REVIEW: Lily-Rose Depp's turn in The Idol is just the latest desperate grasp ... trends now
Not since Elizabeth Berkley's career-killing turn in the 1990s bonk-buster car crash 'Showgirls', has such a soulless mess of boobs, bad acting and dodgy lipliner missed the mark.
HBO's latest series The Idol – staring Lily-Rose Depp – may be full of clickbait shock tactics, but it's little more than a one hit wonder.
Erotic fantasy splashed with scathing satire was probably the pitch, but the result is flat and flaccid, hooked around the pretense of music-industry commentary but ending up just as grim and exploitative in its own right.
As the daughter of Johnny Depp, Lily-Rose, 24, undoubtedly has her father's high cheekbones but none of his on-screen charisma.
She plays Jocelyn, a modern-day pop puppet with obvious parallels to Britney Spears (nervous breakdown, check; former life as a child TV star, check) singing anodyne songs and surrounded by the usual coterie of money men.
Her mother has died, a world tour had to be cancelled and her life is unravelling - as evidenced not too subtly by her chain-smoking and private teary moments.
HBO's latest series The Idol – staring Lily-Rose Depp (pictured) – may be full of clickbait shock tactics, but it's little more than a one hit wonder
Erotic fantasy splashed with scathing satire was probably the pitch, but the result is flat and flaccid, hooked around the pretense of music-industry commentary but ending up just as grim and exploitative in its own right
Seeking an escape, she heads out on a night of binge-drinking and promptly falls for creepy club-owner Tedros, played by Abel 'The Weeknd' Tesfaye, as he bellows 'Let's get f***ed' across a crowded dance floor. What a charmer.
The pair get busy on the club's staircase before getting properly acquainted at her house: a sex session that involves a knife and ends with him almost throttling her - which, of course, our liberated sex-poppet enjoys immensely.
During a press conference at Cannes film festival last month, Depp and the rest of the show's team kept straight faces while attempting to bring some gravitas and introspection to the project.
With considerable understatement Depp referenced her character's 'occasional bareness' which she trilled could be seen as a metaphor for her bare mind.
Meanwhile, series-creator Sam Levinson was also trying to put a gloss on it.
When asked if the treatment of female sexuality in The Idol had gone too far, the filmmaker, best-known for writing the hyper-explicit teen drama series Euphoria, replied: 'We live in a very sexualized world especially in the States – porn's influence is strong and in the psyche of young people.'
That may be the case, but what Levison fails to acknowledge is that the ubiquity of porn in mainstream culture is only
