Review Roundup: COASTAL ELITES on HBO, Starring Bette Midler, Sarah Paulson, and More!

"Coastal Elites" is coming to HBO! The special presentation debuts September 12 at 8:00pm ET/PT on HBO and will be available to stream on HBO Max.

COASTAL ELITES explores our current world of deeply divided politics and the universal pursuit of human connection, spotlighting five distinct and impassioned points-of-view across the United States. When the shutdown forces these characters to cope in isolation, they react with frustration, hilarity and introspection.

Bette Midler, Issa Rae, Dan Levy, Sarah Paulson, and Kaitlyn Dever star.

The critics have spoken...

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Amy Nicholson, The New York Times: "To cap these clever, spartan stories, "Coastal Elites" closes with a plain-spoken address from Kaitlyn Dever, playing a nurse who's just wrapped a 14-hour shift at Mount Sinai. "If you start crying, you'll never stop," she says. Her sigh holds no fury, but signifies everything."

Dennis Perkins, The AV Club: "And, as purgative and entertaining as Coastal Elites' witty and often wrenching confessions may be to those on the same frazzled and anxious wavelength, watching carefully written and expertly performed fairy tales of personal defiance and minor triumphs makes dull, boorish, and decidedly less clever reality that much starker upon reflection."

Helen Shaw, Vulture: "It's theatrical in its execution, too. The filmmaker Jay Roach directed the microanthology - five 15-or-so-minute speeches delivered straight to camera - and you would think at some point that the logic (and magic) of TV would have dominated the result. But no, HBO polish aside, a monologue always smells of the stage."

Caroline Framke, Variety: "'Coastal Elites' isn't nearly introspective enough to get past its semi-ironic title to say anything new about the people or feelings it's trying to examine. It's a well-meaning expulsion of liberal angst that should appeal to its key demographic of people who subscribe to "The Borowitz Report" and still laugh at jokes about Trump's true love being his daughter Ivanka, but few others."

Charles Bramesco, The Guardian: "Rudnick's writing encapsulates and celebrates the worst instincts in this class of viewer, affirming where it should be confronting. The Danish film-maker Lars Von Trier says that a good film should be "like a rock in your shoe", and the poet Cesar A Cruz declared the purpose of art "to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed". In this capacity, by the basic functioning of art, Rudnick and Roach have failed. As activists, doubly so."

Brian Lowry, CNN: "'Coastal Elites' wears its heart on its political sleeve, and the disdain for President Trump and ALL THAT he represents in this HBO special is searing and palpable. Yet while the five monologues presented don't seek to convert anyone, they do encapsulate the rage and confusion Trump's election unleashed within the zip codes that conservatives dismiss, while elevating shot-during-quarantine TV to new heights."

Matthew Gilbert, The Boston Globe: "Turns out there's not much irony in the title of HBO's "Coastal Elites." It gives us five separate character monologues steeped in rage about living in America during Donald Trump's presidency and the COVID-19 crisis. There's no implicit exclamation point in the title, no self-mockery is in the mix of emotions that keep this 90-minute production in full lather. There are cries of anger, fear, moral disgust, grief, and exhaustion from the five "coastal elites," as some red-staters call them, but nary a hint of comic self-awareness."

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: "'Coastal Elites,' which premieres Saturday, Sept. 12, on HBO, is comparable to one of those World War II movies filmed very early in the conflict, when it was still not entirely clear which side would win."

Kevin Fallon, The Daily Beast: "The people involved might argue that the series of five monologues, slam-dunk acting showcases for Bette Midler, Dan Levy, Issa Rae, Sarah Paulson, and Kaitlyn Dever, is more a reflection of the frame of mind of a certain subset of Americans at this particularly volatile moment in time. Sure, it's that. It's also a Molotov cocktail thrown at the White House in the form of witty discourse."

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: "Even in the more uneven and discursive monologues, the performers take care of business."

Watch the trailer for "Coastal Elites" here:

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