Criticism of the Unicorn Store: Brie Larson makes his directorial debut abroad at Netflix

Unicorns are almost universally associated with femininity. The desire that the horned creature is real stems from the same impulse that gives us "horse girls", sent Robot Unicorn Attack viral and popularized Lisa Frank. This level of fantasy – these bright colors, these glitter – can not exist without the responsibilities and monotony of adulthood. Adult women wear costumes, take their lives seriously, eat kale and yearn for a "bikini ready" body. Or, Netflix Unicorn store would like to make you believe.

The ambition of Brie Larson's first film is admirable. Learning to grow while staying in oneself is a lesson that is constantly repeated in the film world and is less often told from the point of view of young women. However, the script, written by Samantha McIntyre (and that Larson auditioned – and failed to obtain – a few years ago), is so intent on embracing the ethic of "be yourself That he exposes the limits of his own message.

The very first scene of Unicorn store – A home video montage of an early child blends into the images of Kit (Larson), now an adult, painting the wall with energy – sets the tone for everything that follows. In the end, colorful paint was stained on her face and clothes, and she finished her work by blowing glitter on the canvas. When she turns around, she discovers that she is in the middle of an art class. Everyone has painted in the canvas and is dressed in dark colors contrasting with Kit's white or rainbow-colored clothes. His instructor gives him a note of failure and shakes his head with disapproval.

Netflix

It's a quick and easy way to communicate Kit's free spirit, but also the type of signage that devalues ​​the characters around him. For the best or for the worst, Unicorn store it feels like a film shot at least ten years too late, torn from an earlier era Garden State, before the "lepid dream girl dream trope" is re-evaluated, and before "geek girl vs cheerleader" is recognized as unnecessarily opposing women to each other. When Kit finally gets a job as a temporary worker, her female colleagues are either deaf girls or average girls, and implicitly ridiculed for their modest ambitions.

Of course, Kit is meant for more than just office work. Several colorful envelopes arrive to invite her to "The Store," where she discovers that her favorite childhood animal, the unicorn, may be within her reach. The mysterious seller (Larson's Captain Marvel and Kong: the island of the skull Co-star Samuel L. Jackson) offers to sell one to him, as long as it meets certain conditions, including providing an environment free of negativity and a suitable stable. To have a unicorn, she must prove that she deserves one.

Although the unicorn can be a fantastic creature, it can not be all that the film asks. The creature represents the promise of company, to embrace his unique voice, never to let go of his inner child … and to make the compromises necessary to grow up?

Netflix

Trying to give life to the characters around Kit, her parents (Bradley Whitford and Joan Cusack), her two friendly colleagues (Martha MacIsaac and Ryan Hansen) – Unicorn store is forced to use more colors than the black and white required by Kit's incomparable personality. These are characters who have accepted some measure of compromise in their lives, and not necessarily for the worse. To put it another way, adulthood means that no one can control the amount of candy you eat, but if you eat too much, you will get sick. The problem is that Unicorn store is built on a basis of "all sweets, all the time."

The best parts of the film are either insufficiently explored (Kit feels she disappoints her parents, which most of us know); tertiary (Jackson costumes with bright patterns); or, sadly, in a film about a young woman's youth (Hamish Linklater and Mamoudou Athie perform remarkably well as Kit's terrifying boss and the unfortunate hardware worker try to help him build a stable). In addition, the feeling that the gung-ho energy Kit projects are not necessarily defensible eventually becomes reality in the final moments of the film, breaking the film's messages and blocking Larson as a director. It has no room for maneuver to do anything particularly interesting, given the energy needed to hold the film together.

Unicorn store is a film in which the heroine wears a "Girlpower" necklace and asks if she is pretty enough to be sexually harassed (as if it were the problem of sexual harassment). Perhaps rightly, he is stuck in a state of arrested development, striving to tell a story about women's empowerment and artistic freedom, but using an outdated language that is almost inconsistent with she. There is a back and forth that never solves the problem, that it's about Kit or the people around him who routinely need to grow up and eventually the magic of Unicorn store is purely at the surface level. The bright colors, garlands and sequins Kit and The Salesman wear can not stand in the way of history; The horn of this unicorn is a fake.