Some notes to consider before you press play on Matthew Perry: A Hollywood Tragedy (now streaming on Peacock): First, it features zero interviews with family members or his primary Friends co-stars – the closest it comes is Morgan Fairchild, who played his mother in a few episodes of the megahit sitcom. It features so much B-roll, it sometimes resembles a free, fair-use video library. And it leans heavily on grungy paparazzi footage, with near-countless shots of him standing on red carpets grinning at photographers. Which is to say this documentary “film” doesn’t offer much substantive reporting, and you can get the same, if not more insight on this sad subject by reading Perry’s Wikipedia page.
The Gist: It’s not a terribly uncommon story: Beneath a happy facade of money, fame and success was an extremely unhappy person. From 1994-2004, during his run playing Chandler Bing on the sitcom Friends, Matthew Perry was one of the most famous people on Earth. At the time, he was open about his struggles with alcohol and drug addiction, and an advocate for seeking treatment. He started drinking at age 14, and a 1997 jet ski accident resulted in a painkiller dependency that put him in rehab. In the decades hence, he lived on the addict’s rollercoaster as he struggled to stay off the substances; one treatment that actually worked was ketamine injections, which, when administered under medical supervision, is an effective treatment for addiction and depression. But that became an addiction in itself. Perry obtained ketamine on the black market, and he had taken 27 shots of the drug in the three days prior to Oct. 28, 2023, when he was found dead in his jacuzzi.
This is a significantly truncated, linear version of the Perry tragedy. Matthew Perry: A Hollywood Tragedy somewhat needlessly cuts it up and jumps around the timeline, tacking on summaries of the lawsuits that followed his death, implicating two doctors, Perry’s personal assistant, a go-between and an infamous Hollywood drug dealer in his untimely passing – and notably, the film is riddled with disclaimers that many statements made are “alleged,” since legal action against two of the defendants is still pending. Director and executive producer Robert Palumbo pieces together the saga with firsthand commentary by journalists (ranging from the Hollywood Reporter to tabloids), attorneys, law enforcement officers and Fairchild, filling in any gaps with snippets from the Perry-narrated audiobook of his memoir, and archival reports and social media posts by some of Perry’s friends (including actor Hank Azaria, who shares how Perry helped him get treatment for his own addictions). It’s a sad, serious, upsetting story.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Matthew Perry: A Hollywood Tragedy is junky reportage in the vein of made-for-cable E! network celeb specials, and it lacks the relative credibility of stuff like Leaving Neverland or Framing Britney Spears.
Performance Worth Watching: It’s a bit surprising to see Fairchild participate in this insubstantial doc, to be honest.
Memorable Dialogue: “I genuinely don’t think a lot of people realize what fame really is.” – Katy Forrester, journalist from The US Sun
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: MP:AHT features so many secondary sources, it’s essentially the documentary version of a quasi-journalistic aggregation post. It flirts with exploitation, featuring multiple slo-mo shots of Perry fake-smiling his way through red-carpet paparazzi gauntlets backed by generic ominous music, Palumbo pasting Perry’s audiobook voice overtop for added “drama.” It seems as if the director (whose previous directorial effort is Cocaine Bear: The True Story), instead of pulling the plug on the project after failing to land interviews with a wide variety of notable sources, got what he could, slapped something together and called it a day.
It ostensibly functions to tell us the what-happened-next of the story of Perry’s passing, but its reporting on the wrongful-death lawsuits lacks substantive detail. The film ends up existing primarily to reveal a couple of sensational tidbits, including Perry paying $55,000 for 20 vials of ketamine, with the doctors illegally selling it to him betraying their predatory capitalism via text messages like “I wonder how much this moron will pay.” And then, the documentary’s release is premature, with legal proceedings still playing out, thus handcuffing any potential exploration of its implications. It’s an unfinished story, and is presented like an exposé despite having nothing new to reveal.
A more serious approach to the subject might explore the issues beneath the surface of Perry’s tragedy, issues that Palumbo never addresses in any depth: The price of fame. The addiction epidemic. Ketamine’s origins as a dangerous recreational drug before it was adopted for medical use. The fraught complexities of working as a celebrity’s personal assistant. Corruption within the medical system. The drug dealers lurking in the underbelly of Hollywood. The idea that society used to blame addicts without considering the culpability of their enablers. The film glances at these bigger issues, but shows no interest in further exploration or analysis. Even as a tribute to its subject’s talents, Matthew Perry: A Hollywood Tragedy is sloppy and dissatisfying. It offers very little substance, and sure seems to be using a high-profile death to get a few cheap streaming views.
Our Call: Tell me something I don’t know – and in a less exploitationist way, please. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.