A new Starz hourlong about a hotel in 1959 Miami Beach, “Magic City” comes to us from Mitch Glazer, the writer-director of 2010’s “Passion Play” (3% positive on Rotten Tomatoes). His prior screenwriting credits include 2003’s “The Recruit (43% positive), 1998’s “Great Expectations” (38%), 1993’s “Three of Hearts” (56%) and 1988’s “Scrooged” (17%).
If you’re not expecting much from a man with that resume, your expectations will be met. “Magic” follows “Playboy Club” and “Pan Am” as a series set in the “Mad Men” era but bereft of anything approaching “Mad Mad” mastermind Matt Weiner’s genius.
The series stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan (“Watchmen,” “Grey’s Anatomy”), Olga Kurylenko (“Quantum of Solace”), Steven Strait (“10,000 B.C.”), Christian Cooke (the U.K. miniseries “The Promise”), Alex Rocco (the hotel owner in “The Godfather”), Danny Huston (“Wolverine,” the “Titans” movies) and Jessica Marais (“Legend of the Seeker”).
Morgan plays Ike Evans, owner of a lavish but financially troubled beachfront hotel, the Miramar. He is reluctantly partnered on the facility with mobster Ben “The Butcher” Diamond. One of Ike’s sons has political ambitions and wants to bone one of the housekeepers; the other is sleeping with the mobster’s third wife and may have designs on his own young stepmother.
The scenery’s nice and the nudity is plentiful, but the dialog is awful and the characters are boring. This is a series that has nothing new or interesting on its mind.
... a mess, filled with paper-thin characters and clichéd dialogue and storylines. If not for the appealing lead performance by Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Ike, large stretches of the series would be unwatchable, even with all the lovely visuals. …
... Everything about "Magic City" shows a lack of depth, and the pacing is almost glacial. …
... The narrative is all mystique and not enough mystery, a moody melodrama that leaves no cliché of the mobster genre untouched, or improved. …
... the fate of Ike's hotel, and Ike, and everybody else here holds no sway or suspense. Glazer has built a beautiful edifice here, but he still needs to get some life into the place.
The San Francisco Chronicle says:
… the writing is a painfully failed attempt at replicating the dialogue of a 1940s noir film or classic crime fiction. You could tell the show creator to can the writer, except that they are the same guy: Mitch Glazer. … Huston is so bad, he actually makes his half-sister look good chewing scenery every week in "Smash." …
... becomes inexorably dull — a forced exercise in deceptions, killings, affairs and under-the-table deals. … suffers from endless predictability and a lack of creative storytelling. It’s too easy to get into — and get out of. …
... the show is gorgeous, but it needs to reveal some substance. …
... leaden dialogue … paint-by-numbers plot. ... Through it all, there isn't a plot twist you won't see coming, or a character you ever want to see again …
… Early on, there’s enough intrigue and style in Magic City to keep the viewer wanting more, but it’s not as fully realized from the get-go as shows like Mad Men, Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad. …
… checking into the Miramar Plaza is an offer you can afford to refuse.
10 p.m. Friday. Starz.
