DON’T WORRY DARLING, A Triumph of Style Over Substance – Armessa Movie News

There’s a moment in Don’t Worry Darling, Olivia Wilde’s (Booksmart) second film as director, where the blandly named Jack Chambers (pop-singer-turned-actor Harry Styles) jumps onto a stage with a backing band to dance joylessly at the behest of the singularly named Frank (Chris Pine), the founder and CEO of an isolated ‘50s-inspired desert community.

For Jack, dancing onstage functions to underline a much-coveted promotion. For Frank, it’s an opportunity to pull a little more firmly on Jack’s marionette strings, reminding Jack that Frank singularly retains the absolute right to exile Jack and his wife, Alice (Florence Pugh), from their socially engineered utopia, for real or perceived transgressions.

While Jack knowingly, consciously, and deliberately trades his freedom, integrity, and autonomy for the promise of a “better life,” a life defined by clearcut, inflexible gender roles (women function solely as housewives and mothers, men as husbands, fathers, and breadwinners), a consumption-oriented, materialist lifestyle, and unquestioned obedience to Frank’s platitudinous rules and messiah-like leadership, Alice, like the other women who inhabit the carefully manicured, pre-fabricated town, has no choice, agency, or autonomy.

She, like every woman in the isolated town surrounded by desert and mountains, must follow the rules laid out by Frank: She can’t ask about Jack’s job at the so-called Victory Project, can’t leave the town to visit Jack at the mysterious compound where he works on “developing progressive materials,” and can’t question anything about their supposedly idyllic life together.

Except, of course, Alice does. She recognizes early on that she’s not in Wonderland. She’s not in Neverland for that matter. Jack’s love and affection come at a price she’s increasingly unwilling to pay: blind obedience. And when, after another resident, Margaret (KiKi Layne), suffers what appears to be a nervous breakdown, the same resident disappears permanently, Alice’s natural curiosity, not to mention concern for her departed acquaintance, starts to get the better of her.

Seeing an object in the sky no one else apparently sees does and pursuing it blindly into the desert Alice no favors. Worse, it brings Alice to Frank’s attention as another potentially troublesome obstacle to maintaining his version of utopia.

Wilde and her screenwriter, Katie Silberman (Booksmart, Isn’t It Romantic, Set It Up), working from an original story credited to Silberman, Carey Van Dyke, and Shane Van Dyke, relies on a plot-as-mystery-box structure to keep the audience guessing as to the true identity of the Victory Project and presumably, interested in the answer. Unfortunately, the resolution to the mystery, the who, what, when, and where surrounding Alice’s peculiar entrapment, isn’t particularly novel, led alone engaging on a basic, fundamental level.

In fact, Don’t Worry Darling leans into an idea that’s been used, abused, and exploited until it fell into justified disuse where it should have remained for the next half-century. When the revelations come — and they do come, all at once in tiresome, listless fashion — the audience has already figured out all of the answers.

The shrug-worthy result isn’t a surprise, far from it. Neither is Pugh’s undeniably enthralling performance as a woman slowly losing her sanity to an epic gaslighting campaign or Pine as the charmingly low-key cult leader and Alice’s central antagonist.

Despite a periodically fluctuating accent and occasionally over-emphasized line readings, Styles delivers a credibly believable performance without the need to grade on the usual singer-to-actor curve, while the remainder of the cast fill out their often sketchy, underwritten roles with the expected level of professionalism.

That alone might not be enough to recommend Don’t Worry Darling, but at least for its first hour, it’s easy for moviegoers to lose themselves in the meticulously reconstructed mid-century homes nestled inside a cleanly organized, planned community, and costume design that simultaneously feels both specific to its time and place and timeless.

Ultimately, though, all that eye candy isn’t enough to carry an underwhelming, over-familiar story, surface-deep pro-feminist themes, or painfully predictable revelations that once made, can’t lead fast enough to the end credits and the exit doors.

Don’t Worry Darling opens theatrically in North America on Friday, September 23, via Warner Bros. Visit the official site for more information.