'The Afterparty' Review - Apple TV+ Comedy Detective About Homecoming Murder.
A new project from the director of the film "Macho and Nerd" Christopher Miller is a hodgepodge of parodies of different genres with a weak detective intrigue.
At an after-party after a high school reunion, tragedy struck when the owner of the house, the silly and arrogant actor-musician Xavier (Dave Franco), fell off a balcony onto a rocky beach. Investigator Danner (Tiffany Haddish) has only a few hours to figure out the killer, otherwise the high-profile case will be transferred to a much more famous detective. She interrogates the suspects one by one, but receives completely different stories about what happened: each of them fancies himself the main character of the film. For Anika (Sam Richardson), it's a rom-com about trying to woo a girl he's been in love with since high school; for Brett (Ike Barinholtz), a goofy action movie in the style of "Fast and the Furious"; for Jasper (Ben Schwartz), an uplifting musical about a dream that openly parodies Hamilton.
If you watched the Macho and Botan dilogy or the animated Lego. Film, you know what to expect from the duo of Christopher Miller and Phil Lord - at least an intriguing story and ironic, smart humor that makes fun of pop culture and genre clichés. All this is appropriate in the case of their new series "The Party", but with a small caveat: first of all, this is the project of Miller, who acted as showrunner, writer and director of all episodes, while Lord is only announced as an executive producer. Perhaps it was the broken division of duties that prevented The Party from becoming another gem of the tandem's filmography: there is too much history and humor that does not ironically comment on modernity, but superficially ridicules everything.
While The Party was originally conceived as a feature-length movie back in 2013, the series seems to owe its resurrection to Rian Johnson's hit Knives Out, another stellar skit with a twisted whodunit story. The main consequence of the success of the project is the audience's realization that the detective does not have to be gloomy and cruel, but can equally well keep in suspense and cause fits of laughter. How else to explain Netflix's decision to pay a whopping $450 million for the rights to the second and third parts of the film, or the record-breaking hits of The Building Murders on Hulu? Apparently, the time has come for comedic detectives - they not only attract an audience to streaming, but also keep it when it comes to the weekly release of episodes.
True, there is doubt that the audience will return to the "Party". The creators chose a model with a change in perspective to maintain intrigue - it sounds original, but many people can quickly get bored with the format. The fact is that these stories, or rather, one about the evening itself, firstly, look like surprisingly superficial parodies of selected genres (in addition to the named ones there will be a psychological thriller, a school comedy and a police drama) with exactly those jokes, gags and ridicule patterns that come to every viewer's mind. Secondly, they contain so much unnecessary information about the characters that even short flashbacks - interrogation inserts start to tire and make you think that the stretched timing, which streaming nobly provides, harms hermetic detective stories. As a result, due to the eternal showdown, the main intrigue weakens - at some point, interest in the identity of the killer disappears, because the opposite Xavier already wanted to kill almost every one of those present. The final eighth episode was not shown to the press, but it is unlikely that the impression will change if it turns out to be a child or a shirt-guy, whom for some reason no one remembers.
Paradoxically, everything that can be considered a disadvantage of "The Party" for someone will become an advantage of the series. Yes, the creators are not trying to make an intelligent comedy, so even the characters have chosen the most predictable ones (a stereotypical nihilist writer, a nerd loser, and the same Xavier is almost a parody of Justin Bieber 10 years ago), but these flat jokes and blockhead humor works great if you leave high expectations aside. Well, the story that has grown deep and wide at some point will give two unformatted episodes - about the common school past and Danner's backstory - which will give the viewer the opportunity to take a break from the constant chewing on what happened at the reunion. "Party" will not cause nostalgia for the times when you wanted to wait for new episodes of the show every week, but it will brighten up a couple of evenings if you wait for the release of the entire season. At worst, the series will only disappoint and make you love Knives Out and The Building Murders a little more. Agree, it's worth the risk - one way or another you will win.
This article was sponsored by Mei Wang
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