Glamorous

1. TV Series : 
2. Glamorous

The Reel Review

C-

A flamboyantly gay, gender non-conforming 22-year-old lands his dream career when the head of a makeup empire hires him away from his job at a shopping mall makeup counter. The mission? Help revive and save her stagnant company. Miss Benny (aka Ben J. Pierce) and Kim Cattrall star in this Netflix comedy series.

Glamorous is a dull, mostly brainless LGBTQ+ mashup of Ugly Betty, The Devil Wears Prada and Emily in Paris, with protagonist Marco as an annoying, self-absorbed wannabe social media influencer whose knack for applying makeup is exceeded only by a knack for making poor relationship choices. An excellent Cattrall, with a softer, more subtle take on her iconic Samantha/Sex in the City persona, is woefully underutilized amidst an array of underdeveloped, one-note characters. The only other standout – eye candy Zane Phillips, as her musclebound gay son Chad.

While it is refreshing to see a wide range of gay character types in a big series, the exceptionally bloated ten episodes in Glamorous could easily have been reduced to six and made it less tedious. Other than shining a light on the phony pandering of much corporate LGBTQ+ marketing, the uneven writing and low stakes storytelling is a frivolous, missed opportunity – disappointingly reductive and itself pandering to the LGBTQ+ community.

REEL FACTS

• Miss Benny is a non-binary social media influencer.

• Kim Cattrall will also appear in the season two finale of HBO’s And Just Like That.

• Actor Zane Phillips (Fire Island, Legacies) says one of the things that attracted him to the series was the fact that all actors playing gay characters are themselves gay.