In Review: ‘The Drama,’ ‘The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’

The Drama
Dir. Kristoffer Borgli
105 min.

The premise for The Drama has been treated as a spoiler, which could kindly be understood as the distributor wanting to keep a provocative surprise under wraps and less kindly be understood as the distributor wanting to keep a provocative surprise that freaks them out under wraps. This has led to a lot of artfully written early reviews that dig into the performances, the themes and the filmmaking while remaining vague on the details. Out of respect for them—and for you, the Revealer who’d rather stay in the dark—this first paragraph will offer my spoiler-free synopsis and review. In The Drama, Zendaya and Robert Pattinson star as a soon-to-be-married couple whose relationship starts to unravel when a disturbing secret from her past comes to light. It’s a film about trust and change and our capacity to overcome hang-ups and truly accept each other, and it’s a compelling high-wire act, wonky at times yet committed to living in discomfort. 

Okay, now let’s talk about the movie. The premise-averse are advised to see it and come back later. 

Writer-director Kristoffer Borgli (Dream Scenario) doesn’t waste much time before imposing a hangover before the honeymoon. In the week leading up to their wedding, Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Pattinson) bring another couple, Mike (Mamoudou Athie) and Rachel (Alana Haim), their best man and maid of honor, to a tasting that’s gone heavy on the wine. During an ill-advised game of “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?,” the mood shifts when Emma shares that she nearly committed a school shooting as a teenager before backing out of it. (A misfired rifle, in fact, is the reason she remains deaf in one ear. It’s like a kind-of-a-funny-story anecdote that isn’t.) This revelation goes over poorly with Rachel, who’s related to  survivor of a school shooting, and Mike spends the rest of the film trying to process his feelings about Emma, who certainly never seemed like a potential mass murderer to him. 

She doesn’t to us, either, which is the nagging issue with The Drama. Borgli allows himself the space, through flashbacks and glitchy little inserts, to fill in the backstory and set the social context that might once have led this seemingly lovely, grounded, “empathetic” (in Charlie’s words) young woman to violence. But the rationale is just a pile of clichés about bullying and her access to military gear, so Emma’s past seems like more of an abstract problem than a real one. That doesn’t necessarily invalidate the film—the underrated Bobcat Goldthwait film Sleeping Dogs Lie, for example, floats a similarly outrageous story as a hook for a black comedy about sexual hang-ups—but it does trivialize a genuine epidemic in America. Borgli is playing with fire here. 

And yet The Drama commits to the bit, insistently mining its wonky premise for a number of riveting scenes that often veer into disarming comedy. Zoe Winters, perhaps best known for her terrific run on Succession as Logan Roy’s grotesquely ambitious girlfriend, gets a hilarious turn as a wedding photographer who tries to coach Emma and Charlie through a dreary session. There’s also a sharp subplot at Charlie’s workplace where he tries to pose Emma’s past as a hypothetical to his female co-worker (Hailey Gates) and lands himself in a fresh heap of trouble. Though it always feels like Emma and Charlie (and the movie) are one productive conversation away from putting the entire matter to bed, The Drama doesn’t let anyone off the line until the last possible moment. It’s a productively excruciating experience. — Scott Tobias

The Drama begins unfolding in theaters tonight.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie
Dir. Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic
98 min.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie wasn’t a disaster. Its financial success might have been. Released to little critical acclaim but considerable box office returns in 2023, the adaptation of Nintendo’s venerable Super Mario Bros. series (and the extended Mario/Kongverse created by decades of related games), Super Mario played like a natural endpoint for IP-driven filmmaking. Here are characters perfectly suited for colorful, fast-paced video games that present virtually nothing in the way of storytelling possibilities. 

No worries, though: There are always references. With more than 40+ years of accumulated items stretching back to Mario’s first appearance in Donkey Kong—not lore, exactly, just… stuff—the film could simply throw in images and sounds familiar to those who knew and liked the games. It’s “Oops, all Easter Eggs!” filmmaking designed to induce chuckles and knowing nods when not simply assaulting viewers with images and setpieces seemingly taken from the coolest Mario game they can watch but never play. And yet, the crowds turned out. Though never worse than a busy distraction, it was the sort of hit that sends all the wrong messages, opening the door for similarly malnourished adaptations of properties that have no business being turned into movies.

Second verse, same as the first: The Super Mario Galaxy Movie sends Mario (still inexplicably voiced by Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) to the stars in an attempt to rescue Princess Rosalina (Brie Larson), a [consults https://mario.fandom.com/wiki/Mario_Wiki] “very powerful figure, as her duty is to watch over and protect the cosmos, while also serving as the adopted mother of the Lumas.” But is Princess Rosalina too powerful to avoid being kidnapped by Bowser Jr. (Benny Safdie)? No she is not. Fortunately, the Lumas (adorable little star things) reach out to Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) and soon Peach is off to the rescue, joined by Mario and Luigi. Oh, and Yoshi (Donald Glover). He’s their friend now, too. And Toad (Keegan-Michael Key). Can’t forget about Toad. The original Bowser’s (Jack Black) there too. And who’s that dashing space adventurer ported in from another franchise? Could it be Star Fox? (It could and is. Glen Powell supplies his voice.)

Again co-directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, who together developed the terrific Teen Titans Go! series for Cartoon Network, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is, like its predecessor, solidly put together and even elicits a chuckle here and there (most of them, as before, courtesy of Black). But it’s also pretty much as impenetrable as Finnegan’s Wake for those not locked into its hermetic, mushroom-and-brick-filled world. And, apart from the striking visuals, those references are pretty much all that sets The Super Mario Galaxy Movie apart from other low-ambition animated fare. The high-volume action scenes and mawkish, obligatory nods to the importance of family certainly don’t. Maybe the third film can get rid of even those. —Keith Phipps

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is already playing in theaters everywhere.