‘The Afterparty,’ From Chris Miller and Phil Lord, Is a Comedy Acting Showcase in Which Sam Richardson Shines: TV Review

variety.com:

Caroline Framke Chief TV Critic“The Afterparty” isn’t exactly subtle about its conceit. The new Apple TV Plus comedy opens with Detective Danner (Tiffany Haddish) telling a room full of suspects that “we’re all stars of our own movie — the same thing could happen, but you see it in a different way.” In order to solve the murder of their obnoxious classmate Xavier (Dave Franco), she says, they’ll each have to tell her their version of how their ill-fated high school reunion went down — or, in an even more blunt line, that she wants to hear their “mind-movie.”Each subsequent episode of “The Afterparty” features a different character retelling the same night in a way that lets creator and director Chris Miller take on a different genre each time. (Miller’s longtime writing partner Phil Lord, with whom he worked on “Into the Spider-Verse,” “Clone High,” and more, executive produces here.) Determined former nerd Aniq (Sam Richardson), for example, remembers the night through a rose-colored romantic comedy lens that makes his every misstep still seem somewhat charming.

His rival Brett (Ike Barinholtz) sees himself more as the ass-kicking star of an action comedy, while class president turned hot mess Chelsea (Ilana Glazer) feels stuck and paranoid in a straight up horror movie.

In one episode that proves both narratively important and creatively ambitious, Aniq and Brett’s love interest Zoë (Zoë Chao) directly addresses the fact that her character’s been something of a cipher by admitting that she’s been having her own identity crisis.

To illustrate her inner confusion, she tells Danner her story by animating it into a cartoon, which fits Zoë’s background as an artist, makes her a fuller person instead of some romantic.