God bless him Driver gives it everything he's got but he is ill equipped for the bizarre and uneven tone and reaching quasi avante garde style. He plays it pretty straight and his talent is not in doubt but the result is a jumbled mess of unclear action and choices resulting in pretty thin characterization and an incomprehensible plot. Cotillard fairs significantly better, although she has substantially less screen time, as she seems more attuned with the vibe, kind of serious verging on melodrama, comedic and operatic both, she's able to create what feels like a real person amidst the soup of genre. The puppet's performance is incredibly bizarre and it's wispy hair and mottled skin is unsettling.
There is incredible ambition on display, a cornucopia of ideas, and the first and last scenes are absolutely incredible. But everything inbetween is so muddled, so off, so devoid of any kind of emotional reality, and occasionally any kind of reality at all the sum is a flat, uninspiring mélange of quirks. One particularly baffling choice is to have Henry be a "stand-up" and his "shows" are more shitty cabaret performance art than anything even remotely resembling stand-up comedy. It's as if a friend of a friend saw a stand-up show and telephone-style relayed what the medium was to the writers. The depiction is straight up dumb and further undercuts the idea that any of the characters are real or inhabit anything like the world we live in. It's like aliens watched L.A. Confidential then a couple Andrew Dice Clay stand-up specials from the 80's and wrote the script. Bad.
Despite all the talent and all the creative drive it snatches defeat from the jaws of victory. Worst of the year contender. For something equally LA focused and weird that actually works see Maps To The Stars.
Currently in theaters and streaming on Amazon.
Don't See It.
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