- Network: HULU
- Series Premiere Date: Nov 22, 2022
Critic Reviews
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Chippendales not only tells a worthwhile story, it takes it a step further and scrapes at the depths of its characters’ psychologies, revealing a meditation on good and bad that is anything but black and white.
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Loaded with first-rate performances and a killer soundtrack, Welcome to Chippendales is addictive, fun, and yet again proves that truth truly is stranger than fiction.
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You have to keep watching simply to know where Banerjee ends up. Chippendales is a moreish junk-food binge and as enjoyable as it is at the time, it will leave you feeling a little bit grubby.
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A multifaceted and highly entertaining look at the unlikely story of Chippendales’ founder — and the tragedy of his success.
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There is more than meets the eye to the Chippendales. The same is true of the Hulu show.
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Even if the titular club seems cartoonishly campy from the outside looking in, and one could easily forget that these are real people, Welcome to Chippendales helps to remind us that they're only human in the end.
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“Welcome to Chippendales” features any number of imagined conversations and scenarios. But the major events depicted here really did transpire, which makes the ride all the more compelling and crazy. ... Nanjiani (“The Big Sick,” “Eternals”) plays against type and delivers the most complex and impressive performance of his career as Steve.
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A large part of the series’ undeniable watchability comes from understanding how Chippendales came to be so powerful, despite being so close (and so often) to tearing itself apart. Even if some of the show’s bigger moments fall back on the unsurprising credo that corruption always wins (or, rather, that dignity always loses), there’s plenty to gawk at here.
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Welcome to Chippendales doesn't reveal much those other projects haven't already covered, but it's buoyed by commanding performances from stars Kumail Nanjiani and Annaleigh Ashford.
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On the continuum of scandal-based TV, Welcome to Chippendales is among the more effective offerings. It doesn't overplay its final stretch or try to be more penetrating than it's capable of. The show dresses its sorrowful core in spandex and bow ties, painting a portrait of prosperity undone by pride.
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Welcome to Chippendales docudrama is great fun. Until it isn’t. Primarily a character study of the glittery male-stripper club’s uptight and insecure founder, Indian immigrant Steve Banerjee (Silicon Valley’s Kumail Nanjiani in a nuanced performance), the series foreshadows his tawdry fall from the start of his giddy rise. [5 - 18 Dec 2022, p.4]
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Instead of fulfilling its potential for greatness, Chippendales settles for being merely good—and is sure to leave some viewers with the uncomfortable sense of having delighted in a dramatization of real people’s death and heartbreak. But its true-crime exploitation quotient doesn’t even approach that of Ryan Murphy’s recent smash Dahmer—Monster or the Renée-Zellweger-fat-suit burlesque of The Thing About Pam.
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In a way, “Welcome to Chippendales” sacrifices a lot to show Steve slipping into tragedy. The business becomes the star around which everything here revolves, for better and worse. The show is a thorough overview, but whenever inspiration strikes, it’s usually only for the people on screen.
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Director Richard Shepard helms the last two episodes and brings some much-needed finesse to the proceedings, but previous episodes, directed by Nisha Ganatra, Matt Shakman, and Gwyneth Horder-Payton, plod along with paint-by-numbers prestige drama energy.
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Running at eight episodes, Welcome to Chippendales is overlong, and too often the pace sags like a sweat-soaked loincloth. Still, it remains an interesting watch, with a sparky soundtrack (Donna Summer; Wire; the Sweet).
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The sleaze, glamour and general air of excess that hung about the 80s is nicely captured, and all eight episodes can be easily binged. But you do long for some depth, some nuance, and perhaps an actor less fundamentally gentle than Kumail Nanjiani, who might have captured more convincingly the darkness lurking in Banerjee’s soul.
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Kumail Nanjiani seems unsure whether to play Bannerjee as hero or villain, and his switch from endearing to raging control freak is abrupt. The script is entertaining, however.
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The truncated timeline of events sometimes works against the series, but vibrant performances make for emotionally investing viewing.
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Hulu has carved out an impressive niche of salacious fact-based limited series, including several with a true-crime hook. “Welcome to Chippendales” checks off those boxes, but in a less-appealing package that’s surprisingly lifeless, and even with its trashy selling points looks under-dressed for success.
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The result is an ideas-rich but disjointed series that feels like it’s tackling too much, yet somehow hardly enough, with a protagonist whose motivations are subject to whatever wild happenstance the scripts are setting up next.
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There’s an interesting crime story entangled in the story of Chippendales. ... But the problem is that the show has that true-crime plot as a backbone, but no pulse or libido. A show called “Welcome to Chippendales” shouldn’t forgo opportunities to dazzle or charm us; instead, just like the drinks Irene serves, this tale feels watered-down.
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If you want to get a more complete picture of how Chppendales exploded in popularity and how Banerjee’s poor decisions led to his death, watch Curse Of The Chippendales or any of the other docuseries about the club’s history. Welcome To Chippendales is so over-fictionalized that it actually makes the story less compelling than the real thing.
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Over eight 45ish minute installments, the miniseries never quite works its way to a distinctive tone or style or perspective, and never finds all that much to say about what it’s showing us beyond some vague clichés about greed, pride and the immigrant experience. ... There’s a difference between buying the right stuff, and knowing what to do with it. Welcome to Chippendales, sadly, doesn’t know what to do with it.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 6 out of 13
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Mixed: 2 out of 13
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Negative: 5 out of 13
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Dec 3, 2022Kumail Nanjiani's acting is bad, he should stick to comedy. His bad performance hinders the series to become more of a mediocre shallow comedy
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Dec 1, 2022