Erik Adams
The Studio is a comedic perpetual motion machine, its freewheeling nature disguising the intricacies within. But it took me a few minutes to catch onto the distinctive style that conveys its constant stream of industry-insider jokes. As movie studio executive Matt Remick (Seth Rogen) takes a golf-cart ride from a wintry film set to the visually stunning offices of the fictional Continental Studios, the entire trek is captured in a single, unbroken shot. When Matt finishes discussing the sorry state of the film industry with his assistant, he segues seamlessly into a walk-and-talk that ends with the camera gliding up and over a balcony. “They can’t keep this up for the entire episode,” I thought. They can, in fact – and they do, in a move that becomes an impressive (if occasionally exhausting) visual signature of Rogen’s new Apple TV+ series.
These extended takes are strung together to create the ideal, energized atmosphere in which the dream weavers and bean counters of Continental Studios can solve problems on the fly and/or spin out in the attempt (Matt does a lot of the latter, sometimes to the detriment of the laugh count) and The Studio’s directors, cinematographer, and editor can achieve some feats of comic derring-do. Rogen and his co-creators conjure the glamour of the Golden Age masters, shoot it with the you-are-there verve of the New Hollywood upstarts who replaced them, and then play everything at the pitch of a vintage Looney Tunes short. It doesn’t always work, but when it does it makes for some astonishing TV comedy.
It is, fittingly, something Matt Remick might admire – though the fact that it’s happening on a streaming show bankrolled by Apple might just as easily disgust this true believer in the magic and art of cinema. We meet Matt on the verge of a professional breakthrough: a promotion to the top job at Continental, poised to test both his high-falutin’ standards for cinematic excellence against the cynically commercial realities of the business (his first, reluctantly received, assignment: make a movie based on Kool-Aid) and loyalty to his mentor and predecessor in the job, Patty (Catherine O’Hara). This is an interesting deployment of Rogen’s everyman schtick: He may have the bespoke suits and vintage sports cars of a wealthy studio mogul, but when Matt has to make a tough casting call or give a note to a powerful director, he’s as clueless and out-of-his-depth as the characters Rogen played in Knocked Up or Neighbors.
He has a knack for asserting his authority and fishing for ego strokes in all the wrong places – something that’s gut-bustingly hilarious when he keeps disrupting a movie’s complicated, continuous climactic shot (wonder where the inspiration for that came from) in episode 2, but eventually grows wearying over the course of the full 10-episode season. Rogen’s just too damn affable for that sort of constant, Curb Your Enthusiasm-esque bottomless hole-digging.
But he’s not alone in making bad situations worse, and The Studio compiles a rich backlog of mishaps and missteps: Slapstick altercations on set, a bad drug trip that spans all rungs of the corporate ladder, the raised-and-dashed hopes of Martin Scorsese (who, along with many other real-life Hollywood luminaries, appears as himself). That so much silliness is taking place on a show so technically accomplished and expensive-looking – where a marvel of mid-century architecture becomes the backdrop for a pratfall, and one of Matt’s classic convertibles bears the license plate “STD HEAD” (he swears it’s short for “studio head”) – is a sheer delight. There are some very stupid gags on this show that must’ve required a lot of planning and coordination, and you’ve gotta respect that.
One place where it struggles, though, is building out its ensemble. Matt’s fears about the future of film and his worries about tarnishing the Continental name shape so much of The Studio’s point of view that it’s hard to get a read on any other character. The main players at Continental all tend toward a wishy-washy kind of people-pleasing, and their cutthroat standard operating procedure means they’re always poised to throw a colleague under the bus. One midseason episode strains to build itself around a campaign of backbiting and sabotage between Matt’s assistant-turned-development executive Quinn (Chase Sui Wonders) and skeezy studio suit Sal (Ike Barinholtz), but the lack of attention paid to them elsewhere in the season makes their little war feel kind of skippable. (Sal, for one, is much funnier later in the season when, through no effort of his own, he falls ass-backwards into stealing Matt’s award-show thunder.)
