SummaryJill Soloway and Sarah Gubbins' adaptation of Chris Kraus' novel how a professor named Dick (Kevin Bacon) changes the lives of a New York filmmaker (Kathryn Hahn) and her husband (Griffin Dunne) in Marfa, Texas.
SummaryJill Soloway and Sarah Gubbins' adaptation of Chris Kraus' novel how a professor named Dick (Kevin Bacon) changes the lives of a New York filmmaker (Kathryn Hahn) and her husband (Griffin Dunne) in Marfa, Texas.
Repeated viewings may help get all the details, grace-note references to artists like Kara Walker and various feminist filmmakers, but this is not a series that will ever leave you feeling satisfied. Dick will leave you as Jill Soloway intends: restless, provoked, unsettled. In this case, that translates to television greatness.
The actors are way stronger then the plot so it's pretty good. Interesting, binge-watched it all in one day.. People motivated by the need to to create instead of money. Kind of funny also.
Unexpected genius. At first, I feared this was new age claptrap or artsy nonsense but as you learn why you dislike certain characters you understand the emotional context of others. it is strangely transformational, pokes fun at self-importance and deconstructs perceptions while being a wry examination of obsession and how art is created. What some find vital is so often not universal. What others accept as gospel bears closer examination The achingly painful protagonist finds facing reality exceeds any pretense. And that changes reality. Without giving much away. Intelligent, amusing, annoying and yet satisfying.
As a TV show, I Love Dick’s makes the smart choice to lean into the book’s aggression, giving Hahn the freedom to fully let loose. The series embraces every sordid, horny detail of Chris’s desire, staring viewers directly (and often literally) in the face and daring us to blink.
An extremely smart, wildly eccentric and very adult comedy. And if Bacon is bringing the heat, then Hahn is the aching, searching heart of this series.
If the first season doesn’t entirely hang together, it’s bracingly risk-taking. At its best, it captures the artistic process in a way that TV rarely does, and it works as a kind of video art itself.
Subversive yet silly, as pretentious as it is provocative. ... This is no ordinary show. Like all self-conscious art, it's bound to be polarizing. [15-28 May 2017, p.17]
The nexus between Dick, Chris and Sylvere is, through three episodes, boring and not entirely believable or a story that seems worth the ride, perhaps more of Devon and Toby would be a good idea. Or a show about them, sans both Dick and dick.
'I Love ****' has a powerful message and some episodes are really creative, plus Kathryn Hahn is extraordinary; but sometimes it gets too complicated to follow, but this is still worth the look.
After looking forward to this series for months, I bailed out after 4 episods. I was expecting smart and funny and provocative--all the alluring adjectives the critics used--but I would have settled for smart-assed and somewhat original. Instead, "I Love ****" is mostly dull. Occasional flashes of visual wit (most featuring Kevin Bacon and livestock) break the tedium and, for me at least, gesture toward the better series that could have been. I haven’t read the book, so I can’t say whether the TV version was too faithful or not faithful enough to its source, but I’d guess the former.
The series tries to satirize the pretentious artists and theoreticians of academia, but most of its jokes seem ham-fisted. Example: at a cocktail party, a Holocaust researcher is told he must meet a board president because she “is a huge fan of the Holocaust.” Ha ha ha, aren't those pretentious twits clueless? What’s interesting about real academics is their exasperating mix of intelligence and stupidity, but the characters in "I Love ****" are mostly just stupid. Worse, they’re flat, even for sitcom characters. They’re like old-fashioned comic protagonists--myopic, histrionic, and self-absorbed--but without the usual endearing qualities. Imagine Lucy Ricardo sans naiveté, enthusiasm, and affection for others. Not interesting.
The “provocative” part is supposed to be all of the sex, which breaks with TV precedent by being ugly, clumsy, and unpleasant to watch. While I too am weary of coitus that proceeds from passionate first kiss to explosive simultaneous orgasm in 30 perfectly choreographed seconds, I’m also not eager to view more “realistic” sex (beyond a certain point) unless it advances a plot line or deepens a character. At least with conventional TV coitus, you know exactly how much time you have to grab a snack before the story picks up again.
I haven’t said anything nice abou "I Live ****," so why do I give this series a 5? Because Amazon is trying, at least. Some of its original offerings explore domains other than the usual hospital, courtroom, and/or police station, and, when they get it right (as with “Mozart in the Jungle”), the result feels really fresh. For some reason, academia has been a difficult culture for TV to crack, which is presumably why so many professor characters turn their hands to (surprise!) solving crimes. If Amazon wants to try again, they could start with David Lodge’s “Changing Places” or another truly funny satire of academic life. There are quite a few that would make good series.