While many of the recent rise-and-fall, true-story tech unicorn company tales follow a familiar pattern of hubris, greed, seductive hustlers, narcissistic splendor, delusions of grandeur, and similar ideas of FOMO hype, (“The Dropout,” and “Super Pumped” to name a couple), the terrific Apple TV+ series “WeCrashed” stands out with its fascinating mix of entrepreneurial capitalism, new-age spirituality and an inspiring love story that fuels its protagonists to great heights. Created by Lee Eisenberg (“Good Boys”) and Drew Crevello (“The Grudge 2”), “WeCrashed” hits the sweet spot of hilarity, camp, compelling drama, and genuine bruising emotion that Ridley Scott missed the mark on with “House Of Gucci.” The show threads an incredible needle of tone: humor at the overbearingness of its leads, but sincerity for what they accomplished, and even empathy for their various failures and damaged circumstances within the golden gates of privilege.
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“WeCrashed” is led by two outstanding performances: Jared Leto as former WeWork CEO and serial entrepreneur Adam Neumann and Anne Hathaway as his wife, partner and former WeWork Chief Brand and Impact Officer Rebekah Neumann. Given the myriad stories of the way WeWork crashed and burned, the recklessness of their business strategy and approach, and how they exploited employees and nearly everyone they worked with, it would be easy to excuse an absolute scorching indictment of the Neumanns. And while the messianic complexes, monstrous self-admiration, and the collateral damage their arrogance causes isn’t let off the hook, “WeCrashed” is a fair portrait of these tech grifters, providing sympathy when necessary— especially with all the misogynist crap Rebekah has to deal with as a woman in the tech world—and allowing room for the admiration for what supercharged confidence can create.
“WeCrashed” starts at the beginning of the end—when the WeWork board has had enough of Adam’s wild and irresponsible shenanigans, ousts him and kills its initial public offering (IPO)—but quickly transports to the start of the story. Adam (Leto) is a struggling hustler or “serial entrepreneur” as he tells anyone and everyone within earshot. As one potential venture capitalist tells him while turning down his concept living idea, “If you could bottle your confidence, I would invest in that [but] I think you’re either going to be a billionaire, or you’re going to be arrested.”
Adam spends time trying to sell people on three different ideas — “a collapsible heel that will disrupt the fashion industry!” — and makes hilariously bad first, second and third impressions with Rebekah at rooftop parties, borderline stalking incidents, and a horrible first date. She sees right through his line — his state-of-the-art bullshit artistry — and wants nothing to do with his bewitching conman game. But when Adam bull rushes the yoga class she’s teaching and calls out the way her boss is exploiting her, she soon falls head over heels for the way he’s able to crunch the numbers, make her supervisor quake in fear, and make a deal for her all in the name of love.
Soon, as Adam partners up with Miguel McKelvey (an outstanding Kyle Marvin, from “The Climb”), the eventual co-founder of WeWork, and creates Green Space (a kind of WeWork 0.1), the dynamism of their pairing starts to make waves (though arguably with Adam as sale pitchman and McKelvey on grunt work).
They eventually create WeWork, the famed coworking office space company and brand that somehow thinks it’s going to radically change the world and “elevate its consciousness.” The preposterous sentiment behind the endeavor is laughable, but the profound ideas of “connecting humanity,” while ultimately superficial and hollow, is exactly the kind of bon mot that suckers in investors. WeWork’s story is essentially the unbelievable tale of how a global brand became worth $47 billion in under a decade, and how its valuation then dropped over $40 billion in under a year.
But the “WeCrashed” central thesis is its love story and the pairing of Adam with Rebekah, the muse and motivation to “manifest” his ideas into being. In crazy, stupid love and both big dreamers, they are radiant supernovas of confidence, ego, and self-absorption that allow each other to blossom in ways they would not have had they not super-connected into a Voltron force of pretentious — but potent — self-determination and will.
United, fueling each other with passion, ideas, and brio (often times just feeding each other with hilarious horseshit that manifests into self-delusion), the pair becomes indomitable and WeWork begins to flourish. Other characters also enter the story: Anthony Edwards, as a WeWork senior board member Benchmark Capital colleague and Adam believer, O-T Fagbenle as a Benchmark Capital bulldog hired to reign Adam’s ludicrous spending in, plus appearances by actors such as America Ferrera, Peter Jacobson, Ajay Naidu and more.
But the series is ultimately rocket-fueled by the intoxicating, larger-than-life personalities and performances of Leto and Hathaway. The former uses his already-notorious self-esteem to arguably play the relentlessly manic role he was born to play—a rock star tech Jesus with a delectable, sing-songy Israeli accent to boot. He’s ridiculously good, funny and self-aware, but Hathaway arguably trumps him in the way she is channels GOOP personified; the ostentatious hilarity of the vagina-scented candle and all their outrageous wellness products they shill manifest into one beautiful, breathy, affected organism of “consciousness-raising.” If Leto is the charming con man, Hathaway is the one behind the Bullshit Boutique, tranquilly watering drops of cucumber honeydew into their Eden garden of (superficial) horseshit. As the series evolves, it maintains space for their ups and downs and the way Rebekah becomes overshadowed as Adam ascends.
“WeCrashed” moves with great dynamic energy too, bolstered by the crisp direction of lead filmmakers John Requa and Glenn Ficcara (“Crazy Stupid Love, “Focus,” “Whisky Tango Foxtrot”) and additional contributing filmmakers like Corey Finlay (“Thoroughbred”), Tinge Krishnan (“Shadowscan,” “The Mosquito Coast“) and Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini (“American Splendor”). But arguably the chief creative force of the show’s energetic vitality is the propulsive synthy-futuro score by Christopher Nicholas Bangs which is thrilling in the way the theme percolates with promise and then bursts into full animated banger mode when Adam and Rebekah’s self-assured conviction really lifts off. When was the last time a TV theme was stuck in your head like a cinematic brainworm? Add Bangs’ “WeCrashed” refrain to the list.
Neumann is told to dream big in “WeCrashed” and for that, well, the Neumanns are guilty as charged. Adam and Rebekah are dream builders, but their organic, green juice specialty store of lies and manipulations eventually crashes hard. But the “rise and grind!” irony and woo-woo scrumptiousness of it all is arguably the most entertaining and amusing of all the recent tech tales of wild ride ascensions and calamitous falls. [A-]
