Skip to main content

Putting Away Childish Things...


Unicorn Store is that kind of strange fantastical-realist movie you don’t see much anymore from the Hollywood machine; movies that are heavily about real world struggles and slices of life, with a light dosing of fantasy. You get the occasional Beasts of the Southern Wild from the indie scene, and technically Unicorn Store is an indie as well (one that actually premiered at TIFF in 2017 and didn’t find a distributor until recently at Netflix), but it has a pretty average budget to it and a handful of notable stars –as well as a coordinated release to coincide with another bigger movie its two leads are also headlining that ensures it has a larger audience than it might have otherwise. So there’s something immediately refreshing about this film so wholeheartedly embracing an honest by way of whimsical tone and a grounded realism still open to flights of fancy. Sometimes, this is enough to sustain the movie, other times it’s more reliant on the effectiveness of the character study at the heart of it all.
Kit (Brie Larson), an expressive artist in her late twenties is returning home to live with her parents (Bradley Whitford and Joan Cusack) after her once-promising career has failed to take off. She’s forced to take a temp job at an office with no viable outlet for her creativity, and just as she seems destined for the miserable mediocrity such a situation affords, she meets a mysteriously eccentric salesman (Samuel L. Jackson) who offers her the chance at her childhood dream of having a pet unicorn –but she must fulfil a series of specific obligations before she can qualify for ownership.
This movie was Brie Larsons’ directing debut, and if she doesn’t instantly impress as other young actors-turned-directors like Paul Dano and Bo Burnham have, she certainly shows promise. She’s modest in technique but cognizant to the needs of the narrative in any given scene. She does a fairly good job hinting at the magical component of the Salesman character and the whole notion of receiving a unicorn without explicitly confirming it. On the whole she handles the structure of the story rather well, but it’s her performance where greater emphasis seems to be placed. Larson had initially auditioned for Kit but was turned down, only to be hired back on to the still in-development project years later as director and star following her Oscar win. She approaches the role with a humour, pathos, and spirit that is authentic to a lot of forlorn millennials who’ve contended with a world designed against them. Her whimsical attitude and arrested development refreshingly don’t come off as character quirks, but rather an aspect of her personality heightened by her circumstances. You feel her sense of loss and her desperation for a new purpose in life. When such a thing happens, it’s natural to reach out to childhood comforts.
Unicorn Store is a film all about finding your way after your dreams have been shattered, which is a theme expectedly not much addressed in a medium that frequently prefers to glorify rags-to-riches narratives. But far more people have been where Kit is than have succeeded in their ambitions, especially artists. There’s obviously a degree of pessimism in this, however the film is not so mean-spirited as to wallow in the depression of not achieving ones’ goals. And Kit’s journey in rebuilding her life without losing her passion is ultimately fulfilling …sort of. The script isn’t consistently clear on Kit’s growth and at times loses sight of what its’ message is regarding her childlike wonder. It both endorses her imaginative, if somewhat irresponsible and naive view of the world (it’s pointed out to her that the Salesman seems likely a scammer), but also stresses the importance of growing up and living ones’ life in the real world. In the end (in a really wonderful scene), it compromises on a happy medium of retaining some childhood wonder while moving forward in responsible adulthood, but it’s a rocky road. Screenwriter Samantha McIntyre knows what she wants to get across, she just doesn’t convey it as cleanly as she could -the dialogue could also use a polish.
Comic fans may well find Unicorn Store reminiscent of Dana Simpsons’ cute and charming comic strip Phoebe and Her Unicorn -which actually makes a cameo appearance in the film. Obviously the love of the titular mythical equine is on display in both, but they also share a particular spirit of imagination and an interest in bridging the agglomerate of romantic folklore with the idiosyncrasies of the modern world. There’s a thread on traditional cultural symbols of girlhood running through the movie and comic as well (though perhaps more pronounced in the former) that I haven’t the experience or confidence to interpret with any relevancy, but surely speaks to the significance those tokens have on some girls’ adolescence and maturity. This movie is quite literally not made for me, and though I enjoyed it fine, I think it’s a step in the right direction for Larson (and I would love to see Jackson in a few more performances like this), I can see its greater potential with audiences of a different gender or gender identity at a similar crossroads as Kit.

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jordan_D_Bosch
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Strange History of the American Spoof Movie

Parody movies have been around for a lot longer than we tend to think of them. Even from the earliest days of Hollywood there were movies meant to satirize a particular subject or genre. In the silent era, Buster Keaton was responsible for a few. And in the early sound era, almost as soon as the monster pictures took off did you see comic versions of them -Abbott and Costello hosting a few. But parody movies tended to be subtle for most of cinema history, or parody came in conjunction with another goal of the comedy. It really wasn’t until the 1980s and 90s that it took off and became popularly understood. And there is perhaps a line to be drawn to the counterculture comedy explosion that began in the 1970s through avenues like  Saturday Night Live , which frequently parodied from even its earliest years popular movies and cultural properties of the time. But that is still a way’s back. To my generation though, ‘parody movie’ is perhaps a less known term than the more blunt ‘s...
Post a Comment
Read more

Notes on the Title Cards of The Lord of the Rings

It might be sacrilege for one who both considers The Lord of the Rings  trilogy to be one of the greatest triumphs of cinema and has been an avid lover of the films since adolescence, to declare that the original theatrical cuts of the films are better than the much beloved extended editions. Easily it’s my most controversial opinion regarding these movies. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the extended editions quite a lot, especially as someone who just enjoys spending time in that universe. They flesh it out more, add extra flavour, and in increasing the length by about an hour really emphasize the epic quality of these films. But I find that the original cuts are generally more cleanly paced, more seamlessly edited, and much more accessible to audiences. All the stuff there is to love about The Lord of the Rings  is there in the original versions, the plethora of new and extended scenes merely add to that for fans. And of those, they fall into three camps for me: 1....
1 comment
Read more

Back to the Feature: New York, New York (1977)

New York, New York  is a two hour forty minute musical movie largely about a toxic relationship and I understand why it was Martin Scorsese’s first big flop. Some have blamed its poor reception on the kind of movie it was, of a style and tone Scorsese wasn’t known for, but I find that hard to believe. Even after only five films, he’d proven himself an extremely versatile director, and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore  found an audience. Sure this jazz musical love letter to New York City was following up Taxi Driver and its’ far more cynical take on the city, but then it’s also ‘from the director of Taxi Driver ’ which itself was a big hit. Was it a matter of public appetite for musicals, or mere word of mouth and early critical reception that dissuaded viewers? Irrespective of that, I was stunned to discover this movie was the origin of the titular song, which I’d assumed was much older (it’s definitely got the sound of something that might have come out of the Jazz sce...
Post a Comment
Read more