The Drama

Grade: A-

The Drama’s first trailer didn’t exactly have me optimistic or excited. It introduces Robert Pattinson and Zendaya as a couple about to get married. There is awkwardness during a photo shoot, for reasons we don’t know. They’re “not feeling it.” It’s easy to see how it could be a lame relationship comedy about cold feet and trouble in paradise. Maybe Pattinson leaves the toilet seat up, and Zendaya spends too much money.

The second trailer is tremendous. The couple is out having drinks with two friends. They go around the table one by one, each sharing the worst thing they’ve ever done. Zendaya shares…something. We don’t hear what, but we do see the maid of honor’s reaction, which is utter shock. She says it’s incredibly disturbing, hits close to home, and she doesn’t know how to respond. Not even Pattinson knew about it, and now – just a few days before the wedding – he has so much to process, unpack, digest, and discuss. This has changed everything. Now that’s a teaser trailer.

A pre-credits sequence shows how Charlie (Pattinson) and Emma (Zendaya) Met Cute. He sees her at a coffee shop, and pretends to have read the book she is sitting there reading – as an excuse to talk to her. She wasn’t trying to ignore him, but he was talking into her deaf ear while she was listening to music with an earbud in her good ear. The misunderstanding gets cleared up, the truth comes out on the first date regarding whether he really read the book, and they spark up a relationship that becomes an engagement.

The aforementioned maid of honor is Rachel (Alana Haim), who works with Emma and is married to Charlie’s best friend Mike (Mamoudou Athie). Haim, who was so great as the star of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza (and was later thrown a bone by him, with a glorified cameo in One Battle After Another), is magnificent here. She has impeccable comedic instincts, and steals every scene she’s in with her asides and reactions. Her best moment, of many, is late in the film, when she interrupts something with a laugh. It’s very early in the year, we just had the Oscars, and this is a preposterous thought, yet I still have it: long shot dark horse Best Supporting Actress nomination?

Though I loved Challengers, those three main characters are never going to win any kindness awards, especially the part Zendaya played. She was so convincing as a not nice person, that I wondered if I’d ever be able to accept her as anything but that. I got over it quickly, with The Drama, and that’s a testament to her acting prowess. Writer/director Kristoffer Borgli previously did Dream Scenario – the 2023 movie where Nicolas Cage kept showing up in peoples’ dreams, doing disturbing things. That tracks, as The Drama is cut from the same cloth.

Emma’s confession isn’t just a McGuffin to set the plot into motion. It gets explored and analyzed, as it should. By the time we get to the wedding, the tension has escalated to a fever pitch – as the viewer frantically treads water to keep up with who is upset with who, and why, and who knows what. There’s a moment where someone confesses to something that wasn’t even being talked about, and would never have come up if they just hadn’t said anything – but now it’s out, so everyone suddenly has an additional puzzle piece to deal with.

The last scene has been called cutesy and unearned, and I wouldn’t blame anyone who felt that way. By then, I was in the palm of this movie’s hand and would have followed it practically anywhere. I laughed. I gasped. I audibly said “no” and “oh gosh,” on two separate occasions. The editing, by Borgli and Joshua Raymond Lee, is among the most interesting I have ever seen. The Drama takes the elements that worked so well in Dream Scenario, and goes even further with them. I can’t wait to see what Borgli has for us next.

Grade: A-