Emily in Paris (2020)

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐  

Netflix's new romantic comedy series Emily in Paris is a welcome offering and delightful distraction during the present depressing times of Corvid 19. Lily Collins plays the Emily, a young and over enthusiastic American thrown in to work with a publicity media company in Paris. Much of the humour is themed around the contrasting values and culture between America and France. There has been many bad reviews given complaining about how cliched and exaggerated the France culture and people were made to come across. I personally don't find any problems with that as afterall isn't that what comedy is suppose to be? If I were to be critical about it, I would add that the depiction of Chinese people in the series was also grossly inaccurate and even a tad degrading. They had a Korean actress, Ashley Park, playing the role of Emily's best friend, a Chinese staying in Paris, and she is made to squeal something quite unintelligible to be passed off as mandarin! I actually found this hilarious and treated this as part of the show's brand of hunour. In fact, Ashley Park is such a wonderful actress, she made her character so bubbly, and spontaneously funny, that she almost always grabs the limelight whenever she appears.

Now back to Emily .. Lily Collins is a wonderful and beautiful actress and I really liked her here. This role is however, honestly very undemanding and she breezes through it effortlessly. Emily is very one dimensional and very predictable but given the premise of the plot, this works perfectly for the show and her fun moments are infectious. The rest of the supporting cast are attractive and eye candy to the already fabulous backdrop of Paris and France. The streets and buildings and skylight of Paris look picture perfect in every shot and if you don't like the show, you can at least savour the scenery.

The show's themes predictably centres around romance, food, wine drinking, fashion, and sex. Stay away if none of these interests you. Otherwise, sit back and enjoy binge watching all 10 of its half hour episodes. The series concluded all too quickly as we sadly have to wait another year for the follow-up season to see what happens to Emily's love life and work life ...