For some reason, Zendaya is everywhere now. She’s in Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” with Robert Pattinson. She’s in “Dune: Part Three” with … Robert Pattinson. The fact that the two of them keep appearing together was what intrigued me to watch “The Drama,” a new A24 movie in which Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Pattinson) are a happily engaged couple, until something bad is revealed about one of them, which throws the wedding — happening in a week — completely off track. Up until the plot twist, the movie was absolutely beautifully executed, with A24’s signature impeccable color grading and cinematography, although I kept on thinking about Tom Holland (and A24’s pivot from an indie production company to whatever they are right now, but that’s another article).
Exactly what that something is is not even that important. It could easily be replaced by any bad thing one is capable of, and the movie does not delve into the specific nuances of that thing that much. Instead, it focuses more on how the couple navigates the revelation and how the support characters react to it. The extent of issues that this movie pokes at, from Freudian psychological questions (Ah yes! The repressed will emerge again!) to moral hypocrisy, navigating modern love, mental illness and performative activism … is insanely wide. However, all it does is poke. It does not dig deeper, and it does not fully go into the drama either. There’s not a single scene in the movie that was actually that dramatic. The level of drama is akin to some story you’d hear about a cousin or a friend’s older sister, that would be worthy of an hour of “Oh my god, she did what?” but not a movie with two of the biggest stars in our generation.
Lacking a more precise metaphor, allow me to quote letterboxd user @faisty: “This film felt like one big conversation I was eavesdropping on over my shoulder.” What makes eavesdropping fun is that you can talk about it in real time, which is not a very polite thing to do in the cinema. “The Drama” is the kind of movie that’s perfect to watch at home or in your dorm with friends or loved ones. It is certainly not a suitable date movie unless you want to have an excessive “Would you still date me if I …” conversation with your date. For me, sitting in the cinema and going through it felt excruciating because of the overwhelming second-hand embarrassment and nervousness I felt — definitely intentionally created by the soundtrack.
“The Drama” is not a bad movie by any metric — I laughed throughout it, sometimes awkwardly, sometimes not, and it’s set in Cambridge, MA. Still, the film is just a lot of missed opportunities, just as the couple missed so many chances to discuss the bad thing, preferably before they got engaged. All I can hope is that the couple can solve their problem in “Dune: Part Three” (Or “The Odyssey”, or … great, Robert Pattinson is not in the third season of “Euphoria”)! Overall: 2.5/5.
