This weekend my best friend and I decided to have a little friend date as one does. We picked a cute restaurant to go to (also if you’re in the Tallahassee area, Sakura Sushi is the place to be on a saturday night!) and then we thought ‘why not go see the new rom-com, The Drama, with Zendaya and Robert Pattinson!’ I have to say, if anyone is planning on seeing that on a date depending on who you are I would possibly rethink that.
I walked in and expected to just see maybe a little angsty romantic comedy/drama with two people who basically helped build my personality. I mean I knew the Shake It Up choreo by heart as a kid and I’ve been a “Team Edward” girl since my sister showed me Twilight. And honestly, for the first twenty minutes, that is what it was. Their meet-cute was cute, a bit worrisome but honestly super realistic. We are introduced to all of the main players pretty quickly and, as an inspiring film producer and director, it was shot in the classic A24 indie way. With a grainy look, it seems like this is a couple in love who are about to get married with loving friends.
When I say that the plot twist, twisted… I really really mean it. I don’t want to give anything away because I think not knowing anything is the best way to go into this movie, but I feel like it brings forth a lot of interesting questions and dynamics that are not really seen in many movies. Actually, I really think this is a very original movie and I’m not super surprised, A24 has a history of taking movies that are more original, indie, or artsy or artistic. However this really is a new take on the idea of a rom-com and also the idea of “do you ever really know someone”?
Again I don’t want to spoil anything, but this is a fair warning that I may get really close to it, because the character relationships that this movie attacks needs to be discussed and context is kind of needed. I’m gonna do my best but no promises.
As someone who was in public school her whole life and now goes to FSU, the topic at hand isn’t something anyone my age isn’t familiar with either; this movie really tackles the idea of empathy towards it in a way that at least got me thinking about it a lot in the following days. I mean Zendaya’s character, Emma Harwood, is the center of the conversation but I couldn’t find it in myself to condemn her the way other characters do, specifically Alana Haim’s Rachel. To me, Emma was and probably is the most empathetic person in the whole movie: she saw the reality, she changed her mindset, she forgave, and she became a better person because of it. However, in the catalyst for the main conflict, every other character showed that their behaviors never changed.
I think it’s most seen in Rachel, which while there are conflicting opinions on this movie everyone seems to hate this character so take what you will from that. Her confession illustrates behavior that she repeats over and over again throughout the whole movie. She views herself as better than everyone else because of tragedies she was adjacent to and lets that cast herself as the victim even if she is more of a perpetrator than anyone else. She is forceful with her husband and strongly condemns Emma through the whole movie even when Emma continues to apologize.
Even Robert Pattinson’s character Charlie Thompson doesn’t really seem to have grown from his confessional, he repeats the behavior of hurting others when he is highly emotional. Nor does Mamoudou Athie’s character, Mike, seem to have changed as he stays behind Rachel through the whole movie.
Honestly, though, the story in The Drama is probably the most realistic depiction of what would happen in this situation. I have seen a lot of polarizing opinions on this movie and I really think they all have a spot in the cultural zeitgeist. I guess to add my two cents, I thought it was a well written, well shot, and well protected movie. I truly had no idea what I was walking into. All the press around it has seemed more like ‘oh lets put Zendaya and Rob in a room and see what comes out of it’ rather than actual discourse over the movie. If you were to ask my best friend, she would say the ending sucked, I personally am not totally sure about it yet. I see what the point was, but I do agree that I wish there was more around if Charlie could grow from this and if Emma truly was just going to forgive and forget. But I guess if we go into movies wishing to see everything, we’d be living in a movie rather than real life.
I think it has brought important acknowledgement towards mental health and the main topic of the movie, which I won’t say in case you are reading this before watching the movie– which may have been a bad idea, like seriously just go watch the movie. All in all I think it was a refreshing take on a Rom-Com-Dram-ady (see what I did there). With the rise of romanticizing more negative aspect of human life, The Drama, with some moments of comedy, a little bit of romance, and just full drama, it brings the conversion I think a lot of people are going to start having to see: what was the true effects of popularized violence and can one come back from mistakes as a child? I’d like to think we shouldn’t judge people for what they may have almost done but what they do, but maybe after watching this movie again I’ll have a change of heart. However, for now, The Drama sits in my letterbox with a five star rating because at the end of the day I watched this movie almost a week ago and I can’t stop thinking about it. To me, a movie that does this to its audience is a five star movie heading to be a possible cult classic.
Edited by Natalli Newman
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