Better Never Than Late on "Vox Lux"

Yesterday I wrote about a movie starring Natalie Portman that I really liked. Today, I’m going in the opposite direction.

I really wanted to see the movie “Vox Lux” when I first saw the preview, about 2 years back. I thought it had an interesting premise, girl is involved in a school shooting, gets hurt, writes a song about the event, becomes a pop star and has many mental problems stemming from the incident in school. It also starred Portman as the grown up version of the kid, the pop star version.

The movie started out strong enough to keep my attention. The school shooting was a little bit too real, which made me emotional, and I felt for this young kid, dealing with the aftermath. It was upsetting and a struggle and, at least I thought, portrayed tragedy through the eyes of a teen very well. But, when the music starts in the movie, that’s where they lost me. As I said, the main character writes a song about the event, someone is filming it on local news, a record exec hears it and decides they want to record it. That is when the movie shifts tones and kind of goes off the rails. The girl, while dealing with record people, and people in the music industry, kind of becomes a satirical version of a young person breaking into the pop music scene. She has to learn how to do choreographed dances, but can’t really dance after the shooting. She goes away overseas and starts to get heavily involved in drugs and sex. She constantly derides herself for making pop music. She has weird monologues that seem pointless and endless. She walks in on her sister sleeping with her manager and that strains their close relationship. She is then late for a plane, but she’s told that she is going to make a video because her song is so popular.

What I gleaned from all of this, pop musicians can do whatever they want if they’re good. She shoots the music video, but that scene felt forced and pointless. We then flash forward about 15 years, and we see Portman as the adult version. And surprise surprise, she has all kinds of mental problems, she’s a head case, she’s an addict and she has no real redeeming qualities.

I’m a humongous Portman fan, but I did not find her very good in this movie. She talks way too fast, and her New York accent is trifling. She’s also over dramatic far too often. As is Jude Law, who plays her manager. In fact, everyone is a bit over dramatic in this movie. They also have a scene, twice in fact, where some bad dudes dressed as the people in her video, shoot up a beach, and they only broach that topic once. I feel like they could’ve done a ton with that, using her past, fame, religion, a ton of stuff, that they barely touched on, if at all. And when you think there’s going to be some big, revealing ending, there’s not. Spoiler alert, Portman sings the song from the beginning, they scan the characters in the audience all smiling, and when the song is over, credits roll. It was very unfulfilling.

This movie had all the makings of things I like, original songs from Sia, Natalie Portman, talking about modern pop music, and a tragic story that could have ended with revelations. None of that, except Sia’s music, worked at all. I wish this movie was better. Unfortunately it is not. Oh well, at least Portman crushes in pretty much everything else she’s in. Watch “Annihilation” instead of this movie. You’ll be happy you did.

Also, on a positive note, happy birthday mom! Love you.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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