Poor Things

• Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
• September 1, 2023 (Venice) / December 8, 2023 (United States) / January 12, 2024 (Ireland and UK)
• Based on the 1992 novel Poor Things: Episodes from the Early Life of Archibald McCandless M.D., Scottish Public Health Officer by Alasdair Gray

A woman in Victorian London is brought back to life via a brain transplant from a baby and superscience.

Since it was getting so much praise I decided to give Poor Things a watch. I decided that there must be something there. Having watched it I am completely baffled. It waffles between boring and offensively bad AND boring.

Based on films like The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and The Favourite director Yorgos Lanthimos has developed a strong following. After watching this I am convinced he is a beneficiary of the same mentality that helps protect the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Jordan Peele. Some (or all) may not appeal to you and when you state why people declare that you are wrong even though this is all opinion. Or maybe he’s an acquired taste like cow tongue and pig knuckles or scrapple. Not bad but certainly not for everyone.

I have heard Poor Things called a black comedy but laughs often are few and far between. It’s more weird and generally kind of stupid and not stupid in a comedic way. It’s more stupid in a look-how-weird-we-can-get away. Just because something is weird does not mean it’s a comedy. It just means it’s weird. And after a little while the weirdness-just-to-be-weird becomes tiresome. Some of the minimal actual humor would work well in a raunchy or plain dumb comedy but this is not either of those.

If one is not careful ‘weird’ can easily transform into stupid and dumb and Lanthimos is not careful here. The mild entertainment you may get from that weird does not help the viewer deal with the assorted insufferable individuals so you just stop caring. A strong desire will grow within you to go into the world of Poor Things with a sack of oranges and beat each and every one of them until they learn some kind of lesson whatever that lesson may be.

I give that the makeup and the general production design is fantastic. It evokes an atmosphere and environment. Kudos to Yorgos Lanthimos on that as it is rare thing. He’s not simply presenting his film but he’s actually trying to create or evoke a feeling with how he presents it. That occurs not too often during these days and is much more in line with James Whale did with Frankenstein than it is anything Steven Spielberg has done. But I don’t think James Whale was trying to be weird for the sake of being weird.

Willem Dafoe is one of those actors who is always good no matter how terrible his material may be. Genuine talent that can polish any amount of poop. And certainly as Dr. Godwin Baxter he polishes the poop given to him here. But no amount of talent can aid this.

Emma Stone plays the main character of Bella Baxter. Bella’s body is that of a woman who committed suicide with her brain replaced by that of a baby. I can’t call her performance here great nor can I call it terrible. She’s okay. She doesn’t harm the material but unlike Willem Dafoe she doesn’t polish it either.

Mark Ruffalo plays lothario Duncan Wedderburn. This is quite possibly my favorite Mark Ruffalo performance but then again, I’ve never liked anything of his that I’ve seen. He’s generally stiff and wooden with a heft amount of monotone but at least as Wedderburn he has a personality here. Still don’t like him in this or anything else.

Poor Things has a weird preoccupation with sex bordering on softcore porn. I’m not against sex scenes and I’m not against nudity but any scene in any film should advance the story whatever that story is. Not so much here. I am convinced this was part of a plot by Yorgos Lanthimos to see Emma Stone nude or having sex. And Emma Stone is naked a lot in this movie. Either partially or completely. That is ultimately the best reason to see this movie.

Why? Because at 2 hours and 20 minutes this is a looooooooooooooong movie. And it’s not particularly entertaining. Scenes go on too long and part of me thinks he pulled a Paul Feige thing and gave the actors a scenario and filmed what they made up. And it all does nothing to tell the story. It is there to fill time. This could have been very easily cut to closer to 90 minutes into something that felt like it was going somewhere.

I know nothing about the book upon which this is based which means I can do little to compare one to the other. Is this focus on sex something more? A commentary on something? I guess maybe it could be sexual empowerment of women. Try not to think that the body is driven by a baby’s brain while Emma Stone is discussing sex, playing with a penis, or mounting an individual. Because there could be no possible icky subtext about a baby’s brain in an adult body having sex. Nope. None.

Poor Things was a colossal misuse of my time. You watch this to see Emma Stone naked or to appear that your tastes in movies are better than it actually is. Otherwise you’ll feel like you’ve wasted 2 hours and 20 minutes of your time like I did.