The Five-Star Weekend Review: Great Premise, Just Not Fully Satisfying

Friendship can be transformative. They can also be extremely messy, and that’s the main concept of The Five-Star Weekend. The Peacock original has some heavy hitters with Jennifer Garner, Regina Hall, Chloë Sevigny, and Gemma Chan. These women give fine performances in The Five-Star Weekend, but the show itself doesn’t give them much to work with.

Garner plays Hollis, a woman dealing with an unexpected death. This role allows her to have some emotionally charged moments. Garner delivers them well.

However, overall, we don’t fully feel her grief. That’s part of Hollis’s persona, but The Five-Star Weekend could have increased the subtle ways it shows the weight of her grief without the big emotional dramatic moments.

Those little things exist in the series, but there are not enough of them. The story orbits around Hollis, but the other characters are often more interesting. Gigi, played by Chan, is a much more fascinating and nuanced character.

She lives with this big secret, but Chan plays her in such a sympathetic way. You know she did this bad deed, but you never hate her. And that’s a strength of The Five-Star Weekend. Most of these characters are likable, despite their bad deeds.

They’re complex women who aren’t perfect but are fighting too hard to assimilate to the standards they set for themselves. It’s not even about society pressuring these women; they’re the ones trying to please everyone.

The mini-series is very much trying to capture that classic genre of female friendship movies and TV shows, such as Steel Magnolias, Beaches, and Sweet Magnolias. It’s an okay version of that type of film or TV show.

However, it lacks some of the charm of the genre. These characters are so busy dealing with their own issues that you never feel like they are really looking out for one another until towards the end of The Five-Star Weekend.

The shows and movies this is trying to emulate work because the bonds feel unbreakable. Obviously, this Peacock show is kind of about these women trying to repair that bond. They have scars from the friendship mistakes of the past.

That’s fine as the main purpose of it, but you never fully feel like these are women who once had deep connections. Hollis and Tatum are supposed to have a sisterly bond, but you never quite believe it. Even when Hollis starts calling Tatum her sister, it feels forced.

We don’t think it’s the actors’ fault that some of these relationships don’t quite feel genuine. It’s the script telling us they are without doing much to show us. That can be the issue with adaptations.

Small moments that may seem insignificant to those adapting the source material can make the difference between a successful adaptation and a failure. By no means is The Five Star Weekend a failure.

Additionally, I am unfamiliar with the source material, so I can’t compare them. The show lacks a feeling of authenticity. It’s a fine series with a great premise.

It just doesn’t move you the way a show with such a devastating plot, amazing twist, and fantastic actors should.

We watched The Five-Star Weekend expecting a five-star series, but it is more of a 3.8 one. It’s fine and enjoyable but not something that changes us on a deeper level

What did you think of The Five-Star Weekend? Share your thoughts in the comments below, and don’t forget to leave your own rating!

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 Stream The Five-Star Weekend on Peacock.

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