Critical Condition: Looking for Alaska

Looking for Alaska | Neon

☆☆☆☆ “Hulu’s miniseries adaptation of John Green’s debut novel about Alabama boarding school students benefits from a strong cast even if it struggles to crack the title character … The stretched running time captures a lot of what makes Looking for Alaska charming and powerful in the book while allowing for the possibility that some of the characters who seemed thin on the page might become flesh and blood.” — The Hollywood Reporter.

☆☆☆☆ “The biggest success Looking for Alaska achieves is in shading out its secondary characters … With eight episodes, there’s rarely a character who doesn’t get to reveal some more vulnerable layer. These cracks in the veneer sometimes take too long to show themselves — the middle episodes particularly sag in anticipation of the explosive final stretch — but they’re always welcome.” — Variety.

☆☆☆☆ “Looking for Alaska feels like a period piece that hasn’t fully reckoned with itself as a period piece, and some of its nostalgic impulses feel out of step with how brutally, gorgeously sad it is … But for the most part, it’s the rare adaptation that dismantles the original in order to build something that works better.” — New York.

☆☆☆☆ “If you can make it to the end without needing tissues, then you’re made of tougher stuff than a certain Rolling Stone television critic. But the catharsis feels earned … It’s a familiar coming-of-age story, but one executed at a high level.” — Rolling Stone.

☆☆☆☆ “It’s the point of lots of teen shows, and lots of the actual lives of teens, this desire to be older, freer, smarter, worldlier. The way this show enacts that frustration, though, often lapses into tediousness, closer to the worst goopy grandeur of Dawson’s Creek than the energetic cleverness of The O.C.” — New York Times.