Grimly funny, mostly unvarnished and frequently proctological ... Aniston, like Keith Morrison and Perry’s eventual costar Bruce Willis, appears here as a warm, if half sketched, character. The more Perry likes a celebrity, the less he mentions them, as if out of professional courtesy ... Perry’s wryly conversational and self-deprecating style will seem familiar to Friends viewers, like a smarter version of Chandler wrote a book. He is easy to like, if prickly, and as easy to relate to as someone with multiple Banksys and a talent for repeatedly blowing up their own life could be.
Funny, fascinating, compelling ... There are some lovely stories ... I’d have liked a few more stories about the Friends years, and a few less about the work that came later. He goes a bit LA woowoo at times, and the words 'creative process' and 'brilliant source material' start to crop up. He thinks that his future will be about helping other addicts and hopes that this unflinching chronicle might play its part. You can’t not love this twinkly, sad, funny, broken man who right to the very end makes you laugh.
Admirably honest, sometimes cringe-inducing memoir ... His book is chiefly about the titular 'Big Terrible Thing': Perry’s alcoholism and painkiller/opioid addiction ... Elsewhere, there’s cringe-inducing griping (poor reviews; award snubs) and barely veiled bragging about his wealth and multimillion-dollar homes ... Perry doesn’t always come across as likable, but maybe that’s the mark of a truthful memoir ... It’s harrowing and revealing about the juncture where extreme compound addiction collides with mega-celebrity. It’s a scream of authentic human pain, albeit one sprinkled with stardust. You end up admiring his honesty.
