150 Word Review: 'Poor Things' (2023)
Frankenstein's Barbie
Poor Things defies the kinds of tidy descriptions that sell movies: it's a grotesque Dickensian fable about a monster who builds a monster who runs away to explore the world, only to discover it is full of mediocre men—hardly box office gold.
The two-hour and twenty-one-minute runtime doesn't help matters either. Like most imperfect but brilliant works of cinema, Poor Things either chugs along like a steam engine or oozes like treacle.
And then there are the sex scenes, graphic, funny, sad. Never exploitative, but plentiful.
Director Yorgos Lanthimos conjures a dream-like Imperial Europe where brains can be swapped. Mark Ruffalo plays a rakish buffoon, and Willem Dafoe a kindly lunatic. As a wise Parisian madam, Katheryn Hunter is otherworldly. But is there another Hollywood actor who can do what Emma Stone does here? The slapstick? The shocking vulnerability? She is tremendous as our feminist hero, silly and fearsome.
Random Ranking
Top 5 Frankenstein Movie Adaptations
5. ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ (1975)
4. ‘Mary Shelley's Frankenstein’ (1994)
3. ‘Young Frankenstein’ (1974)
2. ‘The Curse of Frankenstein’ (1957)
1. ‘The Bride of Frankenstein’ (1935)
I can NOT wait to see this (I mean, obviously I can because I’m not paying for a ticket) but I’m super psyched for when it streams.
I just finally watched it last night. I’d heard so much buzz around it but I was afraid it was going to be a tedious spectacle like Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, which for me was insufferable. There is so much to love about Poor Things - hallucinatory set design and soundscape alone make it worth the watch. I also thought it was horrifying, hilarious, and at times, sweet and tender. It has a happy ending. And God (Shuffled His Feet), so brutalized and abused died peacefully surrounded by the little family he created whom he genuinely loved and was in turn loved by. It’s a crazy, irreverent movie. Lanthimos winks at the audience and some of us wink back.