Critical Condition: Friends From College

Friends From College (Netflix, from today)

“The characters on this half-hour dramedy, which starts streaming Friday, are the kind of people who get seated at a huge table in the middle of a restaurant and then proceed to irritate everyone dining in the vicinity. They’re loud, overdramatic, immature, and often inconsiderate to anyone who isn’t part of their inner circle … Nevertheless, I found myself often enjoying Friends From College, despite the familiarity of its narcissistic-grown-ups-struggling-with-self-imposed-ennui story line.” — New York magazine.

“Created by married Harvard alumni Nicholas Stoller (Neighbors) and Francesca Delbanco (who has a recurring role as an analyst), and directed by Stoller, it is, despite its top-flight cast, something less than the sum of its often ill-fitting parts. If the series bumps along at times as if it had one triangular wheel, it has plenty of funny moments and some genuinely lovely performances.” — Los Angeles Times.

“It’s very rarely funny and the characters are all unappealing, even though they’re played by actors who, in most cases, have almost always been tremendously appealing elsewhere. It veers wildly in tone, gunning for sentimental and emotional moments at exactly the moments its characters are least sympathetic, and then following those with sequences of broad farce that feel cribbed from a dozen better (and worse) sitcoms.” — The Hollywood Reporter.

“What a cast. And what a waste. Friends From College is one of the year’s biggest disappointments — a promising generational sitcom that might have had something to offer its target audience of middle-aged folks raised on Friends but squanders all of our interest with mirthless, misguided strategies for holding it. The only spectacle it offers is the shocking magic trick of turning a bright, dazzling cast into a bunch of dim bulbs.” — Entertainment Weekly.

“The result is a comedy-drama whose comedy is grating and whose drama doesn’t really engage with its essential sadness. To its credit, Friends From College is conscious of how tough its core group can be to take. But what it does best — reproducing the experience of going out with an insular gang whose members aren’t as clever or adorable as they think — is exactly the sort of thing you try to avoid by staying home and watching Netflix.” — New York Times.