Flower — What Happens When Movies Try Too Hard to Be Edgy
“We’re not taking you to court. We’re just taking your money.”
Date watched: July 14, 2020
Date released: 2017
Director: Max Winkler
Writer: Alex McAulay
Memorable Cast: Zoey Deutch (Erica Vandross), Kathryn Hahn (Laurie Vandross), Tim Heidecker (Bob Sherman), Adam Scott (Will Jordan), and Joey Morgan (Luke Sherman)
I had no expectations going into this movie and was hoping to be happily surprised. This was not the case. By the 30 minute mark I was ready to call this a flop and move on with my life. At this point there was already a desensitization to porn and statutory rape, characters making fun of sexual assault and drug addiction, fat phobia, unrelatable characters and sexual advances at a step-brother. However, I thought the overall premise of the story wasn’t terrible: girl with daddy issues extorts and blackmails pedophiles by giving them blowjobs and having her friends film it to get money to bail her dad out of jail. With Deutch starring and Scott appearing as another influential character, I kept hoping it would get better. And it did … for two seconds. After enlisting her future step-brother, Luke, to help with her plans, things go terribly wrong. I was really excited to have this mediocre film turn into something crazy that I would never expect coming. It fell so far short and the ending left me feeling furious, annoyed, and a creeped out (not in a good way).
Technically I thought the shots, coloring, and score was nothing special. I didn’t think the script was good and it was just so obvious that this movie was trying so hard to be relatable and edgy.
I’ve seen this kind of a fail from other movies that center around teenagers or are for teenagers. Adults assume that kids want edge, but hardly ever seem to make it work right. That is why a movie that does get it right for once (like Juno which I will be putting up a review for very soon) gets and deserves a lot of praise. It can be really hard for adults to write for teens and this is an example of what happens when it doesn’t work. They try to pass it off as ‘dark humor’ but end up just making things offensive and not funny. Writers need to learn that dark humor shouldn’t be at the expense of others, especially towards groups who face serious hardships (overweight people and sexual assault/rape survivors for example).
This movie made Jennifer’s Body look like a masterpiece, which if you’ve read my review on it, you would know is saying something. At least in that film, they could make a movie about a flesh-eating cheerleader a little bit relatable and have dark humor that was actually funny at times.
Rating: 2/10
I thought about giving it a 1, but the idea could have been good. I hated it though.
July 14, 2020