‘Inventing Anna,’ From Netflix and Shonda Rhimes, Can’t Quite Untangle Its Knotty Antiheroine: TV Review
variety.comCaroline Framke Chief TV CriticWhen “Inventing Anna” taps into what made New York City scammer Anna Delvey (née Anna Sorokin) such a fascinating flashpoint, it’s easy to get sucked into its orbit.
When it gives its actors enough meat to sink their teeth into, it can be as fun a distraction as Anna’s wilder nights were for the various sidekicks she picked up along her way to true notoriety.
But much like its inscrutable anti-heroine (played with an even more inscrutable accent by Julia Garner), Shonda Rhimes’ new Netflix series becomes a more frustrating knot of contradictions the more you try to untangle it.In retelling Delvey’s salacious and undeniably delicious tale of besting Manhattan power players, the limited series is at its best when zipping through snappy “Scandal”-esque banter, but is also weighed down by oppressively long episodes. (The shortest clocks in at 58 minutes, while the finale runs almost a full hour and a half long.
Why the show didn’t just turn its nine rambling episodes into 10 more succinct ones, I cannot tell you.) With the help of an apparently generous Netflix budget, it spares no expense in its portrayal of jaw-dropping wealth, but still retains the flat cinematography of a broadcast network drama cutting corners.
Read more on variety.com