Perhaps it’s a result of the season’s relentless energy, maybe it’s just too early in the game, but the only relationship that The Studio has nailed so far is the sweet-and-sour dynamic between Matt and Patty. It’s in their scenes together where we get a sense of why anyone would want to stick it out in such an unforgiving line of work (you know, aside from the money and the parties and the cool clothes…) These are also some of the few scenes where the The Studio’s filmmaking style is used to give us breathing room – elsewhere, it’s full-steam ahead for a show that will be eye-catching and gripping (and at an average of 30ish minutes per episodes, easily digestible) on a week-to-week basis but might require scheduled breaks as a binge.
The ensemble works well together as a whole, though, especially when they’re in a high-stakes pickle and throwing boneheaded solutions at it. The long takes really ratchet the tension in these scenes, even more so when there’s a loose cannon like Griffin Mill (Bryan Cranston), CEO of Continental’s parent company, in the mix. It’s great to see Cranston tapping some of that old Malcolm in the Middle zaniness as the mustachioed, walking-’70s-time-capsule Mill, and it’s big, broad characters like his where The Studio gets some of its biggest laughs: We know Beetlejuice and Schitt’s Creek alum O’Hara can do this sort of thing in her sleep, but you’ve also got to come prepared to watch Ron Howard take a sledgehammer to his reputation as “the nicest guy in Hollywood.” Only occasionally does it tip over into caricature: The typically reliable Kathryn Hahn comes in a little hot as Continental marketing wiz Maya, and it takes her a few episodes to match and complement the heat of her castmates’ performances. Maya’s wardrobe, however, is funny from the get-go: Projecting her desire to be cool at all costs, she looks like she gets dressed in a cash cube full of designer streetwear.
Like Bugs Bunny breaking the fourth wall to needle his corporate overlords at Warner Bros., The Studio isn’t afraid to bite the hand that feeds. Its sharpest barbs are reserved for the Silicon Valley interlopers churning film and TV into “content”; Netflix gets it the worst, but there’s at least one juicy line about selling a movie to “f***ing Apple” as a last resort. Otherwise, the satirical edge here isn’t particularly sharp, or trained on unexpected targets: Talent is mercurial, studio management is creatively bankrupt, an awards-show red carpet is littered with influencers who’ll make a front-facing video for their millions of followers, and then go home. It’s the electrifying way The Studio presents its commentary on Tinsel Town superficiality and greed – not the commentary on that superficiality and greed itself – that makes this an exciting new entry in the crowded field of showbiz sendups. Credit to the casting department, though: When the Continental brass visits a set, they’re usually dealing with an actor-turned-director – like Ron Howard, Olivia Wilde, or Sarah Polley – who can hold their own opposite Rogen, O’Hara, and Barinholtz.
I’ll grant you that there might be less appeal for such an insidery show to the average Apple TV+ subscriber who hasn’t spent much time following the behind-the-scenes dramas of the film industry than there is for someone who writes about it for a living. But for all its insider lingo and flashy film-nerd technique, The Studio makes its pitch to prospective viewers directly and earnestly: Movies mean something. They bring people together. They may not be as important as, say, the most recent developments in fighting pediatric cancer, but that doesn’t stop Matt from insisting as much in the episode where he spends the most time with a foot stuck in his mouth.
But they have some importance, and The Studio makes a strong argument that their history and legacy is worth preserving and perpetuating, whether it’s by showing Goodfellas to someone who’s never seen it before, or by watching a goofy Seth Rogen show painstakingly stage an homage to one of Goodfellas’ defining shots. In the idealized world of the Continental backlot, we see the Hollywood that never really was but that Matt believes it could be: A fantasyland workplace where it’s hard to take your troubles too seriously, because you’re always eating lunch next to chorus girls in feathered headdresses and dodging giant props on your way to meetings. Also: This is a very, very funny show, and for that reason alone, it’s worth checking out.
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