Maniac review: Emma Stone steals everyone’s thunder in Netflix’s latest series
“Did I find you, or were you supposed to find me?” asks Emma Stone’s character Annie at one point in Netflix’s latest series Maniac. And this question is a recurring theme on the show. True Detective fame filmmaker Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Maniac almost plays in a loop, not very unlike the Bill Murray starrer Groundhog Day. The lead characters Annie (Emma Stone) and Owen (Jonah Hill) always seem to be reliving a version of their real world, Annie more than Owen. And they always seem to be discovering themselves and each other in flashes.
Maniac is primarily about two people Annie and Owen who volunteer for a pharma drug trial for different reasons. While Annie is depressed and wants to start afresh, Owen just wants to pay his rent via the money he will get in return for participating in the experiment. The drug trial, run by Dr. James K. Mantleray (Justin Theroux) and Dr. Azumi Fujita (Sonoya Mizuno), offers a fix to every life issue faced by the volunteers.
While Emma steals everyone’s thunder with her portrayal of the effervescent but mysterious Annie, Jonah downplays Owen to an extent where it doesn’t even feel like he is at the centre of the story anymore. This subtle performance mostly works in favour of the actor. Owen is schizophrenic and he has a difficult time distinguishing the real from the fake, while Annie deliberately fills her world with an energy that seems insincere.
Justin Theroux’s character, who has invented the trial and its entire process, carries a good weight of the story on his able shoulders. Justin is believable and hilarious as the scientist with some serious mommy issues. While the story is not entirely new, it’s told in a manner that makes it come alive, albeit in a somewhat messy fashion. But the messy part of it is explainable; when you juggle a lot of balls in the air simultaneously, one or two tend to drop to the floor. Maniac wants to talk about grief, love, commitment and forgiveness in nearly every episode, and for the most part, it does so wonderfully.
The road to happiness is often chaotic, but it doesn’t mean that we give up on the hope to attain it in some measure. Both Maniac’s story and execution seem to echo this sentiment.