Palm Royale review: Sex, gossip, Ricky Martin mixing cocktails… check in to this spa now, writes CHRISTOPHER STEVENS
Palm Royale
What happened to Ricky Martin? You remember when he, a Puerto Rican pop star, had a big hit 25 years ago with the impossibly catchy Livin’ La Vida Loca.
It turns out he was cryogenically frozen at the turn of the millennium and has just been thawed out to play a vengeful waiter at America’s snobbiest spa club, in the hilarious Palm Royale (Apple TV+).
Suspended animation in liquid nitrogen is the only plausible explanation for 52-year-old Ricky’s age-related features, but the same can be said for most of the cast.
Comedian Kristen Wiig, 50, bounces around like a teenager, climbing over walls and through windows on her way up the social ladder as the relentlessly cheerful Maxine.
Even Carol Burnett looks great at 90, playing a billionaire in a coma.
In fact, everything about Palm Royale looks great. Loosely based on Juliet McDaniel’s novel Mr & Mrs American Pie, it is set in the super-rich Florida enclave of Palm Beach in 1969, drenched in color like a David Hockney painting.
Everything about Palm Royale looks great. Loosely based on Juliet McDaniel’s novel Mr & Mrs American Pie, it is set in the super-rich Florida enclave of Palm Beach in 1969. Pictured: Amber Chardae Robinson
The nastiest of the bunch is Dinah (Leslie Bibb, pictured), who snarls: “Your handbag is from Gucci’s 1960 collection. Gives you a little away.”
Comedian Kristen Wiig, 50, (pictured) bounces around like a teenager, climbing over walls and through windows on her way up the social ladder as the relentlessly cheerful Maxine
The swimming pools are so blue and Maxine’s outfits (‘borrowed’ from the comatose Carol) are so pink and so yellow that your eyes start to tingle, as if you were swallowing a handful of E numbers.
But while Maxine orders a bright green grasshopper cocktail from Ricky, the other ladies in the club smell deceit. Although she longs to be part of their world, Maxine is not a member. They turn on her like a bunch of mean girls, fighting to humiliate her.
The nastiest of the bunch is Dinah (Leslie Bibb), who snarls, “Your handbag is from Gucci’s 1960 collection. It kind of gives you away.”
But Dinah has her own problems. She is pregnant by the club’s tennis professional. If her boorish husband finds out, he will divorce her, which would be a disaster as she waits for him to have an affair so her lawyers can take him to the cleaners.
It could all be painfully hateful and superficial if Maxine weren’t such an irrepressible optimist.
She is determined to get Dinah to like her and confide in her. She is proud of her own heritage as a beauty pageant queen from Tennessee, and she is genuinely in love with her dimwitted husband, whose wealthy family has disowned him.
The era is richly evoked with vintage cars and clothing, and enough hairspray to scratch a hole in the ozone layer
Palm Royale sends it up, with Laura Dern (photo) as a terrifyingly serious womanizer
The era is richly evoked with vintage cars and clothing, and enough hairspray to punch a hole in the ozone layer.
President Richard Nixon is constantly working on the cathode ray tube. Even the title sequence is playfully kitsch, with paper cut-out figures designed to remind us of the classic opening scene of another ’60s retro series, Mad Men.
Mad Men celebrated the birth of feminism. Palm Royale sends it up, with Laura Dern as a terrifyingly serious womanizer.
Maxine doesn’t see the point of feminism. She gives a pep talk to the girl doing her nails at the beauty salon and urges her to find a rich husband: “Don’t you want to grow up one day and not work?” Keep it up, sister.