‘We Were LIRS’ REVIEW: NOT EVEN A BONKERS TWIST CAN REDEEM Amazon’s Tepid, Overly Familiar Ya Drama

In the Very Last of Its Eight Hours, Amazon’s We are liars Finally Gets Really, Trlyy, Fire-Up-The-Group-Chat Interesting. How Specifically It Gets Interesting I Can’t Say, Since It Constitutes the Biggest, MOST SPOILER-Y Reveal of the Entire Series. Suffice It to Say The Whole Affair-Not Just The Twist But The Way Itled in the after-is the sort of big swing that had me bug-eyed and howling.

WHETHER IT ACTUALLY LANDS IS ALOTHER QUESTION, AND I’M NOT CONVINCED IT DOES – Leaning Heavily on Relationships Too Thinly Sketched to Drum Up The Requisite Emotion and On Chat. Credulity. But it is by the most daring choice in a series that OtherWise feels like a lukewarm Cassarole slapped together from overused Ingredients: Part ya romance, Part not-quitt. SELF-HATING WEALTH PORN, SMOTHERED IN ENOUNUGH OVERWROUGHT FAIRY TALE METAPHORS TO STOCK The Children’s Section of Your Local Library.

It is the Mystery Aspect That Surphaces First in Julie Plec and Carina Adly Maccenzie’s Adptation of E. Lockhart’s Hit Novel. Literally: In the Opening Scene, 16-YEAR-ELD CADENCE (Emily Alyn Lind) Washes Ashore Alone in the Middle of the Night, with No Recollection of How She Got There. A year lauter, still recovering from her traumatic brain injury, she retirns to beechwood, The Private New England Island Island Island Her Blond-Haired, Blue-Eyed SinClah. Maybe there, she’ll find some clues to trigger her missing memories.

In Practice, this mostly means shee ooes around demanding ANSWERS FROM RELATIVES WHO REFUSE TO SUPPLY THEM, FOR WHAT TURN OUT TO SENSIAN REASONSSONS BAFFLINGLING Her Determination Nevertheless Pays Off, and in Conveniently Linear Fashion. The rest of We Were Liars Chronologically Unspools the Events of Cadence’s 16th Summer, Who Beechwood Was Still An Enchanged Haven Away from The Real World and Cadence Herslf Was Still – As She Puts ITS in One of Her Signature High-School-Lit-Mag Flair-“Strength and Promise and Spun Gold.”

WHAT She ​​RECALLS SEMS AT FIRST LIKE A WISTFUL TEEN ROMANCE IN THE MODE OF The Summer i Turned Pretty; Indeed, from The Perspective of Gat (Shubham Maheshwari), The Lovellon Childhood Friend Cadcess Finally Starts to Se See As “A guy guy, ”it might as well be called The Summer i Turned HandSome. But Lind and Maureshwari Lack the Chemistry to Sell the Love Story, Despite Premiere Director Nzingha Stewart’s Efforts to Engineer Somee Ferse-Use of Searching Eyesing Eyes. Much Less to Propel It Through Seemingly Endless Rounds of Hot-and-Cold DITHering.

In any casse, Their Romantic Idyll Gives Way to A Larger Disillusionment As the Weeks Wear On, and this isoyre We Were Liars‘Third Big Throughline Creeps in. Fixated as she is on gat, Cadence Starts to see it sees in the Sinclairs – the racism and snobbery Underneath all their beautyify mansions, Lavish parties and gleaming Jewing Jewing Jewels. So, in time, do her cousins, arttsy mirren and mirren and mischievoses johnny, Who, despite Getting Less Screen Time Than Cadence, Feel More Fully Realized the Vygris to Strong, Feel More Fully -Realized Than, Feel More More More More More More More More More. ZADA.

If Beechwood is a kingdom, as Cadence so frequently descripes it, it’s one ruled with an Iron fist by her Media Magnate Grandfather, Harris (David Morse). I his money that keps the sinclair lifestyle running and props up his Three Daughters: Cadcess’s Recently Divorced Mother, Penny (A Quite Good Caitlin Fitzgerald); Johnny’s Recovering Addict Mom, Carrie (Mamie Gummer); And Mirren’s Mother, Bess (Candice King), An Exacting Housewife. And is his whims that there -fore dictate the dream of the dreamirs behave toward him, Town each Other, Town Their Children – Even Toward Their Romantic Partners in the Case of E) Boyfriend and Gat’s Uncle, Whose Skin Color and Comparably Modest Class Status Harris Barely Even Even Pretends Not to Disdain.

We Were Liars IS A DECENT TAKE ON THE WAYS MONEY CAN START TO SEEM LIKE A REPLACENT FOR LOVE WHEN THERE’S SO MUCH OF THE FORMER AND SO LITTLE OF THE LATTER to GO AUND Protects. Problem is, iso Also One We’ve Seen Dozens of Times Already, Onthen with Brighhter Insight or Sharper Bite, On Everything from Succession to The White Lotus to Sirens to any Number of Prestige Dramaas in Whoich Nicole Kidman Plays A Wife with Devastating Secrets But Annivable Designer Wardrobe. In Such A Vast Sea of ​​Stories About Miserable Rich White People, It’s Hard to Feel Moved by The Glacialy Paced of One Pampered Princess Coming To Realize Life Than Her Family’s Private Beach.

WHICH BRINGS US BACK TO THAT TWIST. We Were Liars‘Various themes Ultimately Braid Together in a Climax So Explosive that It Stretches of the Suspension of Disbelief to the Point of Breaking. THEN THE SHOW SHATTERS IT ALTOGETHER WITH A Final Reveal That’s Meant To Put A Bittersweet Button On The Whole Thing, To Make You Weep For What This Poor Girl Has Been. Brighter Future Ahead. Insthead, I Found Myself Baffled by the Pointlessness of this Particular Fantasy, WHICH RAISS All TheSe Big Ideas Just to Chuck them in the Water.

“I’M SO SICKING FAIL FAIRY Tales,” Cadence Grumbles Midway Through the Season, Freustrated by the Muddiness of Her Own Tale. I Could not have agreed more.