Since watching The Bling Ring, I was casually listening to a popular movie podcaswhen suddenly its host defended it. He said something along the lines of “I liked it when it came out, but I think I should re-watch it. I know so many people love it because it’s so relevant in the current climate regarding social media and how we use it”.
Listen: don’t bother.
I watched it for the first time ever almost a month ago, and I promise you, it’s still just okay.
Why did I choose to watch this film in particular? I felt it was time to delve more into female directors, and of course we’ve all heard of Sofia Coppola, so why not start there? Sure, I’ve reviewed Gerwig (twice) and Cathy Yan on this blog. I reviewed Can You Ever Forgive Me? and Mary, Queen of Scots. But 4 female directors out of the 38 movies I’ve watched is just poor.
Coppola is highly-regarded, too. Unfortunately, it seems that I picked one of her poorer entries into the cinematic zeitgeist. No, it wasn’t completely awful. But it wasn’t good either.
Here, it seems that Coppola was on the verge of saying something interesting, but she just doesn’t quite hit that mark. What she (thankfully) gets right is the movie’s run time. It’s a pretty short piece, but any longer would have just made it utterly boring.
There are things about it that aren’t bad. The direction is very good, so I have to credit her for that. The cast are decent, and the music choices are very relevant and well placed. But it is still just missing something. Possibly that the story doesn’t have enough substance for a feature length picture.
Maybe I should go watch Lost in Translation instead…
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