TRITE LIGHTS
‘Last Tycoon’ struggles with Fitzgerald’s 1930s Hollywood saga
Lights. Cameras. Cue the cliches. Amazon Prime's newest drama, “The Last Tycoon,” spins the saga of a 1930s Hollywood studio. Based on the 1941 unfinished novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Last” spotlights Hollywood It Boy Monroe Stahr (Matt Bomer, “White Collar”), a producer for Brady-American Studios, a struggling film company. He's determined to leave a legacy on film as soon as possible.
He really is working on a deadline: He has a bum heart that could quit at any moment.
When the series opens in 1936, he's mourning the loss of his wife, Minna (Jessica de Gouw, “Underground”), BradyAmerican's biggest star who died in a fire two years earlier. Monroe watches her films in private and sobs to himself.
Well, he's not grieving the time: He's having a prolonged affair with Rose (Rosemarie DeWitt, “La La Land”), who just happens to be the wife of his boss, studio mogul Pat Brady (Emmy winner Kelsey Grammer, “Frasier”).
Pat is looking for new financiers and dealing with new edicts from Germany, their second-biggest market, to censor any negative portrayals of Germans and remove any positive depictions of Jews. That's a problem for Monroe, who, as a Jew, objects. The one problem Pat and Monroe share: Pat and Rose's daughter Celia (Lily Collins, “The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones”), a 19-year-old college student determined to break into the business as a producer and make Monroe her husband. She often promises to be both to anyone in her vicinity. Celia often behaves as if she was dropped on her head a lot as a child.
There's also a resentful Okie named Max (Mark O'Brien, “Halt and Catch Fire”), who lives on the Hooverville adjacent to the studio with his young brother and sister, and a writer, Aubrey (Enzo Cilenti, “Game of Thrones”), who pushes his co-workers to unionize.
With the exceptions of Nazi Germany's demands on the film industry — based on fact — the glimpses of 1930s Hollywood come off like cotton candy dipped in bourbon.
When Monroe runs into waitress Kathleen (Dominque McElligott, “House of Cards”), the score tells you she's going to be important. Kathleen is a beauty who shuns the phoniness of Hollywood, so you can guess where she is going to end up.
Of the cast, Grammer manages to keep his head above the material. His studio mogul can be gruff, but Grammer is canny enough to play against the dialogue. In a climactic confrontation with his wife, he mixes anger with anguish.
“You have any idea what it's like not being the hero of your own life story?”
From the opening, it's easy to predict just where the nine episodes of “The Last Tycoon” will lead you. You may be distracted on the ride, but the destination will leave you short-changed.