Ratched (2020 series - Netflix) Uh uh.......in no way are we going to dignify this show's ridiculous attempt to claim it's an 'origin' story of Louis Fletcher's toweringly malignant villain from "One Few Over The Cuckoo's Nest".......
Bullshit.
For all the sense it makes, this show might as well bill itself as the origin story of "From Russia With Love"s Rosa Klebb, played by Lotte Lenya as the poison-shoe toad who kicked at Sean Connery's shins.....
Ryan Murphy, the impresario of over-the-top mini-series like 'American Horror Story" simply slaps the 'Ratched' name on another one of his primary colored comic book Grand Guignol spectacles......populated entirely by more gargoyles than you'd find at the top of the Notre Dame cathedral.......
But on a sheer Guilty Pleasure level, you can't get any guiltier than 'Ratched'.
If you love wallowing in crazed performances, grindhouse gore and deliriously eye-popping production design, costumes and cinematography.........then watching this show is like polishing off a full box of Dunkin Donuts.......by yourself.
We don't know if it's even worth singling out individual actors here.......they're all fully in the nutso zone and clearly having a ball. For sheer 'can-you-hear-me-in-the-upper-balcony' bravado we will mention Sophie Okonedo's split personality tour-de-force........she's doing 'The Three Faces Of Eve' as a three ring circus.
You know it's not good for you........but who cares?
And we couldn't get enough of the gloriously exaggerated Ken Adam-like sets, which create a loony bin with 40 foot ceilings and mile long panoramic windows......one dreamscape after another.
We can only hope that Mac Quayle, the composer of the Bernard Herrmann-esque score received official permission from the Herrmann estate, since he chose to toss in actual themes from "Cape Fear", "Psycho", "Vertigo", and "North By Northwest"........
Okay, let's get down to it........worth a look or not?
If you groove on glossy, deliberately pulpy junk, you shouldn't miss it. We'd like to think we got into the spirit of this series by laughing out loud all the way through it.
But if Crazy's not your cup of tea, and you'd quickly tire of spending 8 hours with a cast of characters who all belong in a straight jacket and do unspeakably violent things to one another.......give this a wide berth......
For BQ it's a 2 & 1/2 star hoot..(**1/2), but screw that nonsense about it being in any remote way connected to 'Cuckoo's Nest'..........it's just plain cuckoo.
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