User reviews

I think the story can be a good lesson on scam awareness, making it worth watching. However, the nearly three-hour runtime felt unnecessarily long to me. The start of the first episode successfully hooked me, but the second episode suffered from repetitive dialogues, filler monologues and seemingly stretched expositions, which all came across to me as redundant.

Showing the efforts made to track down the scammer was intriguing, but I don't think that literally every single detail needs to be depicted so exhaustively. For example, in the second episode, there are many scenes of the journalist selfie style portrait video showing him monologuing to his phone. It's redundant because the journalist was already being interviewed by the film crew.

Towards the end, it felt weird because the journalist seemingly makes all this to be about himself.

It is an interesting story which purports to tell the audience how one audacious individual was able to impersonate and scam hundreds of individuals, but the author of the articles and book which the documentary is based upon gets caught up in trying to discover the motivation of the person who perpetuates the lies and crimes. People are hurt financially & psychologically by the scammer, but he isn't a tortured soul. He's a psychopath. Anyone who's been in a relationship with one knows how this ends. You can view the perpetrator through a sympathetic lens and never understand what's really going on. The depths of their depravity is beyond comprehension. Suffice to say evil exists.

The story is interesting and it's amazing what some people are capable of doing. What ruins the experience is the music. There is literally not a second without it and on my TV the music has the same volume as the narrators. What's wrong with the sound people in the industry? There are almost no movies anymore, where the music and effects are not double as loud as the voices. Don't you have TVs at home or neighbour's? I'm looking at you, sound designers. But this is the worst so far. Most of the time I was reading the subtitles because the voices are really hard to understand. I don't care if it's technically difficult with all the different sound formats and devices. Solve this. 8 stars for the story, 2 for the sound design, so I'm giving six (I know that this is mathematically not correct but I don't want to thrash an actually good documentary).

"Hollywood Con Queen" (one season (2024), 3 eps, 1 hr, Apple+) This short run documentary uncovers the fraud of dozens of low-level Hollywooders perpetuated by someone at first thought to be a woman of voice impersonations but turns out to be someone else, someone who's "sweet" and "light on their feet" but obsessively annoying, too. My takeaway from this is how the US DoJ/FBI once again leaves it up to others to develop a case till it rises to their standards of interest. Even with plenty of evidence of fraud presented to them, the FBI did not take on the case till it hit the $1 million level. This is especially egregious since the con man was operating internationally which should've pushed them to immediate involvement, whatever. The conclusion of the tale is not really solid, some justice is achieved, but the tale doesn't end with a conviction and sentencing, that still is yet to play out apparently.

I've watched three con documentaries on Apple TV+ (this one, plus "The Big Conn" and "Escape of Carlos Ghosn") and this is definitely the best of the three. The three-episode length is just about perfect. It's filled with enough intrigue, tension and surprises to keep you engaged, although some of the b-roll of the detective and reporter does get a bit repetitive. Still, by the end, it's enough to give you both sides of the story and allow you to make your own decision about the motivations of the con man. He is certainly an interesting character, definitely a narcissist and probably a psychopath, but someone who never actually ruins the lives of any of the victims. In fact, a lot of the people who get taken are lucky they weren't targeted by someone a lot more evil who could have bankrupted them and destroyed their lives (at least none of the ones who were featured in the documentary were financially ruined). In any case, this was an interesting series. If you watch and enjoy it, the other two mentioned above might also be of interest to you. And, if you want to get a little more out-there and watch a docudrama that's better than all three of these, watch WeCrashed, which is a fascinating study of a con man (and his wife) who are still out there committing the same nefarious deeds. It's a great watch.

My. God. Could you calm down with the constant background music? It gives the sense of total overproduction and ends up making the whole experience feel low budget and desperate to seem modern and hip. Dynamics lack because the music tries to make the whole show feel like a constant climax. Feels like being talked down to as a viewer really.......................... Such a shame cause it's obviously an important story and made by someone who really tried to be thorough. And a bit too thorough too - very slow paced making you feel like they were desperate to stretch the story into as many episodes as possible.

OUTSIDE of the fact that it's painstakingly slow and boring (albiet fascinating which, granted, seems like contradicting but alas, is true) I'm taken aback by the fact that we are preached to and partially admonished by the filmmaker and subjected to HIS opinions - and why we need to hear a layman opine on psycology (as opposed to an actual psycologist or pyschiatrist) is beyond me - I get he's got a ton of skin in the game but maybe this is a scenario where 'you're too close to it' dude, leave it to the professionals - ya know and not to be a dick or anything but it's definitely a detractor and why I've given the project a sad sack six

Now on a personal note - I don't want to appear insensitive, cause I'm not, especially towards this subject - in fact, I myself have been affected by a similar situation with an ex girlfriend - that has forever altered my life - so when I say that this is small potatoes, and the only reason a) we're hearing about it and b) it was important enough pursue - was because the leverage of pressure used to gain confidence was the intitial impersonation of these EXTREMELY WEATHLY AND POWERFUL people - and let me also clear up for u the concept that it was not done for the money but for control - peeshaw - this idea illustrates the naiveté of the film maker and even the investigators - the money WAS the driving force - the perpetrator knew that to keep it chaotic and keep the sums reasonable that a) it's more believed and b) authorities would be FAR less likely to engage - this is common for Intelligent fraudsters - also this was done on a continuous scale - so it's not negligible amounts over time - furthermore we keep hearing how complex and time consuming the grift was and how not worth the effort - again I say peeshaw - this is that person's career - and it's not all that much effort - the internet takes care of the documents and the hardest part is keeping track of everything - but the perp is clearly highly intelligent and skilled, so they merely exploit and hone scams that 'make logical sense' to them - of course there is components of psychopathy and those of loneliness and feelings of anonymity - obvious tendency to want to demonstrate superiority and punish those who were endeavoring to succeed where they hadnt even attempted but... over all again I say 'small potatoes' that the documentary ITSELF has made a mountain out of a molehill -only the breath and length of the scam makes it noteworthy

And again, I'm extremely empathetic - however not impressed

(and on a final comical note - isn't it amusing that these high end private investigations are basically just adept at search engines and paying close attention to social media?!) (Sheesh what a world we've devolved into)