Editor’s Note: If a film is, technically speaking, a drama … can it also be funny? And can it make you squirm? Freeline Media critic Mike Fried solves that riddle for us. Read on!
By MIKE FRIED
THE DRAMA
4/5
A couple, Emma and Charlie, are getting married in a few days and they are at a final tasting dinner with their best friends. There’s a point when they decide to describe their worst actions — and they all do, and it’s laughable until she tells her worst action. The group is stunned into shocked silence.
What follows is the most uncomfortable of dark comedies. I’d like to repeat the opinions of others that this is one of the best movies of the year, but I don’t think it is. It’s still very good.
Zendaya and Robert Pattinson give career highlight performances. They are tremendous in this film and they eclipse their best previous performances. Either one, or both, could get a nomination for best acting.
And it’s all due to a genius script by Kristofer Borgli that takes it for granted that the funniest moments in life are the ones that are the most uncomfortable — at least to other people, meaning us the observers. Perhaps one of the best visuals in the movie is after the secret is revealed and Emma and Charlie have to go to the photographer for test shots and Charlie can’t smile for the camera. He only grimaces and all he can do is show his teeth as if he was going to the dentist for a cleaning.
The script is perfection. When Charlie is throwing a hypothetical out to a colleague about her possible response if she learned her boyfriend did what Emma has done, and Charlie says “What if the person says they are a totally different person?” and the colleague responds “Isn’t that what a psychopath would say?” and it sends Charlie over the edge.
I mean, this movie takes the concept of “pre-wedding jitters” and flips it on its ass so that everything that can go wrong does go wrong. Every little glance or nod has the potential of being misconstrued — and often is. Things are said and done that create the chance of spiraling out of control — and they do.
Besides, Pattinson and Zendaya, Mamoudou Athie and Alana Haim shine as their best friends, a couple who are the best man and the matron of honor. They are terrific actors in their own right and Borgli’s script gives them a chance to strut their stuff, especially Haim’s Matron of Honor speech which is so cringeworthy, even if you didn’t know the backstory. Haim could potentially earn a best supporting actress nomination.
Life intruded so I didn’t get a chance to see this in the theater but, for me, this is the type of movie that works best on the small screen. It is a film whose power isn’t diminished watching it on a television screen.
It’s not the best film of the year — far from it. But it is a very good film. It’s not a comfortable film. It’s a herky jerky film but in the best possible way and therein lies the humor. And the ending is a bit facile.
Schadenfreude means the feeling of joy, pleasure, or satisfaction you get when something bad happens to another person.
And like Jerry Lee Lewis almost sang, “There’s a whole lot of schadenfreude going on.”
WATCH IT!
Michael Fried has no formal training in movies, except having watched over 26,000+ movies — if not more — in his 60-plus years on this planet, starting with Goldfinger as his first cinema experience. He knows what he likes and he knows what he doesn’t like, and it’s quite often different from the conventional wisdom. He knows that the best franchise is Godzilla and he loves action movies and comedies. He has not been nominated for any awards except some boring insurance awards which has no applicability to movies (with the possible exceptions of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and John Cassavettes’ Big Trouble). He is part of a team that won the 1980 SUNY Albany Trivia content by correctly guessing the question, “Who played the president of Klopstockia in Million Dollar Legs?” So he has that going for him, which is nice.
Contact Mike at moviemike3@gmail.com
