![]() A number are cribbed from influences such as David Lynch and other practitioners of “something funky’s going on in suburbia,” but I think Wilde is unfairly coming under fire for such a practice when every other A24 dude is doing the same. But for all its messiness, I think the movie is generally an engaging watch with some brilliant images. The sophomore slump is a tale as old as time, and I do think Wilde fell into the trap of indulgence that can come after an initial, big success. But in trying to just focus on the movie, on DON’T WORRY DARLING as a work of art, I came to the conclusion that it’s…just fine. If you drown out all the production and media drama, from the Shia LaBeouf recasting (although it is certainly understandable to focus on Wilde’s bizarre throwing under the bus of/defense of/plea for LaBeouf, a known abuser, to come back to the movie) to the Florence Pugh relationship to the Harry Styles romancing amid/following a breakup with Jason Sudeikis to Cannes hullabaloo and a probably fake Styles spit on costar Chris Pine…OK, that’s a lot to drown out, and there’s even more. Now, for all of my negative criticism of Wilde so far, I’ll actually defend her in the case of DON’T WORRY DARLING, the product of her fall from grace after the success of and infatuation with the director’s debut feature BOOKSMART. FREE HUGS has shades of visual creativity, from its opening tracking on a grocery store conveyor belt to the framing of a workout tape on an old TV, but it’s mostly cringe without the comedy. Wilde pulls in Justin Long and Aziz Ansari as supplementary characters in this 24 minute affair (the former is much better than the latter in this context), but lead Jaclyn Jonet isn’t able to bring the humor out of her depressed but also angry character. ![]() Tonally, FREE HUGS is all over the place, and the jokes quite simply don’t land. Maybe IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA (2005-present) can pull it off, but Wilde, in her first time behind the camera, certainly couldn’t. It’s part of a trend of shorts, movies, and TV shows that really doubled down on characters that aren’t very likable for the sake of comedy. ![]() ![]() So for that reason and others, FREE HUGS is very of its time. The comedy, which follows a miserable woman dealing with a breakup, also features some very overt product placement/references to the Clarisonic skincare device, which I understand is no more. Both of her shorts were commission pieces, and FREE HUGS, being her first director’s credit of any kind, was for the magazine Glamour. At first, what Wilde did as a director wasn’t very promising. ![]()
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