Critics praise Lily James’ performance on Pam & Tommy. This film follows the famous legal battle over Tommy Lee’s sex tape and Pamela Anderson.
Hulu’s limited series of eight episodes is drawing mixed reactions from critics. However, the Downton actress’ portrayal, at 54 years old, of the Baywatch icon was ‘nothing less than a revelation’ according to AwardsWatch.
Allison Picurro, TV Guide’s TV Guide, raved that James’s portrayal of Anderson is “so mesmerizingly performed by James that all other characters feel underwritten in comparison,”
Arizona Republic has slammed the entire project for being “all over the place” or in other words, “a mess.”
Bill Goodykoontz, the reviewer, wasn’t shy in slamming the series’ misfirings. He then cited a scene where Tommy talked to his penis and it responded.
The series, which streamed on Hulu starting February 2, is trying too hard. He concluded that the series tries to be too many things at once — shocking, enlightened and funny, serious, serious, revealing and intimate, or whatever else.
The Hollywood Reporter suggested viewers might not feel comfortable watching the ‘with a Pamela Anderson photo reclamation project, from which Pamela Anderson does not stand to benefit in any tangible manner’.
“We’ve made a mess out of celebrity in this nation,” Daniel Fienberg, THR’s Chief Television Critic, stated. Pam & Tommy captures that,’ Daniel Fienberg, Chief Television Critic at THR, said.
AV Club suggested that’maybe it could’ve succeeded without Anderson’s participation. The show is a violation of many others.
Lacy Baugher made a similar statement in Paste Magazine, stating that she felt ‘uncomfortable and borderline complicit’ in the mess created by the couple’s lives.
Meghan O’Keefe, Decider’s executive producer, applauded the “provocative storytelling” but didn’t think that everything in the series worked.
She did not forget to mention Anderson’s ‘phenomenal Lily James’.
Rolling Stone praised it as “whip-smart”, “funny” and “a poignant reexamination of an event once thought to be a punchline for tabloids or Jay Leno monologues.”
Cassondra Feltus, Black Girl Nerds, wrote that she laughed, gasped, and even shed a few tears. It’s one of my favorite miniseries in recent years.