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With Jason Bateman and Michael Costigan's long-term partnership with Netflix, the streaming service gained another crime-comedy series: Florida Man, a seven-episode odyssey. The series comes from creator Donald Todd (This Is Us) and does not lack style or eccentricity. However, its sloppy pacing and over-the-top gimmicks simply come short in the holistic picture.
Following the life of Edgar Ramírez's Mike Valentine, a gambling addict and former cop who has dug himself quite a generous hole, the series focuses on the exploits of the famous Florida Man meme, which has now become the identity of the state. With a clever plot that emulates the meme with some offbeat additions, the series is filled with twists, bizarre plotlines, and some over-the-top action that could have been salvaged if it was slightly shorter.
With seven hour-long episodes, Florida Man is rather long, with plenty of takeaways, but not all necessary ones.
Florida Man is a refreshing take weighed down by plenty of downsides
The worst part about Florida Man is perhaps the innate potential that the series failed to live up to. Kicking off with the very interesting character development of Mike Valentine, expertly portrayed by Ramirez, who perhaps gave his career-best performance as the former cop stuck in a frenzy after a simple mission asks too much of him, the series does not take long to dive into the meme-repercussions of the title.
The primary plot device sounds rather simple. After finding himself in debt, Florida native Mike works as a henchman for mob boss Moss (Emory Cohen), another expertly played character with a lot of layers to peel. When Moss's girlfriend, who also had a brief romantic stint with Mike, runs away to Florida, his boss sends the reluctant native back to his homeland, something that results in pure chaos.
Initially, Florida Man seems very fast-paced, with a lot happening only in the first episode, but soon the plot divulges quite a bit. This is the Achilles' Heel of the story. The sloppy pacing, which varies almost too much between episodes, and sometimes even within a single episode, makes it difficult to watch the series as diligently as the makers would expect.
One of the key factors for this is the unnecessarily long premise. The series does come around to its best once more, but that happens only in the final two episodes, which are hugely entertaining. The absurd twists are engaging, at the very least, and the story spinning out of control is something many would love to witness.
With some great performances from the lead actors and Netflix's signature framing and colors, it is quite an intriguing watch for at least half of its total duration. If the series was maybe three or four episodes long, it could have been one of the more compelling entries from Netflix.
Sadly, Florida Man is a refreshing take weighed down by plenty of downsides, which cannot be ignored when judging its caliber. It is still a fun watch but not one that would remain in the memory for a long time.
All the episodes of Florida Man are now streaming on Netflix.
