Kritiken

Scorsese allows his subject to wax grandiloquent even when her outrage engine runs out of steam. The series is at times a potent valentine to a city lost, but you can only listen to someone kvetch for so long.

"Pretend It's a City" is a tribute to two things Scorsese loves, Fran Lebowitz and New York City, and that affection is contagious for much, if not quite all, of its running time. Even the places the series lags a bit are more a product of exhaustion from spending that amount of time with any other person, a sentiment I'm fairly confident Lebowitz would acknowledge.

["Pretend It's a City"] is hardly a high-concept show. Scorsese seems solely interested in putting a worthy frame around the living, breathing, eloquently complaining work of art that is Fran Lebowitz in conversation.

This is a very funny production, though I suspect it will play best amongst the denizens of the city Lebowitz loves. No matter how many pet peeves she has—and there are many—I never tired of hearing them... So, if the first episode hooks you, this is worth binge-watching.

"Pretend It's a City" certainly yields its share of amusing thoughts and wry observations, many of which are worth recording for posterity. But it would take a great pretender to act like it's worthy of the time devoted to them.

“Pretend It’s a City” offers a tantalizing snapshot of New York in full bloom, along with Lebowitz’s lively and unapologetic commentary on what it means to live there.

So much of the joy in watching comes from the pure quality of Scorsese’s reactions to Lebowitz, a figure who’s remained singularly herself for the past five decades and whose animated mannerisms, precise opinions, and rambling stories are given center stage here—for better and worse.

While proximity between director and subject sometimes proves limiting in a documentary, it works wonders here. The friends are great conversationalists—although nobody can out-talk Fran Lebowitz—and are comfortable with one another to let the discussion flow in directions that only friends can navigate after years of familiarity.

“Pretend It’s a City” passes quickly, but that’s more condemnation than praise. Nothing that Lebowitz says in it does more than provoke, and that’s a reflex that fades with overuse.