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  • Writer's pictureRoman Arbisi

Review: Malcolm and Marie

Absolutely insufferable across all stages of the production. Not even it's promising cinematography can shed any light or meaning onto this forced, ridiculous argument between two uninteresting people.

In the days leading up to Valentine’s Day, director Sam Levinson (Assassination Nation) is looking to deliver a visceral and cynical look at the highest and lowest points of a relationship in, Malcolm and Marie. Starting with John David Washington (Malcolm) as the artist, and Zendaya (Marie) as the muse, this is a bottleneck movie made in the strict COVID era that forces two immovable objects to meet toe to toe. With grumpy word of mouth making the rounds just a week before release, Malcolm and Marie is just as bad as you’ve heard, if not worse.


 

Despite the black and white presentation, it takes less than five minutes for Malcolm and Marie to show its colors. All of the rumblings you’ve heard about Levinson’s attack on film critics is far worse than you could anticipate, and it is the first thing he interrogates. Sadly, I wouldn’t even go as far to call it an interrogation, because that would imply that he was looking for answers. From the get go it is clear that there is minimal interest in being anything other than a personified stand-in of thoughts. All of those thoughts rooted in real-world anger at people who probably didn’t like his last movie, Assassination Nation. There is no basis for arguing this, because trying to find any palpable foundation as to why he would bludgeon film critics can only be traced back to the fact that there isn’t any. The first rant plays it pretty nice all things considering, Malcolm comes around on it and moves on, that is until he unleashes rage mode in the wake of a review that praises the character’s film.


This sequence spans about five or so minutes, and perfectly embodies how dull and hollow the animosity is. Sam Levinson drops a plethora of references to modern film-makers, older film-makers, deceased film-makers as a means to try and give it some tangible relevance, but it makes his personal insecurities standout even more. He unloads on critics and how they misunderstand art and try to twist words into meaning something that ends up missing the point of the director’s film. All of this reaches a point to where it means absolutely nothing in relation to the alleged “drama” between Malcolm and Marie at the center stage. It stands out so much because it exists on an entirely different plane outside of the movie, and it’s clear that Levinson thought he needed to include it. His frustrations are bubbling so much that he felt he needed to go out of the way to try and sell audiences on the idea that this was a movie about the high and low points of a relationship, when it isn’t that in the slightest.

You can tell that it isn’t because the way he manufactures drama is some of the most forced writing I’ve seen in a long time. Every time you feel the characters are starting to understand each other better, or try to reach a conclusion, he manufactures some absurd nonsense to up the ante compared to the last set piece of screaming. It comes across as someone lacking complete and total confidence in what they’re making because they know that what this is really about, has nothing to do with the primary conflict at all. It also doesn’t help that neither John David Washington or Zendaya are convincing. Admittedly, they are both working with awful material here, but the fact that neither of them can sell it convincingly is a tell all sign. Zendaya has so much work to do as an actress and this is a great example of that. Sometimes it feels like she doesn’t even know how to properly act her lines, and it plays even worse off of a stale Washington. Someone who I believe has loads of potential as a monumental leading man in Hollywood, but unconvincingly yells his way to being forgettable.


If you think I’ve said as much as I could about this, you’d be wrong. There is so much more I want to cover in regards to how overwritten, over acted, poorly directed, and conceptually misguided this whole entire operation is, but saving my time seems like a better option considering how much of it has already gone to waste with this movie on my mind. If you thought other movies were bad in how it took on the artist/muse dynamic, or the artist vs critic clash, you are in for a whirlwind of utter nonsense here. So much of this is laughable and borderline career destroying it makes that Josh Trank episode at the hotel understandable. Malcolm and Marie is a completely misguided and thoughtless annihilation for no other reason than to say it was. Characters spout seriously wicked phrases that are supposed to feel like knives cutting deep, but it triggers the feelings of being tickled by a feather. Leaving the audience laughing before they realize that Sam Levinson also tried lending his penmanship to the black experience in relationships, Hollywood, and America!

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