Seth Rogen’s Star-Studded Showbiz Satire ‘The Studio’ Is a Shrewd Send-Up of Modern Hollywood: TV Review

variety.com:

Alison Herman TV Critic The Apple TV+ series “The Studio” is, on several levels, a contradiction in terms. It’s a TV show about the making of movies.

It’s an act of self-indulgence that works as a shrewd parody of self-indulgence. Most of all, it’s a lament for a lost era of extravagance, investment and originality — that is itself the product of extravagant investment in an original idea.

This irony is, foremost, a comedic strategy, and a successful one. Matt Remick (Seth Rogen), the newly promoted head of the fictional Continental Studios, may fancy himself the second coming of legendary Paramount chief Robert Evans, but the reality of modern Hollywood delivers one rude awakening after another.

Hence the contrast between how “The Studio” presents Matt’s life — in an endless procession of single-take scenes, preceded by a faux-film-grain title card and tricked out with vintage cars and earth-toned outfits — and what he actually spends his days on: IP slop (a Kool-Aid Man origin story) and horror schlock (Johnny Knoxville hunting zombies who infect their prey with projectile diarrhea).