2 out of 5 stars (has some good moments, but is overall bad)
I usually avoid major spoilers in my reviews, but The Drama is impossible to discuss without getting into them. This film (and by unfortunate necessity this review) will discuss school shootings.
The Drama is one of the most frustrating kinds of movies: One that runs away from exploring its concept like it’s got the National Guard on its back. Mismarketed (as is often the case with movies produced by the film studio A24) as a dark comedy, the film opens with some mildly spiky laughs before establishing its hook, only to pussyfoot around anything interesting that could be mined from that hook for the remaining 90 minutes and leaving its leads up awkward creek without a paddle.
Charlie (Robert Pattinson) and Emma (Zendaya) are seemingly the perfect couple. They had a meet-cute that could rival a ‘90s Meg Ryan romcom, they “complete” each other, and they’re a week away from the i-dos in blissful harmony. However, a few too many drinks with friends Mike (Mamoudou Athie) and Rachel (Alana Haim) leads to the revelation that all 4 of these yuppies have some skeletons in their closets, the worst of which is that Emma nearly went through with a mass shooting at age 15. As the days tick by, this Olympic stadium-sized bump on the road to matrimony will challenge our characters like never before as they all determine how best to proceed.
If a movie is going to center around an emotionally charged subject matter, I expect it to commit to exploring that subject through whatever lens it chooses. The Drama’s screenplay is completely incapable of choosing the lens to view its scenario and thus brings up a thorny topic without saying anything of value about it. I could see a razor-sharp movie mining dark humor out of the awkwardness that this situation would create in a relationship or another one playing it completely for drama and really exploring the ramifications of this, but The Drama tries both and satisfies as neither.
Robert Pattinson has shown he’s a capable dramatic actor over the years, but the uncertainty of this script leaves him oscillating between a decent dramatic performance and verbally bumbling over himself like Ben Stiller in the Fockers movies. Zendaya is similarly hamstrung, doing good work with what she has, but lacking truly meaty material to sink her teeth into. Athie and especially Haim play their parts well and deserved a better movie.
The Drama occasionally gestures at exploring Emma’s motivations, but never dives deep enough for us to understand how she reached that point. If I’m not sold on why a character does what they do in a story, I’m not attaching myself to them, and Emma is the poster child for underwritten characters sinking a movie. The film tries to both-sides the issue by having one of the friends’ family members be affected by a different shooting and thus that friend is understandably rageful towards Emma, but it’s too scared to go either as dark dramatically as it should to explore its heavy theme or as dark comedically to make the attempted awkwardness funny.
Everyone’s chemistry is fine, there are some one-off funny lines or exchanges, and the subject is a challenging one, but The Drama wastes the talent of the thespians assembled and us the audience in watching it in being too scared to grab its premise by the horns and do something meaningful with it. Did I mention the movie also has needless random artsy shots and janky editing sometimes? Skip it.
Rated R for Sexual Content, Some Violent/Bloody Images, Language Throughout, and Brief Drug Use