In the Bronx of 1977, the neighborhoods are so criminally neglected that they resemble a war zone, so romance and beauty feel a lot less hackneyed in the hands of the abandoned kids of New York City.
The word ‘get down’ in the TV series is the term for the sections of songs that are better than everything that surrounds them.
“The Get Down” may be a hackneyed metaphor for life. But Luhrmann is a master of conflict and twists, as his Red Curtain film trilogy attests.
The TV series is a beautiful mess, a flawed show interspersed with moments of remarkable brilliance. It was unprecedentedly expensive and time-consuming for parent company Netflix; the result of which is a half-baked creative ambition that seems to have gone off the grid.
There is a deliberately off-putting messiness to its execution, with cartoonishly blended tonal shifts from cheesy caricature to gritty tragedy.
Old footages from the ’70s are knitted together with elaborate production design. Some scenes are filmed like musical numbers on “Glee;” and some are like action sequences from Bruce Lee’s kung fu movies.
Critics think it is easy, and even understandable, to see in the approach of “The Get Down” nothing but a patchy, inconsistent flight of fancy, where it ought to be tough; sentimental, where it ought to be smart; and undercutting the viewer’s expectations at every turn.