Maniac

Fukunaga's fantasy. 

Cary Fukunaga is no stranger to the mini-series format. His 2014 mini-series True Detective won him a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if more of the same was to be expected with his latest series. I must state before I continue any further that ‘Maniac’ is a love letter to many films that have come before it and I’ll be making references frequently to these films in the review.

Owen Milgrim portrayed by Jonah Hill is what you’d get if you combined Fredo Corleone and Edward Norton’s character from Fight Club. Like Fredo, Owen is the least impressive member of  a wealthy family. He suffers from schizophrenia and makes a living independently, much to the bewilderment of his family. To make matters worse he has to stand trial and defend his brother Jed from accusations of sexual harassment, someone he despises.

The other lead is Emma Stone’s Annie Landsberg who is troubled by her past and brimming with guilt to this day cause of her broken relationships with her mother and sister. Much like Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter’s characters in Fight Club, Annie and Owen find themselves entangled by fate in a web of surreal adventures when they offer themselves to a pharmaceutical trial which can repair any mental illness and even heart break. This is where the fight club comparisons stop and the comparisons to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind begin.

For the movie buff, Maniac has everything from the 80s time period, a dystopian setting and mesmerizing visuals in the post Kubrick world. The lab itself wouldn’t look out of place in a Wes Anderson film. It even has episodes dedicated to beloved film genres such as high fantasy, extra-terrestrial sci fi, 40s heist and 80s trash comedy. Yet, it somehow fails to capture the heart of Gondry and Kaufmann’s Eternal Sunshine nor does it have the strong under lying message that Fincher’s Fight Club offered. 

Justin Theroux, Sally Field and Sonoya Mizuno are all fantastic as the dysfunctional family/team behind the pharmaceutical trial. They are as good a supporting cast as you will find in an ensemble yet there is nothing new that Maniac offers in this dark comedy side plot that Eternal Sunshine hadn’t already done 14 years back. You can't help but think that Hill and Stone; who have come a long way since working together on Superbad; now household names, had fairly good performances wasted on Fukunaga's fantasy. 

Fukunaga clearly wants to pay homage to films but unfortunately that’s all Maniac feels like and nothing more. It's an ambitious project and  I feel Fukunaga will never have worked on a more enjoyable project. He's dropped everything he loves into one basket and he wouldn't care  what went inside cause he was just having so much fun. Even the infamous scene from ‘The Graduate’ is used here but instead of celebrating another homage to a classic, you’re left thinking, “Oh, of course they couldn’t leave that out.”

For all of my reservations, I have no doubt that audiences will binge it up like Annie does with the  pills, "This is it,this is the last one." I can’t help but feel Netflix yet again opts for quantity over quality with it's content.