Language: English
They could pitch this one at the Guinness records for Longest Fiction Show Title Of The Year In English, if indeed there’s a section for that sort of stuff. There is precious little else worth note or recommendation in The Woman In The House Across The Street From The Girl In The Window.
We get the idea. It’s a deliberately daft title because the show it introduces is meant to be all about deadpan humour bordering on madness. The intent is to set up a parody that spoofs the archetypal psychological suspense drama of Hollywood — think The Woman In The Window or The Girl On The Train (they’ve thrown in a dash of Scream, too, towards the end). It is a genre that is not often spoofed in films or television, which lends an element of curiosity to the series.
The problem however is the show creates little scope for a convincing spoof. There is a lack of ample content, too, to justify eight episodes. At best, this story should have been adopted for the feature film format with a runtime of around 90-odd minutes, like most Hollywood spoofs. The stretched narrative takes a toll on the humour quotient, as well as the psychological drama that the screenplay tries setting up.
Creators Rachel Ramras, Hugh Davidson and Larry Dorf have taken a smart call with the casting of Kristen Bell as protagonist. Bell is known for being funny on screen, and her primary claim to fame till date rests on her breakout act as the titular character of the teen noir series Veronica Mars. (Incidentally, she is also credited as an executive producer of her new show along with Will Ferrell, who is counted among contemporary Hollywood’s busiest spoof-makers).
Bell plays Anna, the woman in the house across the street from the girl in the window that the title alludes to. She sits at her window all day, downs wine by the glasses and pops pills, and generally gazes out at nothing. She has the fear of rain. Anna’s back story is tragic, we understand soon enough. Her daughter’s death about three years ago and her divorce from husband Douglas (Michael Ealy) have left her shattered.
The story takes off with the entry of Neil (Tom Riley). He is a handsome widower who moves in with his daughter Emma (Samsara Leela Yett) across Anna’s home. For the sake of parody, we will accept the fact that all of what happens at Neil’s place comes directly within range of vision for Anna from where she sits at her window. Then, soaked in wine and pills, Anna one day sees what she is convinced is a murder. The catch is she has no proof to support what she thinks she has seen. Worse, there is always the niggling doubt at the back of her mind that she could be hallucinating.
Strictly, the show unfolds more like a formulaic medley than a spoof attempt. If the plot synopsis above makes it look like the show is merely a formulaic repeat of earlier works in the genre, rather than a spoof those better-executed efforts, that’s exactly what happens here.
For the spoof factor to work, it was necessary for the character of Anna to work. The writing credited to creators Ramras, Davidson and Dorf understandably uses every cliché in the generic textbook while setting up Anna and her world. She admits her husband always said she had an “overactive imagination”, and the idea goes in sync with her addiction to alcohol and pills while setting her up as an unstable, unreliable protagonist.
An innate sense of humour has been added to the character (consider the tone of self-mocking that accompanies her confession of having an acquired English accent) but the trait is never fully explored or allowed to become an asset in a storyline that aims at peddling dark humour. Anna should have been an enigma for the spoof element to come alive. Instead, she is reduced to a being caricature of the very prototype the show sets out to lampoon, and that is the biggest undoing of the script.
The outcome is Anna gets caught in a tangle of generic tropes, which in turn adversely affects Bell’s attempt at rendering a quirky quality to the role. The actress struggles to bring her character alive, and she is neither wholly funny while portraying Anna’s idiosyncrasies nor emotionally convincing enough to strike a bond with the audience, even when it feels like she could be losing her sense of reality. Bell’s casting remains the biggest asset of the show but, weighed down by weak writing, the actress only manages a flat performance.
Ideally, a limited series like this would be apt for binge-watching. It isn’t, mainly because the intrigue around the cliches that the narrative rehashes wears out rather quickly. There are moments of insanity that grab your attention but these are sporadic. What comes across as the episodes unfold is a unsured quality in writing as well as execution, which reduces parody into monotonous farce.
On their part, the creators hired Michael Lehmann to direct the series, a Hollywood veteran who has called the shots on black comedy (Heathers), horror comedy (Meet The Applegates), action comedy (Hudson Hawk) and the rom-com (The Truth About Cats & Dogs) with equal ease down the decades, besides a host of TV shows. Maybe, it was the specific genre Lehmann was attempting this time that did him in. As he struggles to infuse comic strains into what is inherently a tragic theme, you begin to wonder if this sort of tragi-comedy can be successfully executed at all. Anna’s story, after all, is set against a backdrop of irreplaceable loss.
The Woman In The House Across The Street From The Girl In The Window, as that title suggested, ought to have been crazy fun bordering on the absurdly mysterious. It ends up crazy in fits and starts, and is absurd in many ways. But the show misses out on being either funny or mysterious.
Watch the trailer here
Vinayak Chakravorty is a senior film critic, columnist, and film journalist based in Delhi-NCR.
from Firstpost Bollywood Latest News https://bit.ly/3rZb43A
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