‘The World According to Jeff Goldblum’ Review: It’s “Ellen Burstin'” with Potential

Disney+ is here! Yet another streaming service has entered the content war, and they have brought one of the internet’s favorite boyfriends and all around zaddy Jeff Goldblum along for the ride. In The World According to Jeff Goldblum, he appears to be loving every second of it. 

This documentary series, produced by National Geographic (now part of the Disney family after the Fox merger), follows the veteran actor turned living meme (in a good way, I swear) as he travails the globe in search of interesting topics that might benefit from the expository commentary of a flirty Jewish man in his late sixties. Our topic for this week: sneakers! 

Now you might be asking yourself, “Do I really need the star of beloved classic films like The Fly and Jurassic Park to explain to me what sneakers are?” The answer, my friends, is one hundred percent yes. 

Over the course of 30 minutes, we follow Goldblum as he discovers the existence of SneakerCon, the epic sneaker convention where collections can sell for tens of thousands of dollars and the line to get in is miles long, the Adidas product development lab, where cutting edge science apparently informs key aspects of sneaker design, a custom sneaker designer, whose sneaks can sell at up to $100,000 a pair, and a YouTuber who makes a living unboxing sneakers to the delight of the masses. 

Through it all, Goldblum is delightfully bemused. He approached the subject matter is a flirty, casual manner, like he may have found himself too deep into a discussion about designer sneakers with a nephew and decided he had to just get to the bottom of this whole “sneaker business” himself. He genuinely seems surprised and impressed, if not also a bit amused by how seriously everyone else takes sneakers, and the man can let off a one-liner like no one’s business. My favorite was the way he described SneakerCon as a place “Ellen Burstin’ with an international congregation to worship at the alter of Mr. Sneaker.” 

Not every moment lands, however. A notable clicker of a segment comes when he decides to spend some time playing street ball with some young men of color, since they are the real heart and soul of the sneaker industry? Not even Goldblum’s surprisingly agile performance on the court can save that moment from feeling cringy. 

The cringy moments are few and far between, though. For the most part, The World According to Jeff Goldblum is exactly the show you’d hoped it’d be. If he can make this much of a meal out of “sneakers are really something these days, huh?”, the future looks bright for this one. Maybe not worth a Disney+ subscription all on its own, but if you are subscribing anyway, it’s worth a look. 

The World According to Jeff Goldblum is currently streaming on Disney Plus. New episodes air every Friday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7aN9OkNl7U