‘Dont Worry Darling, Its Only A Mediocre Movie
Above : Florence Pugh stars in Don't Worry, Darling. (Photo/Warner Bros.)
Film Review : Don't Worry, Darling, directed by Olivia Wilde, starring Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Chris Pine, Olivia Wilde, Nick Kroll. Play at the movies.
Movie sequels rarely match the original features. But Hollywood continues to produce them.
Yes, Godfather II is a masterpiece, but a rare exception. For every Sting there's a Sting II. Every Saturday night fever comes with a survivor. And we'd all rather forget all the Home Alone movies starring Macaulay Culkin.
However, it's not just the sequels that have been filmed recently. They produce clear films. And when they don't, they take bits and pieces from old movies and invent something that tries to feel original, fresh, and even thought-provoking, but ends up just... well, derivative.
This roughly describes Don't Worry, Darling , the second film directed by actress-director Olivia Wilde, the first being 2019's BookSmart. Don't Worry, Darling is based on an idea by the Carey Brothers and Shane Van Dyke, and was adapted into a live-action screenplay by Cathy Silberman, one of the four BookSmart writers.
Set in the fictional town of Victoria, California (and primarily shot in Palm Springs, California), the film centers on Alice and Jack Chambers (played by Florence Pugh and Harry Styles, respectively) in Don't Worry, Honey, a couple who seem to have it all. They live in a mid-century modern house in a perfect 1950s neighborhood, Jack drives to work in a vintage car (first a Thunderbird, later a Corvette) and Alice stays home to work (do laundry, vacuum or clean do. bathtub). ) or hanging out with friends by the pool before heading home to make dinner and handing her husband a cocktail as she walks through the front door.
Right now they are having hot sex. But as if we in the audience didn't already suspect something was wrong. Alice is plagued by scenes of women spinning in circles like rockets, twisting their legs in unison, and then transforming into a giant dilated eye. And sometimes these visions seem very real, when the glass walls close around him, or when he seemingly randomly wraps his head in plastic wrap.
And what's not true is Frank (played by Chris Pine), the victory guru whose sermons cause a stir on the TV, which is always on while Alice cleans. At a party thrown by Frank and his wife Shelly (played by Gemma Chan), Alice sees her friend Margaret socializing, an act that begins to destroy the community's atmosphere of perfection.
When Margaret later kills herself and everyone, including Jack, tries to convince Alice that she's imagining things, there's no turning back. Soon he will go to the desert where no one is allowed to see what the secret of the victory headquarters is.
This mystery will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with what Rod Serling has revealed in various episodes of The Twilight Zone. Or what the Wachowski siblings created in The Matrix, not to mention the world Peter Weir first saw in The Truman Show. Add to that the feminist message of The Stepford Wives — the 1975 original, not the 2004 remake with its very obvious condemnation — and you don't worry, honey.
Whatever Wild brings to the screen sure looks good. The beautiful colors of Palm Springs contrast well with the San Jacinto Mountains. And the acting is good. Pugh – an Oscar-nominated actress who seems to be in everything these days – proves poignant as she holds her own as the voice of Stiles' Alice, while former Captain Kirk Pine adds just the right amount of evil to her iconic lead. . Wilde himself, who played Alice's rabbit, also fits the picture well.
It's just that there's a little worry, dear, we haven't seen. Even the tabloid headlines surrounding the making of the film — rumors of an on-stage romance between Wilde and Styles and Wilde and Pugh's public feud — feel dated and clichéd. Not to mention the ending, which is probably meant to be mysterious but feels oddly abrupt and incomplete.
So yeah, there's nothing to worry about, at least where Hollywood seems to be going -- that is, going down the same path it's gone down so many times before.
