“Internet therapy” is a new project and benefit of Lisa Kudrow, better known to the general public as Phoebe from “Friends”. The series has evolved from several series launched on the Internet for fun to a full-fledged movie, stretching for a couple of seasons with famous actors and excellent dialogue.
The format itself and the presentation of material are more like English TV series - a dozen short episodes per season, subtle humor, hiding in halftones, hints, raised eyebrows, intonation, deliberate camerainess of filming. In fact, in the frame there are always one or two actors exchanging lines. No behind-the-scenes laughter, music, under-the-belt jokes and other sitcom entourage. Only the format of the reality show and Skype dialogue between two faces in the windows on the computer monitor.
The main character is Fiona (Lisa Kudrow), a former middle-level financial manager, who quit or was fired due to some petty dirty trick. Remaining in the care of her husband-lawyer with obvious gay BDSM inclinations, Fiona decides to promote to the masses her brilliant idea of Internet therapy. To watch her unabashedly manipulating her patients is a pleasure, she gives way only to the impenetrable idiocy of a secretary with her former job and her mother, an egotist and narcissist to an even greater degree than she.
“Internet therapy” is like a mixture of the well-known and extremely serious series “Treatment” and English, namely English, “The Office”. As in Treatment, most of the time is occupied by dialogues between Fiona and patients, only psychotherapy takes place not in a cozy shaded office, but on the Internet, and not a full 50 minutes, but only three. Why three? Fiona herself admits that it makes no sense to spend an hour listening to the heresy that patients carry about dreams, childhood experiences and hidden complexes. After all, all really pressing issues can be solved quickly. If in the “Treatment” of poor fellow Dr. Weston went out of his way to help another patient, then here Dr. Fiona rather solves personal problems and shamelessly manipulates his wards. From the "Office" is taken that humor of hints, halftones, strange, ridiculous and uncomfortable situations when you do not understand whether to laugh or cry at the next episode.
Kudrow plays great. In her heroine mixed a slight shade of self-irony, aplomb, arrogance, eccentricity, to everything else added a horse dose of selfishness and self-admiration. On the radiant Phoebe of Friends, her heroine is not at all like, of the general features, except that the general quirkiness. From Friends to Therapy migrated one of the screenwriters and episodic actors - Dan Bucatinsky. She flashes in one of the series Courtney Cox as a psychic who came to support her friend. So is David Schwimmer. Among the famous actors can be mentioned Meryl Streep, who appears in the second season. She, as always, is brilliant and gets obvious pleasure in the role of a courtesan psychologist who must re-educate Fiona's husband from gay to a respectable citizen. The struggle and mutual dive of Kudrow and Streep on Skype is something!
It is worth watching the movie, although we must admit that it was shot on an amateur. Again, no voiceover laughter, no music, no special effects. Only mind-blowing dialogues with constant, glued smiles on their faces, which adds even more absurdity to what is happening.
9 out of 10