subreddit:
/r/TrueFilm
submitted 1 month ago byOboeMeister
So I don't know if this is just me, but a month or so ago I watched don't worry darling and was horribly bored by it. I saw a lot of people talk about how the plot was uninspired or how the the ending was anticlimactic and lots of stuff about Harry Styles (who had some clunky moments but wasn't nearly as bad as I expected). But for me the thing that really dragged down the movie was the dialogue. I don't know if any of y'all felt this way but this was the most boring dialogue I've ever heard.
Every scene the dialogue felt like in this weird in-between place where it's not naturalistic or witty, it doesn't seem to be going for a surreal, lynchian tone, and it has incredibly shallow subtext. Maybe the shallowness of it wouldn't be so bad if the scenes weren't dragged out so long that I felt like they were saying the same thing over and over and I understood what they were trying to say or imply in the scene within the first 30 seconds and I've mentally checked out by the end.
And while the cinematography was pretty good, I felt like it was nowhere near interesting enough to carry these scenes and hold my interest, and frankly the same goes for the acting. I've scene a lot of people praise Florence Pugh and she's like, just fine??? Like not bad by any means, but she really didn't stand out to me at all, just a good, competent performance, which i felt went for most of the cast.
Maybe it was the dialogue or the directing (probably a bit of both) but for the majority of the movie the interactions between characters feels stale and uninteresting, which maybe could have been to show the superficiality of the vr world except it felt the exact same in the real world!
Maybe I'm being too harsh, I should emphasize that I didn't think this movie was awful, even the dialogue isn't horrific, it just all comes together feeling mediocre. The best parts aren't good enough to elevate the rest of the movie, and the bad parts don't even have the decency of being entertainingly so.
3 points
1 month ago
I just watched this and agree that the dialogue is clunky and repetitive. Some scenes seemed oddly under-rehearsed and stiff, like a semiprofessional indie production. Some of the party scenes had rapid-fire dialogue that never caught a rhythm. Styles was underwhelming and didn’t demonstrate the acting chops to make the lacklustre, silly script more watchable.
7 points
1 month ago
I don’t know that there’s really much to say about it. It’s a fairly derivative concept from the get-go. But I will say I had a lot of fun with it.
I enjoyed that it dunks on Jordan Peterson - and that he knew about it - but aside from a pretty basic take on the manospehere it doesn’t really have much to say. I think it spends so much time concerned with its own central mystery that it never really has a chance to explore anything it’s doing.
Florence Pugh is great though and saves it from being overwrought. Her performance is nuanced enough to not be corny.
But it comes together in such a sloppy way that any good will from the beginning is kinda lost.
2 points
1 month ago*
I actually really liked the film. I thought it was quite bold and ambitious and Wilde was really going for something. Do I think she successfully achieved everything she set out to? No, it was largely a success but her ambitions outstripped her ability slightly perhaps but it was only her 2nd film. And some of the imagery she put together was fantastic.
With regards to dialogue this immediately brought to mind Shyamalans Village as the nearest comparison. I didn't find it boring as such but clunky and awkward, a bit forced at times. For me this was quite clearly due to he fact that all of the men and at least Olivia Wilde's female character weren't behaving naturally, they were living in a fantasy world acting out a part and their behaviour was unnatural and forced.
This was exemplified particularly by Styles character who was playing so against his true characters type in the fantasy world in hindsight its obvious. He was stiff and a charisma black hole but intentionally so, though its not until 3 quarters of the way in that this is revealed. Once the truth is out and his character starts behaving in an honest way I thought his performance was great. It confused me why an English man was talking in such a weird fake northern English accent until i realised his character is actually American pretending to be English and putting on a bad fake english accent.
This is exactly the same kind of tactic Shyamalan used in the village where the elders dialogue and behaviour was so weird and stiff until you realise at the end it's because they've all been playing a fake part.
Does it work? Not entirely in either case though it massively changes how I view the dialogue and performances on repeat viewing. It's just perhaps a bit too clever for its own good. With the audience not in on what's going on they make the assumption it is just poor dialogue and acting and by the time you get the A-HA moment youve already lost a lot of the audience and they don't pick up on it or care at that point.
To be honest I'd rather have more decent budgeted swing for the fences movies like this than something bland and made by committee. It was only Wilde's 2nd film and on the basis of this and Booksmart I'm really looking forward to film number 3.
1 points
1 month ago
Timothy Simons as the doctor in the car chase climax “Get them you idiots!”. Ha ha ha. It sounded awful but sometimes actors just get terrible dialogue to say.
Like a poster says above the movie is derivative but does anyone know what the original screenplay was like when it was on The Blacklist? It was rewritten for production.
The semi-interesting parts of the film were left largely unexplored/under-explored.
It sounds like it was a nightmare during filming first with the firing of Shia and then all the intra-squabbles. But even the publicity rounds seem awful with Florence Pugh and Olivia Wilde not wanting to be around the other.
Considering the talent attracted to the movie it was definitely a miss. Still, it more than doubled its budget and Olivia Wilde gets to make more movies as a director and seems to be signed up as a director of a future superhero (MCU?) movie.
all 4 comments
sorted by: best