Bel-Air review: A dramatic Fresh Prince that's more ridiculous and less charming

"Nostalgia's a hell of a drug," says Carlton Banks (Olly Sholotan). And Carlton should know because all that Xanax he snorted literally starts pouring out of his nostril! Welcome to Bel-Air, a Fresh Prince update that replaces the laugh track with dramatic intensity. The reboot (debuting after the Super Bowl on Peacock) winds up overly sensitive yet also way too ludicrous, trapped between dueling instincts for soapy animosity and bland aspiration.

The concept remains unchanged from the '90s sitcom. A kid from West Philly moves across the country and up several economic stratospheres to live with his aunt and uncle, their kids, and their butler. The kid's name is Will Smith (Jabari Banks) — canonical, sure, and never not strange for a regular person to be named Will Smith in 2022 without other people constantly asking follow-up questions. The Bel-Air premiere remixes the original cheeky rap intro into an extended prologue about gang violence and police brutality. This Will is a top basketball prospect who winds up with a target on his back after a pick-up game goes the wrong way.

Will's mom (April Parker Jones) has a simple solution. She sends him to live with her sister Vivian Banks (Cassandra Freeman) in a gigantic Bel-Air mansion. And I do mean gigantic. In Fresh Prince, Will's aunt and uncle were rich, but sitcom rich, like the-house-is-mostly-a-couch-to-sit-on rich. In this new streaming world, Vivian and Philip (Adrian Holmes) live in a palace with a San Simeon-sized pool, and their ambitions know no bounds. He's running for district attorney. His daughter Hilary (Coco Jones) is an influencer with 75 thousand followers and counting. At school, middle child Carlton is a popular athlete. Youngest kid Ashley (Akira Akbar) seems nice, and will presumably take over the Federal Reserve in season 2. "I mean, look at us!" Carlton tells his siblings. "Pure, unadulterated Black excellence!"

I think that line is sort of meant to be ironic, the same way that Carlton is sort of Bel-Air's first major villain. Their life looks glamorous — closets full of fashion, an arcade room, friends in high places — and hides some notable secrets. Hilary left college last year and has lived at home ever since. Carlton takes rich-kid drugs, and Will's arrival sends his cousin spiraling for various reasons. Will sparks a relationship with his dad, upends the social order in school — and starts making moves on Carlton's ex-girlfriend. There remains the fascinating danger that Will is just more authentic than Carlton, the proverbial Black Guy on the Lacrosse Team, and their outright hostility to each other forms the backbone of the three Bel-Air episodes I've seen.

Carlton as Draco to Will's Harry? That's certainly an angle. One problem with Bel-Air is that there's a criminal back in Philadelphia who wants to murder Will — like, murder him until he is dead — which removes all the danger from the internal family squabbling. (It doesn't matter if your cousin is a goon when someone is trying to kill you.) Adding reality spoils this premise in so many ways; it makes no sense to seek top-secret witness protection in a house with a political candidate and an Instagram influencer. Peacock officially describes Bel-Air as a "dramatic take," yet the show bungles basic rules of drama. Shocking cliffhangers quickly get resolved. Philip keeps solving major legal issues with Lawyer powers.

As Will, newcomer Banks can be charming, though the show keeps awkwardly shoveling emotional weight on his shoulders. He suffers from personal trauma, and he's an amazing basketball player, and he has to be the Voice of Social Conscience when Carlton sees nothing wrong with his white teammates saying the n-word, and he helps Philip get back in touch with his roots just in time to impress the local power broker. It's a lot — and you have to remember that in Fresh Prince, there was no real distance between the fictional Will and the real Smith. You always felt the rapper-turned-actor standing a few steps back from the sitcom world with a cockeyed can-you-believe-this grin. There was a generosity in his confident sarcasm, a playful awareness that he could hit all these marks blindfolded. (Put another way: I make this look good.)

Even in the dramatic context, Bel-Air could use more of that sardonic spirit. There are stray moments of observational hilarity. In his first basketball game for Bel-Air, Will sidles up to a player on the opposing team. "You really from Malibu?" he asks. "You really from Bel-Air?" the guy responds, with a wink — another non-white athletic star from a rich white enclave. Conversely, too much of Bel-Air is just too much, representing that old rebooting instinct to make everything extra something. Do we really need a cool Carlton, a sexy Uncle Phil, or a sad Will? Bel-Air wants to modernize its source material, but I worry the main appeal for the post-Super Bowl crowd will be posting side-eye social memes. It's the opposite of fresh: Nostalgia from hell. C

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