” A strip club for women ! Somen “Steve” Banerjee just had a brilliant idea. As he seeks to attract crowds to his backgammon club, Destiny II, the budding businessman, who is also fascinated by the owner of Playboy, Hugh Hefner, decides to convert the place in order to offer the the fairer sex of Los Angeles the very first bar of striptease male in the United States. Now renamed the Chippendales, it was as wildly successful as its founder was ruthless, and became a place where women and men indulged in excessive sex, alcohol and drugs.
Created by Robert D. Siegel (Pam tommy) and inspired by the biographical work of K. Scot Macdonald and Patrick MontesDeOca, Deadly Dance: The Chippendales Murders, the Disney+ series explores the American dream of this Indian immigrant. Unsurprisingly, the fantasy of Somen “Steve” Banerjee, embodied on screen by the excellent Kumail Nanjiani (The Big Sick), will however quickly turn into a nightmare… Indeed, the choreographer he has just hired, Nick de Noia (extravagant Murray Bartlett seen in The White Lotus), does not take long to appropriate the international rise of the Chippendales whereas the company is quickly marred by crimes.
Whether Welcome to the Chippendales is, as a whole, disappointing and fails to captivate the viewer despite an intoxicating soundtrack (ABBA, Donna Summer, etc.), we must highlight the performance of an impeccable cast completed by Juliette Lewis, Annaleigh Ashford, Nicola Peltz Beckham, Quentin Plair and Dan Stevens.
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