We hate to spout one of the most ancient of cliches, but if there was ever a project that became a textbook example of the phrase "The book was better", it's this one......
Liane Moriarity's mordant, darkly funny soap opera about wealthy, privileged Australian housewives was a treat to read from start to finish........cutting edge wit used to oversee a clash of wickedly developed characters whose interlocking stories end in a climactic, violent death.....(kept a tantalizing secret from the reader until the end....)
The book offered, in addition to its memorable supporting characters, three roles-of-a-lifetime for any actresses cast as the three leads........and the HBO mini-series didn't disappoint in the casting, with three stellar people headlining.... Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman and Shailene Woodley.
If they'd stuck to the book, which provided a feast of sharp dialogue, telling incidents and enough melodrama to stuff a daytime soap opera for a year, "Big Little Lies" the mini-series could have emerged as a delicious, addictive wallow, a "Peyton Place" for new generations......(you young'uns can google that reference we just made, if you never heard of Peyton Place....)
But that wasn't the result. Moriarity's source material was sliced, diced, altered and overall undone by the self indulgent show-boating by scriptwriter David E. Kelley and director Jean-Marc Vallee....
These two guys, consumed by their own egos, should have served and showcased the considerable talents of their three gifted actresses........instead, they competed with them.
Kelley, with a distinguished, long career of writing successful TV series behind him, obviously considered himself a better writer than Moriarty. So he jettisoned 99 per cent of her caustic wit, replacing it with his sub-par dialogue........(in a book already crammed with multiple subplots, Kelley drags in his own contribution, involving a disputed community theater production of 'Avenue Q'.)......where the book's scenes fly by, Kelley's scenes, afflicted with heavy gravitas, grind on forever. The only time his lugubrious writing shows a pulse is when he goes back to the book....
And even worse.....Jean-Marc Vallee, leading an entire platoon of film editors from hell, regularly chops up the narrative with loads of artsy-smartsy, faux-Euro cinema montage.....he seems to positively delight in destroying the storyline's narrative power by tossing up all this visual garbage to call attention to his directorial "creativity". What a pretentious dunce. And what shame for the series.....
Witherspoon and Woodley's worthy contributions to the series are pretty much chopped into mincemeat by Kelley and Vallee, sweating bullets to claim their Emmy awards. Only Kidman's performance survives. Since her backstory involves physical abuse at the hands of her husband, Vallee for once slows down his restless camera and his Texas Chainsaw Film Editors to concentrate on her squirming through her therapy sessions........
That's as far as Vallee goes when it comes to letting the story breathe and flow. He and his Suicide Squad of editors utterly wreak havoc on the climactic scene.......and then Kelley weirdly alters the book's finale in order to turn "Big Little Lies" into an ongoing series with multiple seasons......to keep Kelley employed. A greedy, malicious move.
Simple guideline: read the book ,skip the show........for the book, 4 stars (****)....for the series, 1 star (*) and Nicole Kidman's the only reason it's even getting that many stars.......
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