MANIAC tells the stories of Annie Landsberg (Emma Stone) and Owen Milgrim (Jonah Hill), two strangers drawn to the late stages of a mysterious pharmaceutical trial. Things do not go as planned.
A Netflix Limited Series from Cary Joji Fukunaga. MANIAC arrives September 21.

Maniac | Official Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6cDDmk-O5A

First episode is just okay. It picks up and gets better around episode 3 and 4. Overall, I like this series and think both Stone and Hill were really good.

i started episode one thinking it was a movie, when it came to the end i was like why does it feel like an episode is about to end...then the credits rolled lol

this is a really cool show and im really liking it. i love the mix of technology and music and style from different eras. the jonah malone character is hilarious.

i think i have two episodes left but this might be a show i rewatch to catch things i missed.

cool to see "ruth" from ozark in another show playing a different character. while watching ozark i was thinking i couldnt see her as anything but white trash but this show changed that. girl definitely deserves some recognition.

I love the pace, the 30 minute episode's length and it being a limited series with no need to set up subsequent seasons. Something happens every episode and there isn't much filler.

The world building was exciting in the beginning but it seemed to lose steam early on. There didnt seem to be anything "new" about the world past the first couple of episodes.

I don't love Jonah Hill. I think he wants to be a serious leading man way to much. I loved everyone else. Especially Sally Field, the main Asian lady and Jennifer Anniston's husband.

Part of me getting old is being underwhelmed by things that people find as groundbreaking and new because I have been around long enough to recognize inspirations for things that youngsters don't recognize. This was a mashup of Brazil, Enternal Spotless Mind (whatever it's called), Black Mirror, Inception, DreamScape and a couple of other things.

Some of the ideas seemed underbaked. I didn't fully see the connection between Emma Stone and Jonah's character. We should have gotten the impression that they had spent like a lifetime together inside the study (slight spoiler: Instead we learn he spends a lifetime with some other character which he walks away from inexplicably).

I think this will definitely connect with people who have dealt with a certain type of trauma.

Anyway, my wife and I eat up this series in a weekend and it left us very satisfied at the end so that certainly counts for alot.



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"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

Both Hill and Stone got to flex a lot of acting chops in this too...must've been fun for them to be part of all those segments across different genres.

Good stuff all around

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twitter: @BrosefMalone

It jumps between Inception, Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind, The Matrix, Legion, 2001, Hollywood parody films and a whole lot of weirdo 80s iconography that it's always kind of hard to be sure where influence ends and inspiration begins. The style is off the charts, Theroux is hilarious, Stone kills it, Hill can be a weak link in the animus but I think he plays Owen himself pretty well. I'm also becoming a bigger and bigger fan of Billy Magnussen.


There's never a dull moment here and I'd highly recommend it to anyone who's interested in what all those influences might blend into, but part of me wishes it had focused a little more on what it acted like it was in the beginning rather than what various tropes of screenwriting practically demanded it become by the third act. To me that's part of what I'm getting at in the subject line; everything that it borrows from catches you off guard in some way and leaves you tipsy for the entire ride, but in its journey from A to B to C it kind of reneges on its promise that it won't only be clever, but different.

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