Robert Pattinson and Zendaya as a couple on the edge of getting married is the kind of movie I would never though be watching but considering both are some of my wife's favorite actors specially Pattinson from his Twilight days. The Drama is not exactly what you would call a romcom even though it builds around a wedding menu tasting where a simple game of sharing secrets turns into a complete nightmare, you really never end up knowing someone 110%, thats just a lie but one its better to keep taim and under control, not all secret need to be known at once. The dread is thick from the very opening where Charlie is at the kitchen table with his best man Mike, working through his wedding toast and Mike is already telling him not to say anything about their chemistry in bed in front of the family, and to be frank who would?!. The production quality is very good as expected, at least for now you wont see Zendaya or Pattinson making crapy movies, The Drama does not look like a staged set at all, at times it becomes very tense almost like you are sitting at that table and knowing every other placer cards and just sensing what is about to unfold, when nobody at the table has any idea what is coming. You dont have to invest much time just to realize that Charlie feels liek the kind of person who is just trying too hard and immediately regreting even before things really happen, its like he has this fight on his own head. One clear example is how he takes a picture of the book Emma is reading so he can pretend he also read it later and thats both funny and kinda sad too, so it kinda backfires. This is the kind of insecurity moments around him during the movie were you get more from his character and this is for sure by design, he is trying to make a good impression and things just keep getting more awkward. Even the reveal that Emma is deaf in one ear and never heard what he said when they first met turns into one more painfully human misunderstanding instead of some big movie moment. It is a slow burn that pulls you in because it takes those early memories, the first date, a first kiss at a museum, and uses them to show you why these two people are so in love before the caterer conversation destroys everything, and Charlie walking around his apartment in wedding shoes that are too small and visibly painful is one of the smarter visual choices in the whole picture because it says everything about a guy suffering in silence just to make the relationship fit.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33071426/
- Platform: PRIME VIDEO
On the other end of the rope on this movie we got Emma and this two are fire and gasoline put together, she got this secret that feels like a sword over her head and it creeps up because its not her but the nature of what she is actually hiding and Zendaya does such a great job at it, this role for her was not any quick acting she could pull off without putting some effort into it, from that tension on her face that tells you right away that her pants are on fire. On this role Zendaya did some serious physical and emotional work, specially during the scene where she admits at the dinner table that as a fifteen year old she came close to carrying out a mass shooting at her school, and the air just leaves the room because nobody at that table knows how to breathe after hearing something that dark. The movie goes back into flashbacks of her as a teenager posing with her father is rifle and it makes the threat feel real even though it happened years ago, and you see through those memories how completely isolated she was before she found something to connect with. That picture of her childhood room with music posters and the classic teenager decoration with small things that cary some sentimental value for her was kinda sadd too, it was the middle ground between anger and innocence and it makes you think about how close someone can get to something irreversible without anyone noticing. I feel like Im just describing the movie scene by scene as I go but to be honest I dont watch or post I would say too much about drama movies and series because of this, because its almost the same as comedy where you got to go through the scenes to describe the characters inner problems. The scene where her computer keeps trying to run a software update while she is recording a personal manifesto is great because it drops this dark comedy aspect right on top of a horrifying moment and that kind of tone mix is where the movie is most interesting, those why now, why me moments. It is the kind of script that forces you to keep reassessing the characters through a darker lens, like when Rachel the maid of honor loses it completely and turns the confession into something personal by reminding everyone her cousin ended up in a wheelchair because of gun violence, and that moment lands hard because it shifts the whole table.
There are scenes where the pacing feels all over the place, especially where everyone is just yelling about who is the worst person at the table and it felt draggy but the cast still made it watchable because Alana Haim is giving everything she has as Rachel, who is unlikable from the jump and somehow still gets to feel morally righteous while admitting she locked a mentally disabled neighbor in a closet inside an abandoned RV and left him there overnight. Sometimes the movie tries to add these deeper moments about empathy and trauma and they do not always land because the tone is so locked into black comedy that you lose the thread, like when the wedding photographer keeps joking about shooting the parents and the grandparents and nobody knows whether to laugh or get up and leave. The whole detour into Charlie is paranoia is a letdown because he starts seeing Emma with a gun in his imagination even during completely normal moments, and you watch him getting more and more wound up until he asks a coworker what she would do if her partner had once planned a shooting, and she just tells him to call the police which sends him spiraling. You get why the movie goes there but the way it plays out feels like it undercuts the tension the dinner table already built better and faster. The movie shows the fallout through small choices that land hard, like Charlie quietly deleting the word empathy from his wedding speech because he is no longer sure he understands who Emma actually is anymore, and that detail is one of the better quieter moves the script makes.
I feel a bit let down by the movie because it shares the same DNA as Dream Scenario where the concept is way better than the execution, something like what you saw on Instagram and what you got from Temu, but you can tell Borgli wanted to make something more intimate and personal while the social commentary underneath stays raw and uncomfortable during most part of the movie. The way they use the tight physical space of the restaurant to generate these moments of dread gives it a different style from other movies dealing with similar subject. You want to see if Charlie will actually walk down that aisle after he starts fearing that his fiancee might be someone he never really knew and the way the movie shows Emma is isolation over the years is the thing that stays with you during the second half of the movie. There is a scene where she is drinking a blood red smoothie in the kitchen and Charlie watches her from across the room with this quiet terror on his face while she is holding a knife and the movie does not play it for obvious horror, it just lets the image sit there and do its work to paint the picture. The script even goes to this strange place where Charlie finds an art book at his desk featuring women posing with guns and you see the moment it starts getting into his head in a way that implicates him just as much as it does Emma, its funny although the movie didnt fully commit with it.
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