How do you write about Lena Dunham’s semi-autobiographical Too Much, a 10-part Netflix series that popped on 7.10, without stepping on a land mine or stepping over the woke-terror line by addressing the elephant in the room?
You start by praising Dunham’s writing, I suppose. (Right?) The dialogue is well honed and just right — wise and zeitgeisty and agreeably settled-in and never less than perceptive. I immediately felt at ease because of this talent, this signature, this attitudinal stamp.
And because of Megan Stalter’s believably dug-in and disarming lead performance.
But we can’t just sail along and pretend that Too Much, despite its emotional precision and candor and generally elevated vibe, isn’t a chubbo sell-job.
The truth is that I briefly gasped when a shot captured a partially disrobed Stalter in profile. I didn’t gasp because I wanted to earn or ratify my ayehole credentials. I gasped because a voice deep inside went “holy shit!”
Remember when the great Shelley Winters (who once told me I reminded her of an old boyfriend) ballooned up in the mid ‘60s? In Jack Smight and Paul Newman’s Harper (‘66) she was candidly and unapologetically described with the “f” word. Imagine!
Remember James Mangold ‘s Heavy (‘96)? And Catherine Breillat’s Fat Girl (‘01)? Remember that moment in Sideways when Thomas Haden Church described Missy Doty as “the grateful type”? The Stalinists would never tolerate this terminology now..
Too Much is an engaging, faintly downish but agreeably hip and certainly chuckle-worthy feminist romcom that is also (I’m repeating myself but an emphasis is warranted) an attempt to normalize.
Normalize what? Well, what has always seemed to me and tens of millions of others like an exotic concept, which is that obese, whipsmart, Type-A women and lean, open-hearted, chubby-chasing dudes often hook up and wind up happily entwined or even married. Not to be spoil-sportish but this kind of thing is not by any stretch a common relationship occurence, not even among size-affirming Millennials and Zoomers.
We all understand the basic appeal of curvy, zaftig and even a little Rubenesque action. As far back as the ‘70s a friend used the term “tons of fun”, and I knew exactly that he was joking about, conceptually speaking.
Speaking as a trim guy from way back, how many overweight women have I “been” with? One. Okay, maybe two. (And I don’t mean obese.) Did I mostly steer clear of calorically challenged lassies because I’m a bigot? It sure didn’t seem that way back then (i.e., the 20th Century). Nobody “slept” with fatties.
Backstory–wise, Too Much is about a moderately fetching Dunham-esque producer-writer-whatever (Stalter) who moves to London in the wake of a traumatic breakup with a longtime Brooklyn boyfriend (the trimly proportioned Michael Zegen) who’s dumped her for a model-esque hottie (Emily Ratajkowski).
The main order of business is about Stalter falling for a poor, well-sculpted musician and kindred spirit (The White Lotus’s Will Sharpe) who, in a non-wokey, normal-seeming world, would almost certainly be seeing a girl more his own size and shape. Or at least a zaftig rather than a tubby tuba.
What happens between Stalter and Sharpe is the meat and essence of the show, of course. Most of it romantically resonates and touches bottom and all that good stuff. (Including, I’ve read**, one or two harsh stand-offs.) Dunham is grade-A all the way. But how do you get around those gasp moments?
** I’ve only seen the first three episodes
