A while back I wrote about all the off screen drama involving the movie "Don't Worry Darling". The trailers and the cast and then all that nonsense had me pretty hype to watch the movie. I also loved "Booksmart", Olivia Wilde's first movie, so I figured she was due for another solid outing. I was on board to see this movie. And it is now streaming on HBO Max. My wife also wanted to see it, it was her turn to pick the date night movie and she picked "Don't Worry Darling". We sat down and were both excited.

The movie, for me, did not deliver. Now, my wife liked the movie. She enjoyed her viewing experience. And Florence Pugh and Chris Pine did a very good job with little material to work with. Those are the things I enjoyed about the movie. But everything else fell very flat for me. It was not worth all the hype. The story and most other performances just didn't work for me. The direction felt clunky and forced. Some of the acting was very blah. And the stuff that was left on the cutting room floor, according to internet research, probably would have helped. But I was not feeling it.

Pugh, as previously stated, was solid. She did a great job in fact. She is very good in these horror/psychological roles. She knows how to do that. But Harry Styles is not a great actor. He tried very hard in this movie, but I just didn't buy his performance. He has a scene where he has to cry and act upset and it looked like a first time actor trying way too hard. He did some things well, but most of it was very forced and not so good. At least he can sing. Nick Kroll was underused. He did not get a chance to shine in a role that is very different for him. I wanted more. I could say the same for Kate Bertlant, who I also like very much. She had moments where it looked like she was going to go through some stuff, but they cut her off or cut away from her character. I wanted to know so much more about her. Her husband, played by Asif Ali, only had a handful of lines. He was not fleshed out at all. Kiki Layne had a very juicy role, got to do some decent stuff, but she was the person who was cut the most. Her role was, seemingly, very important to the story, but she was more under utilized than Kroll. That was a bummer. Pine's wife, played by Gemma Chan, had this eeriness to her, but she never got fleshed out either. That seemed to happen a lot in this movie. Wilde gave herself a supporting role, and it felt like they wrote her character more than any other supporting actor. She had a backstory and stuff that happened to her, but I was not given enough time as a viewer to really care about her. What happened was sad and devastating, but they did not reveal any of it until the very end. There was no time.

Therein lies my biggest problem with the movie. They had a great idea, they had a solid cast, they had people game for this movie, the set pieces were dope, but they did not go far enough with this story and these people living in this world. The movie was a shade over two hours, but it felt unfinished. It felt rushed. It felt like they were all trying to not get COVID, this movie was filmed during a surge from what I read. It just did not tell this interesting story in an interesting way for me. The way they got to the twist was slow, but once they were there, they went too fast. Pugh tried her best to pull it off. Pine was a great villain, but the rest was just too bland. When they flashed back and forth, Styles looked like a bad guy from an early 2000's indie movie, and not in a good way.

I don't know. The movie had all this press and all this build up, but it just didn't hit home with me. And that bums me out. I really wanted to like this movie. Or, at the very least, I wanted this movie to give me a story. I wanted it to be memorable. But it was just a very bland and boring movie that did not deliver. Oh well, at least I have the off screen nonsense to look back on in the future. What a bummer.

Ty

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

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