"Disclaimer" Doesn't Work

Minor spoilers ahead.

I don't think there's another streaming project from 2024 with credentials like "Disclaimer," the Apple TV+ limited series.  It was entirely written and directed by celebrated filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron, whose last film was 2018's "Roma."  Its cast includes Cate Blanchette, Kevin Kline, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Lesley Manville.  The cinematography was split between Emmanuel Lubezki and Bruno Delbonnel, who have fourteen Oscar nominations between them.  Upon learning about the show, I couldn't understand why Apple didn't give this, of all its projects, a bigger marketing push.  However, after finishing the whole seven-episode series, I'm sorry to report that  "Disclaimer," despite some very good specific scenes and performances, does not work as a series.

The first few episodes are very good, setting up the characters and the premise.  An accomplished writer, Catherine Ravenscroft (Blanchette), is delivered a book one day titled The Perfect Stranger.  The story is clearly based on an event from her past, twenty years ago, when she and her son Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee) went on vacation in Italy, and young Catherine (Leila George) met a British tourist named Jonathan Brigstocke (Louis Partridge).  Jonathan died under mysterious circumstances on that trip, and his grieving father Stephen (Kline) holds Catherine responsible.  The book, which was written by Jonathan's recently deceased mother Nancy (Manville), is only the first salvo in Stephen's plan to destroy Catherine's life and avenge his son.   

After the first three episodes of "Disclaimer," I was fully onboard with what it was doing.  All the characters and their relationships seemed promising.  Several extended flashbacks were intercut with events in the present day, going into the motivations of the various players.  Lesley Manville was a standout for her portrayal of a mother destroyed by the death of her son.  Blanchette had a nail-biting confrontation scene with Sacha Baron Cohen, playing Catherine's husband Robert.  By the fifth episode, after watching the least plausible and most unpleasant part of the plot be dragged out for multiple episodes, I was ready for the series to be over.  After seven episodes, it was clear how shoddily constructed the whole enterprise had been, with one of those twisty endings that depended on several characters being completely ineffectual at communicating with each other.  

I understand the idea behind "Disclaimer."  It's trying to examine the impulse to assign blame and vilify people, to root out secrets and solve mysteries in the wake of something tragic happening.  Since "Disclaimer" is about a prominent woman being disgraced and canceled, I expected that it was going to be similar to "Tár" at the outset, with Cate Blanchette as a similar, complicated character.  Instead, the actual main character is Stephen Brigstocke, with Kevin Kline playing him like some evil, geriatric Count of Monte Cristo.  His ability to manipulate people and orchestrate all of these ridiculous schemes is far beyond my ability to suspend disbelief.  The implausibility was exacerbated by the fact that it took multiple episodes to finally drop the other shoe and point out that we had clearly only been getting one version of events up until the last episode.  As for Catherine, she's disappointingly flimsy - a plot device ore than a person. And even with the worst interpretation of her motives, her actions hardly come across as rage-worthy.

"Disclaimer" would have almost certainly worked better if it were half its length, or even if it were refashioned into a feature film, but I'm still not sure it would actually be good.  The production is very high quality, with the gorgeous, dreamlike seaside scenes in Italy being a particular highlight.  The character work, however, is very far from where it needs to be.  Major characters like Stephen and Robert are positively cartoonish, and I suspect that it's only due to great efforts from Blanchette and Manville that the women manage to come off better.  The whole story is this hopelessly contrived tangle of bad tropes and clumsy melodrama that is too self-serious to let loose and enjoy its own absurdity.  There's a campy genre version of this show that would have been much more fun.         

Instead, "Disclaimer" is one of the worst things I've seen from everyone involved, and an unfortunate disappointment after so many good shows on AppleTV+ this past year.  

---