The Drama, a black comedy headlined by Zendaya and Robert Pattinson (in theaters Apr. 3), has been shrouded in secrecy for months. It turns out that was a shrewd decision.
The film’s premise is almost as ill-advised and cringeworthy as its execution is crushingly humorless. No matter its talented stars, A24 should have kept it hidden away in the darkest corner of their deepest closet.
As with writer/director Kristoffer Borgli’s previous film Dream Scenario, The Drama explores how conscious and subconscious thoughts shape and inform our waking lives. In this case, that means the action is punctuated by brief flashes of memories and premonitions. Unfortunately, as with so much of the proceedings, that recurring structural device fails miserably, largely thanks to a misguided tone for material that, to have any chance of working, required either a far goofier or more straight-faced approach.
The Drama’s tenor is off from the start. Charlie (Pattinson) walks into a city coffee shop and spies Emma (Zendaya) reading at a window counter. When she momentarily gets up to toss her trash, Charlie—whose disheveled hair and backpack suggest immaturity, and whose big anxious eyes imply creepiness—races over to take a picture of her book, Harlan Ellison’s The Damage.
After hurriedly researching the novel, he tries to hit on Emma, only to have things go terribly wrong due to the fact that she’s deaf in the one ear that isn’t listening to music through headphones.
Amazingly, though, that’s not enough to stop her from agreeing to go on a date with him.
At that dinner, Charlie comes clean about his ruse, compelling her to call him “a weird little British freak.” As this meet-cute plays out, The Drama cuts to present-day Charlie trying to write his wedding vows at a kitchen table alongside his best friend Mike (Mamoudou Athie).
The Drama begins cheerily, if not convincingly. Despite their natural charisma, Pattinson and Zendaya share no believable couple-in-love chemistry, nor much distinctive character, save for Charlie being somewhat squirrely. At a wedding tasting, Mike and his wife Rachel (Licorice Pizza star Alana Haim) prove the far more interesting pair, with the latter feisty and mildly domineering, and the former more level-headed and reserved.
Nonetheless, during this casual and jovial sit-down, the film’s centers of attention finally make an impression courtesy of an impromptu game in which they all reveal the worst thing they ever did—a pastime that goes haywire when Emma spills her beans.
[WARNING: Spoilers follow]
While Charlie, Mike, and particularly Rachel confess to less than flattering conduct, Emma takes the cake by admitting that when she was 15, she planned to carry out a school shooting.
Worse, this was not just a thought exercise. She’d gone to school with her father’s rifle with every intention of carrying out the atrocity. This stuns the group and outrages Rachel, whose cousin is paralyzed and permanently confined to a wheelchair due to such a heinous attack. In the aftermath of this revelation, Charlie is left to grapple with the fact that the woman he’s pledged to spend the rest of his life with was, at least at one stage of her life, a wannabe mass murderer.
This turn of events is the catalyst for The Drama, whose subsequent tale revolves around Charlie’s struggle to cope with his new reality. Still, from the moment it’s introduced, Emma’s secret resonates as less outrageously uproarious than inescapably off-putting.
Perhaps if Borgli had cast his film as a cartoonishly inappropriate gallows-grade farce, he might have had a (slight) chance of generating some queasy comedy. By treating it mostly seriously, though, Emma’s grim plot comes across as merely repellent, thereby leaving Charlie’s handwringing over whether to follow through on the nuptials or to cut and run—complete with terrified reveries of frolicking about with the young Emma (Jordyn Curet)—feeling awkward and mirthless.
Once the proverbial cat is out of the bag, there’s not much to The Drama except numerous scenes in which Charlie tries to pretend in front of Emma that he’s not totally rattled and plagued by doubts. Emma, in turn, acts embarrassed and scared that she’s inadvertently blown up their forthcoming happily ever after.
Additional combative and ill-advised behavior ensues in the lead-up to the big day, including an incident with a gun-decorated coffee cup, a failed attempt at lovemaking, and a conversation-gone-awry between Charlie and his coworker Misha (Hailey Gates).
Yet even more problematic than the film’s implausibility—simply put, there’s no way Emma would have ever told on herself in this manner, and Charlie wouldn’t stick around—is its lack of wit and momentum. Save for a few subtle reactions by Athie’s Mike, the feature plays like a torturous tone-deaf joke that won’t end.
The Drama is teeming with charged undercurrents: how we’re defined (and define ourselves) by the stories we tell; the boundaries separating truth and lies; man’s capacity to change and forgive; and the tension between theory and deed.
What it lacks, however, is rhythm and style.
Scored to high-pitched, staccato woodwinds by Daniel Pemberton (Project Hail Mary), and edited with herky-jerky abruptness by Joshua Raymond Lee, Borgli’s latest lurches about in search of a well-timed cut or amusing development that might alleviate the cover-your-eyes embarrassment of watching Zendaya and Pattinson strive to elicit chuckles from one misjudged scenario after another, and pathos from Emma and Charlie’s unfortunate plight.
Be it the duo getting caught attempting to sneak into his place of employment or a late bit of bloody post-matrimonial conflict, the film is akin to a train wreck unfolding in slow motion.
It’s to Zendaya’s benefit that in its second half, she takes a backseat to the flailing Pattinson. Not that anyone survives The Drama, which is so misguided, empty, and unfunny that, like Emma’s scary indiscretion, it should have never seen the light of day.
