#Afterparty review movie#
#Afterparty review series#
#Afterparty review tv#

Speaking of casting, knowing that the initial movie idea was 10 years ago makes you wonder how much it's changed - even after casting. Some elements hint at how it might tie into the central mystery, but from a storytelling perspective, it just doesn't work, and you find yourself wondering when we'll get back to our main cast. On its own, it's not a bad episode, per se, but it feels like a bump in the road as it abandons one of the biggest draws of the show - the cast - to follow a completely different story. This episode features a flashback for Detective Danner to another crime earlier in her career. They all feel vital to the overall telling of the story. While some styles work better with their storytellers than others, Miller displays a remarkable grasp of each of the genre tropes without making it seem like some hacky Scary-Movie type parody. You can be invested in discovering who the murderer is, even if you're not actively searching for every little clue. The laugh out loud performances, particularly from Sam Richardson, Ben Schwartz, and Jamie Demetriou, bring you along for the ride as well as develop stories like Aniq's (Richardson - with another great central performance) quest to woo his high school crush Zoe (Zoe Chao). That's not to say you have to bring your inner Poirot to enjoy The Afterparty. Influenced by classics such as Rashomon, Agatha Christie and even Cluedo (each character is dressed in a colour of the playing pieces), The Afterparty proudly wears its influences on its sleeve. So what surprises is how this is a proper murder mystery as much as it is a comedy. While people such as Ilana Glazer and Franco have branched out into more dramatic roles, there's no denying this is a collection of some of the best comedic actors around. You'd be forgiven for expecting a wild parody of the murder mystery genre going in.

This makes the narrators frequently unreliable and makes telling the truth from fiction difficult. Of course, I say 'get to know', but because we see their 'mind movie' as THEY tell it to detective Danner, we also see different perspectives of events and sometimes completely different accounts of how those events unfolded. This way, we get to know the characters and the possible reasons why they would want Xavier dead (spoiler: they all have a viable reason). This is presumably why Miller decided to expand it from a movie to a series. Like the best murder mysteries, it's not just the Rubik's Cube solution to HOW the crime was committed it's the WHY of it too. The individual flashbacks are not only fun genre mashups they're good at shining a light on each character's personality and state of mind on the night. It's quite an ambitious undertaking, featuring a rom-com, an action movie, a musical, a psychological thriller, a teen party movie, an animated movie, and a gritty LA cop movie. What unfolds over 8 episodes is a different character in turn telling their side of the evening, each visualised for us as a distinct 'mind movie' genre. They're still there, so Danner locks them in and begins questioning them individually while they continually point fingers at each other. Detective Danner (Tiffany Haddish) arrives at the crime scene with her weirdly strong partner Detective Culp (John Early) to discover Xavier fell from a balcony at his swanky house, which was hosting an afterparty for several of said former classmates. Now an uber-famous popstar with songs such as 'X Marks The G-Spot', he's also had starring roles in a Hall & Oats biopic (with a cameoing Channing Tatum) and a movie adaptation of Hungry, Hungry Hippos. Before the credits roll, we see former Ska nerd Xavier (Dave Franco) plunge to his death off a cliff.

#Afterparty review series#

(Lord also writes one episode and executive produces the series alongside his creative partner) The show focuses on one night (save for a high school party and a misguided flashback - more on that later), where some old school friends are brought back together for their high school reunion.

Originally conceived as a movie over 10 years ago by Miller, it was then expanded into a series for him to direct. That is until The Afterparty, the new Apple TV+ series that joins the streamer’s almost flawless comedy lineup.

#Afterparty review tv#

However, it's the first of those hits, the wonderfully silly and inventive Clone High, that marks the last time they entirely created and ran a TV show. Clone High, 21 Jump Street, The Lego Movie, The Last Man on Earth and of course, the mega-hit Spider-man: Into The Spider-Verse have turned them into household names. Chris Miller & Phil Lord have come a long way in 20 years writing, directing and/or producing some of the best movies and TV series of those two decades.