The true story of Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin is such a wild, crazier than fiction story. It heavily impacted the world when aired in documentary form on Netflix, and therefore the dramatic version deserves to be told with guts, impact, drama and emotion.
This version does none of that and as such, heavily lets down both the audience and real life characters it portrays.
Kate McKinnon plays little more than her SNL-self, with a long blonde wig and change of wardrobe...while she (suspectly) played-up Carole as a virtuous well meaning animal warrior with an equally virtuous and (strangely non-creepy) husband, Howard. I instantly smelled that a litigious threat had put-upon the producers of this series by real life Carole, should she and Howard be played as anything less than the heroes of the story.
Conversely, most other characters were accurately portrayed in a physical sense, through their makep, costumes and voices. This was particularly so with Joe Exotic, Reinke, Jeff and Lauren Lowe, Josh, and John Finley. Yet, they all lacked the deeper substance that truly could have taken the series to a higher place.
Essentially, this story should have been portrayed with a grittier, more serious tone, to demonstrate the absolute lunacy of it all and its equally complex, emotionally driven characters. Instead, it presents with the visual appeal of a Baz Lurmann film, which deprives the audience of feeling the tumultuous experiences and seriousness of what all of these people truly did to each other in real life.
There's still room for more to come in this story, with Joe still in prison and Carole under investigation for the murder of her 2nd husband, but I hope it's not made by the same team if it ever comes about.
Just like the Kate McKinnon flop of Ghostbusters 2016, we scrub this low grade version from the timeline of Tiger King and start again with a production that has guts and does this fascinating story the justice it deserves.
This version does none of that and as such, heavily lets down both the audience and real life characters it portrays.
Kate McKinnon plays little more than her SNL-self, with a long blonde wig and change of wardrobe...while she (suspectly) played-up Carole as a virtuous well meaning animal warrior with an equally virtuous and (strangely non-creepy) husband, Howard. I instantly smelled that a litigious threat had put-upon the producers of this series by real life Carole, should she and Howard be played as anything less than the heroes of the story.
Conversely, most other characters were accurately portrayed in a physical sense, through their makep, costumes and voices. This was particularly so with Joe Exotic, Reinke, Jeff and Lauren Lowe, Josh, and John Finley. Yet, they all lacked the deeper substance that truly could have taken the series to a higher place.
Essentially, this story should have been portrayed with a grittier, more serious tone, to demonstrate the absolute lunacy of it all and its equally complex, emotionally driven characters. Instead, it presents with the visual appeal of a Baz Lurmann film, which deprives the audience of feeling the tumultuous experiences and seriousness of what all of these people truly did to each other in real life.
There's still room for more to come in this story, with Joe still in prison and Carole under investigation for the murder of her 2nd husband, but I hope it's not made by the same team if it ever comes about.
Just like the Kate McKinnon flop of Ghostbusters 2016, we scrub this low grade version from the timeline of Tiger King and start again with a production that has guts and does this fascinating story the justice it deserves.
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