The Drama Review

The Drama opens with a meet-cute, although your mileage will vary on how cute it is. Robert Pattinson’s Charlie is drawn to Zendaya’s Emma as she reads a book at a coffee shop. When she isn’t looking, Charlie snaps a photo of the book, looks it up on Goodreads, and uses the summary as a conversation starter. She eventually realizes he didn’t really read the book. Some might find this charming. Others may see it as creepy. Either way, it’s far from the worst thing someone can do, which Charlie realizes as he prepares to marry Emma.

Pattinson plays Charlie with the adorable anxiety of Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral. The Drama similarly builds to an explosive wedding, although it’s on a whole other level. If anything, you’d feel more comfortable at the funeral. The whole movie is a pressure cooker of unresolved tension. What starts as a lighthearted courtship takes a dark turn when the engaged couple has a double date with their friends, Rachel (Alana Haim) and Mike (Mamoudou Athie). Rachel suggests that they all say the worst thing they have ever done. In Emma’s case, it’s the worst thing she almost did. The almost part doesn’t make her intentions any less reprehensible, however.

Haim makes the most of her supporting performance, playing Rachel with utter disdain. She wants nothing to do with Emma anymore after she drops this bombshell. Charlie has a harder time walking away. Emma is far from the first person to have these unhealthy thoughts. If anything, she’s one of countless individuals in what’s become an epidemic with no end in sight. She’s seemingly turned her life around, but that doesn’t erase the past… even if it was something that technically didn’t happen. In any case, Charlie second-guesses who he’s marrying.

Attempting to justify his fiancée’s actions, Charlie forces a smile through the wedding preparations. Zoë Winters has a scene-stealing cameo as a wedding photographer with ironically poor word choice. Zendaya gives a reserved yet layered performance as a woman who thought the worst chapter of her life was forever swept under the rug. Now that it’s resurfaced, it becomes evident that her issues were never truly addressed. Emma seems convinced that if they just make it down the aisle, they’ll be able to move past this hurdle. Tying the knot may just make matters worse, however. As Charlie reconsiders the wedding, he also questions himself, finding that he’s no angel either. Is what he does worse than what Emma almost did, however?

Writer/director Kristoffer Borgli has made an uproarious dark dramedy with the audacity to go to some uncomfortably grim places. Joshua Raymond Lee also demonstrates some of the funniest editing in recent memory, always cutting at the most unexpected yet appropriate time. Pattinson and Zendaya create characters who are toxic together in so many ways. Yet, a part of us still wants to see them work things out. You get the sense that they’d likely have a blissful marriage if only Emma had kept her mouth shut. Is the moral that for a relationship to work, we can’t be fully honest with our significant other? It’s not an easy lesson, but there is some truth to it. As hilarious as it is dramatic, Borgli’s film hits its target.