Florida Man

By Hap Haggerty, Content Coordinator

Florida gets a bad rap. The beautiful beaches, plentiful sunshine, pirate treasure, and Disneyworld seem to draw far less attention than all of the serial killers, rednecks, drug trafficking, shark attacks, and general malfeasance that transpires upwards of constantly in the Sunshine State. The Netflix series Florida Man, however, manages to encapsulate all of the aforementioned in a would-be entertaining double cross hi-jinx heist scenario.

Not sure if the weak link in Florida Man is the story or the writing. Even in 2023, a recovering gambler/former Pittsburgh cop from Florida pushing 50 (Edgar Ramirez) embroiled with a barely 30 something vixen on the lam (Abbey Lee) a hard sell. Throw in a typecast-cop-network-TV-star (Anthony La Paglia) to portray the criminal kingpin and former town police chief father of the post-middle-aged gambling cop and it gets a little trickier. Inexplicably. the Pittsburgh cop has an Hispanic accent but the father cop doesn’t. Neither does his sister who looks even more Hispanic. Aren’t they all from FL? To make matters even more confusing, the vixen on the lam has a doppelganger (?) and they’re all in on a plan to excavate a Penske truck full of Spanish gold doubloons from a sinkhole in Orlando. 

Kitsch caper only goes so far. What might have been a fun funny story boils down to under-the-top camp and an underwhelming array of supporting characters. We finished Florida Man, hoping all along that the colorful setting, gorgeous lead cast, and rogue Anthony La Paglia would pull it off off in the end. They do not.