Venice 2022: Wilde's 'Don't Worry Darling' isn't worth much

So you want to make a movie inspired by Matrix? Of course it looks cool, why not. But what more can you add? What can you tell the audience that hasn't been said in four other Matrix movies before this one? If there's nothing else to add, if there's nothing unique or clever about the script, this film will end up being particularly useless. And that's exactly the result with Don't Worry Darling. Actress-turned-filmmaker Olivia Wilde's second feature as a director is Don't Worry Darling, which premiered at the 2022 Venice Film Festival out of competition. This placement in the lineup should already be a sign that it doesn't have much to offer, but now that I've seen it myself I can confirm that sadly, as nice as this movie is, it's empty . Just like the bottles of wine and champagne that Italian restaurants put in their windows to lure you in, but when you look closer they're dusty and dry because they're all for show and someone drank years ago. With this movie, the "free yourself" commentary is obvious, but it doesn't mean much overall and feels excruciatingly redundant. Is that it? There's nothing more to it?

Don't Worry Darling is directed by Olivia Wilde, from a screenplay written by Katie Silberman and Carey Van Dyke and Shane Van Dyke. During a CinemaCon presentation earlier this year, Wilde cryptically compared it to sci-fi classics like "Inception, The Matrix and The Truman Show." The setting and first half of the film is more like The Stepford Wives; there is clearly something strange about this fabulous palm-lined city and we will eventually find out what. A perfect husband and wife live in their idyllic neighborhood in a small town where the weather is always sunny, the food is always delicious, everything is carefree and charming, and everyone gets drunk every night. But not everything seems quite right, and Alice, played by Florence Pugh, is starting to notice. Her husband goes to work every day on a mysterious hill in the desert called "Victory Project" while she stays home and enjoys her day with her perfect neighbors. It's all so basic and generic in its white picket fence idealism and "women stay home and live the best life" concept that it's surprising the film never adds more complexity beyond this setup. . Again I ask, is that it?

On the one hand, the movie looks damn good. It's enthralling to watch, thanks to so many pretty faces and some clever cinematography from DP Matthew Libatique (who also filmed The Whale playing in Venice). It's got that polished Warner Bros vibe, with something as simple as a desert car chase, like it's Mad Max: Fury Road all over again. But this is not the case. It is far from it. Aside from Florence Pugh and an underutilized Chris Pine, none of the actors give such prominent performances. Harry Styles proves he can't really act well at anything that requires complex, layered character work, so much so that they had to change his character to be overtly British (his ethnicity is literally mentioned several times in the movie) because it seems he couldn't pull off a believable American accent. Despite all of this, Wilde tries to string together a film that lives up to the concept of "breaking free from perfection." But the audience is so far ahead of the characters in the movie that after 20 minutes we wonder when they're gonna figure out what's going on and when they do it's so dull and unsurprising it almost ruins the rest of the film. Fortunately not entirely.

I'm all for a movie that wants to teach us how we should stop being so obsessed with perfection and glamor and the ideal life in the ideal city with the ideal neighbors and the ideal car. That's exactly what The Matrix does so well, including even in Resurrections, though it's a lesson few seem to have learned. It also seems that Wilde didn't learn much from The Matrix films either, although she gave up on the original as inspiration, because Don't Worry Darling< /em> looks like half a movie. Everything up to the point where Morpheus helps Neo unplug and join them on the Nebuchadnezzar...