet, but Theroux is reason enough to look to the horizon.

Imperfect, often entertaining, unrecognizable from book or movie.

A charismatic Justin Theroux, some interesting ideas and great visuals are let down by tired drug-cartel malarkey and strange screenwriting choices. But perhaps the most baffling decision is to take on an adaptation and depart so wilfully from the source material. Stick with Peter Weir’s 1986 version.

If you know where this story is eventually going to end up, geographically as well as emotionally, it can seem as if the writers are unnecessarily running out the clock in order to get the next binge-tailored ending to land at the 55-minute mark. But there’s enough going at the level of performance and characterization that you rarely feel as if a given scene is devoid of purpose.

The Mosquito Coast mostly left me impatient for the show it’s eventually going to be, rather than the one it is at the moment.

With one harebrained and hair's-breadth escape after another, Mosquito Coast is suspenseful but nonsensical. ... Still Theroux is convincing and compelling. [26 Apr - 9 May 2021, p.6]

When Mosquito Coast is about how Allie and the family handle the adversity that Allie himself is causing, there's real suspense. When the adversity is coming from by-the-numbers baddies, the show plays more like a knockoff of Breaking Bad and the latest season of Ozark, a show that's already a copy of a copy of a prestige drama. At its best, this Mosquito Coast is far worse than the former and a bit better than the latter.

Solid performances anchor The Mosquito Coast, as does the show’s stunning cinematography and direction that effectively use its secluded locales. Otherwise the drama ends up being pretty mundane. It’s fun enough to follow along, but the payoff is far from satisfactory.

Aside from Theroux, it’s one of those shows where nothing is really bad, but nothing is quite spectacular either. It’s slickly made and the acting is fine… even though, unlike the resplendent cast from The Leftovers, everyone here pales to Theroux.

This is a series that’s always tantalizing viewers with glimpses of profundity—in its political commentary, its plot complexity, its character development. But only in Theroux’s performance does The Mosquito Coast transcend the superficial.

This is a good-looking show with the talented cast doing everything they can to sell the material, but it’s a major problem when the lead character is such an insufferable, selfish, reckless hypocrite who is forever spouting his hippie-B.S. philosophy even as he hardly blinks when he leaves a trail of blood in his wake and continues to endanger his family.

We wonder what exactly Allie did to trigger such a perilous escape. But it also makes the show feel more conventional and less of an exploration into the psychology of the man who wreaks all the havoc and the family who goes along with him in an almost cult-like fashion.

It shares some themes with the novel. But meaning is obscured by action as the family jumps from frying pan to frying pan to frying pan in an attempt to forestall the fire. “The Mosquito Coast” works best when you just follow along with the running and don’t think too hard about the rest, but the running itself becomes tedious after awhile.

Theroux’s glowering is supplemented by sequences in which his family mooch around their dimly-lit house (the bank’s about to foreclose) looking vaguely annoyed at the state of world. After sitting through the first few episodes of Breaking Bland – a more honest title than The Mosquito Coast – the viewer will know exactly how they feel.

The Mosquito Coast comes together as the product of several puzzling choices, beginning with the decision to again adapt Paul Theroux's 1981 book, and then to situate it in a contemporary setting. The result is a creepier-than-perhaps-even-intended series, which most charitably plays a poor man's "Breaking Bad: Family Edition."

The lack of real, destructive danger for this dual expedition and chase isn’t just a tedious factor about the show—it’s plainly uninvolving, like watching an invincible superhero prevail without the viewer knowing their true weakness. In its place, “The Mosquito Coast” constantly teases a mystery about what father and mother did in the past, but that also becomes tedious, a dangling carrot to get the story from one overlong episode to the next.

The inconsistencies mount in a generally unconvincing series. But the cast is so much better than the material.

These are folks whose loudly expressed principles exist basically separately from the story they are in. It’s less that they’re inconsistent and more that they don’t matter in an action-adventure story that, give or take a monologue, does not have too much on its mind.

Mosquito Coast goes big on gorgeous atmospherics; you can practically feel the heat of the desert and smell the fruit on display in the street market. Theroux is particularly good at making the most of the wide berth the script gives the actors. ... But even his absorbing performance can’t make Mosquito Coast make sense. ... Mosquito Coast’s biggest problem may be that the show doesn’t really have enough story for seven episodes.