3.4/10. Woof. That was pretty awful. I think it was a bad idea for me to have watch the O.J. Simpson: Made in America documentary before watching this, because in the shadow of that stark, stellar series exploring OJ's life, the trial, and the state of race relations in Los Angeles and around the country, this dramatization just comes off like a bad soap opera. The acting is hammy if not outright laugh-worthy, and the dialogue is downright horrible, with clumsy expositional statements. Sarah Paulson is doing the best she can to polish a turd; John Travolta is doing...something, and Cuba Gooding Jr. has occasional compelling emotional moments when he doesn't have to spit out those horrid lines, but overall I've never seen so many decent actors come off so poorly. Whoever decided to tell the story this way was supremely misguided.
The best you can say for this out of the gate is that there seems to be a fidelity in the look of the characters and to the details of the major events (like the forensic investigator not wearing gloves), and that the Kato Kaelin character is pretty amusing, but man was this a slog to get through. Just bad plotting (in terms of what they focus on and how they depict it), bad acting, and bad dialogue almost entirely across the board. Again, bad soap opera is the best description that comes to mind.
