Two out of four stars
Dearly beloved, let’s get this out of the way: The Drama is not for everyone.
The provocative A24 film, written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli, asks a charged question: How well do you know your partner? And the week of your wedding, is there anything that person could reveal that would make you question your entire relationship?
Charlie (Robert Pattinson) and Emma (Zendaya) are getting married in just a few days. While relaxing over a bottle of wine with the best man (Mamoudou Athie) and maid of honor (Alana Haim), the foursome get to talking about the worst things they’ve ever done — think cyberbullying and beyond.
No spoilers here, but the big reveal that happens just moments into the film, in theaters beginning April 3, is a gasp-worthy twist that upends all the rom-com marketing. While the initial sharp dialogue between the two couples suggests an intriguing, boundary-pushing drama, The Drama ultimately fails to become more interesting than its twisted opening moments, despite a handful of sick, delicious gags throughout its 105 minutes.
The black comedy clearly courts controversy — there’s already plenty of it online, and you can Google the opening twist if you’d like — but it’s unable to move much beyond surface-level shock, even with an assist from some particularly grisly moments. (Squeamish viewers, beware!)
Zendaya and especially Pattinson deploy their best movie-star charisma and settle into a disconcerting chemistry that intermittently succeeds in getting viewers to feel for them and their strange circumstances. Particularly great among the cast is a seething Haim (Licorice Pizza) as Emma’s maid of honor. She manages to perfectly calibrate the uncomfortable energy ricocheting around the movie and make it work, drawing unsettling laughs and shock from her handful of scenes. Alas, too often the movie strands its cast (including a funny, game Zoë Winters as the wedding photographer) in a script that circles the same provocation, leaving the final moments to never quite gel.
Weddings often bring disparate people and ideas together, but this one isn’t ever able to fully meld its deconstruction of the love plot with a uniquely American horror show.
The film is currently sitting at an 80 percent positive on Rotten Tomatoes. Below, what other critics had to say about The Drama.
The New York Post: “The Drama, for all its heat, is not perfect. I wasn’t won over by its climactic series of calamities that fall in rapid succession like dominoes at the end. However, most movies are completely forgotten by the time the credits roll. This one, like it or not, lingers for days. It’ll likely wind up one of the most controversial movies of the year.”
IndieWire: “The brilliance of Kristoffer Borgli’s The Drama, or at least the brilliance of the sketch comedy-adjacent conceit that it exploits to mixed results, is rooted in the fact that Emma’s confession is impossible to laugh off completely. Like the impish anti-romance that crumbles around it, the movie’s twist is both transgressive enough to be pleased with itself and also rooted in a reality that refuses to be dismissed as a bad joke. It’s shocking, yes, but mostly because it’s rare to see a mainstream film so eager to stick out its tongue and lick one of the last genuine third rails of American discourse.”
The Hollywood Reporter: “In disappointing reality, though, the film is merely a differently dressed rehash of very familiar material. It’s a deceptively simple dramedy of cold feet, of pre-wedding jitters, only given the stain of higher-minded, more piercing social inquiry. What Emma specifically discloses ultimately doesn’t matter.”
