Review: 'Disclaimer' Ambitious, but Falls Short

Academy Award-winning director Alfonso Cuarón adapted Renée Knight's novel "Disclaimer" into a seven-part series premiering on Apple TV+.

The project evokes Akira Kurosawa's "Rashomon," unspooling the same story via different narrators with similar themes of violence and betrayal. Some interpretations in the series are soft-core pornographic and melodramatic, while others are stark and unforgiving. This adaptation still feels largely like a chick-lit bodice-ripper-type book, with the overuse of voice-over narration, all but taking the storytelling reins out of the hands of the impressive cast.

Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett plays acclaimed documentarian Catherine Ravenscroft (a job that author Knight held before turning to writing), whose life and reputation are assaulted after she anonymously receives a self-published book that eerily recounts an incident that happened to her and her son 20 years earlier during an Italian vacation. "The book was a work of fiction, but it released the truth from its ballast, allowing it to float up to the surface," says one. It also contains the disclaimer "any resemblance to real persons living or dead is not a coincidence," so Catherine feels "strangled by freshly-unburied memories."

Her "dimwit" husband Robert (a measured Sacha Baron Cohen) and young adult "junkie" son Nicholas (a brooding Kodi Smit-McPhee), already somewhat estranged from the successful, glamorous woman in their lives, become even crueler and more distant, eventually telling Catherine that "you don't deserve us."

Oscar-winner Kevin Kline plays retired teacher Stephen Brigstocke, the surviving father of a family involved in "the incident," now "tossing bombs" into Catherine's life to avenge his wife Nancy (an always impeccable Lesley Manville), who died of cancer and a broken heart, and his son Jonathan (a smoldering Louis Partridge), via social media catfishing, cancel culture, and more.

Time-traveling back and forth between dreary London and the bright Italian coast, the shots are lovely but the transitions between each storyline consist of iris in and iris out fades. Likely meant to evoke nostalgia in the liminal space, it feels corny instead. There are nosy cats weaving around everyone's households, foxes pop up in the outdoor spaces, and an insect is trapped in an inverted glass; again, these potentially revelatory choices feel contrived. Energy evaporates at the end as the fragile nuances of secrets and lies are all too quickly wrapped up.

"Disclaimer" premieres globally October 11th on Apple TV+.