Despite the five-minute ovation, reactions to The Idol aren’t so hot

We could’ve seen it coming a mile away. As is the case with so many standing ovations at Cannes stories, the time people in formal wear spend smacking their hands together doesn’t tell us much. It seems like every year, every movie (or in this case, a TV show, for some reason) gets perfunctory lengthy applause. The applause is empty calories. For actual meat, we need those sweet, sweet tweets (mmm… sweet, sweet tweet meat) to offer knee-jerk first reactions to a TV show most have already made up their mind about: The Idol. It’s either a provocative, satirical deconstruction of Hollywood fame or an exploitative mess sent from the TV gods to ruin social media for a few weeks. Thankfully, those tweets are finally starting to come in, and they seemingly confirm the latter.

Perhaps, the most descriptive comes from New York Times writer Kyle Buchanan, who likened the show to “a Pornhub-homepage odyssey.” That seems in line with what we’ve seen of the show so far, as well as some of the behind-the-scenes sexism the show’s creators, Sam Levinson and Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye, stand accused of. Still, it was one of the kinder responses. The Playlist’s Gregory Ellwood called the first episode “eh.”

“Some funny scenes at the beginning, nice music video-ish stuff. Levinson doing his long-running rip-off of Nicolas Winding Refn,” Ellwood tweeted. “The second episode. HATED. Sexist, pseudo-porn. I just… no. There are only five episodes.”

Still, that doesn’t tell us that much about the show. For that, we have IndieWire’s Eric Kohn, who likened the show to someone putting “Black Swan, Succession, and Secretary in a blender and let it rip.”

“By the way, this doesn’t put it on the level of any of those!” Kohn wrote in a follow-up post.

Variety’s Ramin Setoodeh captured the vibe in the room as people were busy applauding away for five freakin’ minutes. “Lots of strong reactions to #TheIdol out of #Cannes2023 — ranging from ‘I hated it’ to ‘the TV version of clickbait’ to ‘I don’t need to see any more of Lily-Rose Depp naked,” Setoodeh tweeted. Too much nudity isn’t something we’re used to hearing, so it really says a lot about how much of Depp we see and how often. Though, Buchanan did warn us that the show stars “Lily-Rose Depp’s areolas.” Fellow Variety correspondent Tatiana Siegel also shared some of the conversations happening after the screening: “The Idol convo in the theater. ‘I hated it.’ ‘Garbage.’ ‘I’m disgusted..’ ‘She’s way better than I thought she’d be.’”

One thing everyone is in agreement about, the discourse around this show will be a nightmare for everyone with an internet connection. One need only look at Variety’s description for what viewers are in for:

Revenge porn photos of bodily fluids on Depp’s face, masturbation with ice cubes, nightclub-owning scam artists and vile Hollywood sycophants populated the first two episodes of the already-controversial series.

Maybe it’s not too late to just pull the plug on Twitter altogether before this show comes out. The Idol discourse comes for all of us on June 4 on HBO.