Netflix debuts preposterous ‘What/If’
When did old Demi Moore movies become “classic”? Intentionally over-the-top, the new Netflix series “What/If” updates the 1993 thriller “Indecent Proposal.” It recaptures the atmosphere of films like “Basic Instinct,” slick homages to Hitchcock thrillers, complete with shimmering musical scores.
Renee Zellweger stars as Anne, a super-powerful venture capitalist and author of motivational books of the Ayn Rand variety. The series opens with a prolonged scene of Anne dictating the closing passages of her certain best-seller, filled with bromides about abandoning concern about the morality of others. Here unalloyed selfishness drips with pomposity. And if that weren’t silly enough, Anne seems to control the weather. Thunder rumbles and lightning strikes almost every time she’s on screen.
“What/If” is set in San Francisco, a city turbocharged by Silicon Valley gazillionaires who have taken Rand’s philosophy to heart and have added a few chapters since Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal regurgitated her awkward fulminations in the 1949 adaptation of “The Fountainhead.”
Jane Levy (“Don’t Breathe”) co-stars as the doe-eyed innocent Lisa, a brilliant developer on the verge of revolutionizing medicine. She’s married to Sean (Blake Jenner), a former major league pitcher who became an ambulance driver after his career with the Giants flamed out.
After Lisa fails to find a single investor, Anne enters their lives with a simple proposal: that she spend the night with hot young Sean in exchange for $80 million in capitalization. I believe Robert Redford’s “Indecent” offer for Demi Moore was a paltry $1 million, but I digress.
While the wages of sin have certainly risen in the past quarter-century, it’s interesting to note how chaste this effort seems compared to the hyper-sexualized movies it imitates. Gratuitous sex has been demoted to subtext here; the real subject is power.
Created by Mike Kelley (“Revenge”), “What/ If” promises to be an anthology series, with each season following a person acting upon an outrageous, unacceptable desire and seeing how that transgression plays itself out.
Besides Anne’s bad writing and stilted dialogue, the biggest problem here is that the movies that “What/If” references were already parodies.
› Speaking of throwbacks, Hayley Mills (“The Parent Trap”) returns to the screen in the four-part U.K. drama “Pitching In,” about the complications of estranged siblings returning to their family’s picturesque Welsh holiday resort. Streaming today on Acorn.
Contact Kevin McDonough at kevin .tvguy@gmail.com.