Zendaya and Robert Pattinson’s The Drama is taking the plunge in theaters this weekend. What are Rotten Tomatoes critics saying about the movie?
Written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli, The Drama opens in theaters nationwide on Friday. The official summary for the film reads, “A happily engaged couple is put to the test when an unexpected turn sends their wedding week off the rails.”
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Rated R, The Drama also stars Alana Haim, Mamoudou Athie and Hailey Benton Gates.
As of Thursday midday, The Drama has earned an 83% “fresh” critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer based on 76 reviews. RT’s Critics Consensus, Audience Summary and Popcornmeter score are still pending.
Disclaimer: The trailer below includes cursing.
What Are Individual Critics Saying About Zendaya and Robert Pattinson’s ‘The Drama’?
India Block of the London Evening Standard is among the top critics on RT who gives The Drama a “fresh” score. In her review summary on RT, Block writes of the film, “It’s cringe-inducing and gross-out in places, but artfully shot, interestingly edited and set to some of the freakiest flute toots in arthouse cinema.”
Peter Howell of The Toronto Star also deems The Drama “fresh.” Howell writes in his RT review summary, “Kristoffer Borgli’s marital dramedy turns the rituals of love and commitment into a warped mirror for modern guilt, exposing how easily intimacy curdles into self-serving hypocrisy.”
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G. Allen Johnson of the San Francisco Chronicle is also a fan of The Drama. Johnson writes in his “fresh” RT review summary, “It’s Zendaya’s movie. Her layered performance holds back then lets go as Emma’s full complexity is gradually revealed. If you can’t get on board with Emma, then you’re the problem — which partly is Borgli’s intention.”
Brian Truitt of USA Today gives The Drama a “fresh” score as well. In his RT review summary, Truitt writes that The Drama is “one of the boldest, brashest movies in some time … When not giddily tearing apart the rom-com, Borgli asks really major thematic questions with his controversial subject matter.”
Robert Daniels of RogerEbert.com is among the top critics on RT who gives The Drama a “rotten” score, asking,” What gives this glib, circuitous film the right to persecute the apathetic when it barely understands its own characters?”
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Larushka Ivan-Zadeh of Time Out also rates The Drama “rotten” on RT, writing, “It’s about cold feet and how well we know the people close to us or want to — the irony being the movie itself doesn’t seem all that invested in its own characters, who rarely behave like plausible human beings.”
David Fear of Rolling Stone isn’t a fan of The Drama, either, writing in his RT review summary, “The fact that so much hinges on the poking of a wound doesn’t automatically make it audacious in a way that’s taboo breaking. It’s the sort of too-edgy-for-the-mainstream movie that’s not nearly as edgy as it thinks it is.”
Nikki Gemmell of The Australian calls out writer-director Kristoffer Borgli in her “rotten” review summary of the film on RT, writing, “The Drama is a film written by a man about a complicated female. As a woman, it doesn’t ring true. It normalizes violent psychopathic tendencies in females — I didn’t have that on my bingo card for a movie marketed as a … black comedy about weddings.”
The Drama, starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, opens in theaters nationwide on Friday.
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This article was originally published on Forbes.com