Don’t Worry Darling: Star-Studded Project Fails to Find Footing
Source: Don’t Worry Darling
Don’t Worry Darling will not be remembered for its quality as a movie, but instead, the media frenzy surrounding its cast, starring Florence Pugh and Harry Styles and director Olivia Wilde.
Mehera Bonner outlined the drama in an article for Cosmopolitan Magazine, titled “‘Don’t Worry Darling’ Drama, Explained”. It began back in 2020, Shia LaBeouf was cast alongside Florence Pugh and Chris Pine. According to Labeouf, he decided to walk away from the movie on his own, but director Olivia Wilde disputes this, saying she fired him for being difficult to work with.
Additional drama arose with rumors that Wilde and Pugh did not get along, and were no longer speaking. Finally, a clip was released of the cast at the Venice Film Festival, in which Harry Styles appeared to spit on his co-star Pine. While both actors quickly refuted these claims, it further fueled the rumors that the cast did not get along. I tell you all of this because I can assure you that it is more interesting than the movie itself, and the relationships between these real people are far more intriguing than that of their characters.
First, a few good things. Director Olivia Wilde starts the movie off strong, with eye-catching, mid-century set designs and glitzy 50s fashion. She nails the style of the era, and she captures this throwback world with rotating camera shots and slick shallow-focuses that keep your eyes on the screen.
Another reason to keep your eyes on the screen is the star power of this movie. The big three of Florence Pugh, Olivia Wilde, and Chris Pine do a lot of the heavy lifting during this film.
Pugh is stellar in her leading role as the inquisitive housewife Alice Chambers, delivering every line with such convincing emotion and intensity. Olivia Wilde plays Bunny, Alice’s close friend and next-door-neighbor. While she doesn’t serve too big of a role in the plot itself until later in the movie, Wilde is quite entertaining in her supporting role; she doesn't take too much attention away from the leads, but absolutely supplements the story throughout.
Another good part about this movie is Chris Pine. Pine plays Frank, the charismatic yet enigmatic founder of the Victory Project, a cult-like town in the California desert where the story takes place. I found myself disappointed in the lack of screen time for Pine, as I found him to be convincing as a charming and intimidating community leader. I would’ve loved to see more of Pine’s role as Frank, and we never really get to know him enough.
Now for the bad, and there’s a decent amount of it. I’ll start with the fourth star of the movie, Harry Styles, who plays Alice’s husband, Jack Chambers. The rumors are true: he can’t act. He is so horribly robotic with his delivery, and it’s even more obvious when he shares the screen with Pugh. He simply cannot match her emotional level, and it can get pretty hard to watch on certain occasions.
The more passion Wilde asked Styles to show with his lines, the harder it was for Styles to keep up. In his defense, the character of Jack Chambers is not very well-written, and although he serves an important role in the world of the film, he has very little action. It’s a whole lot of telling and not enough showing when it comes to Styles’ role, but that doesn’t excuse his lackluster line delivery throughout.
I also found that the cinematography became quite bland after some time. While I enjoyed some of Olivia Wilde’s tricks initially, I found them to become quite repetitive not too far into the movie. The plot of the movie also did nothing for me. I was entirely bored by the story immediately, and it failed to reel me in at all during the rest of the runtime.
I wish I could go into the story further, but it is so meaningless to me that I have a hard time even giving it a proper criticism. There is nothing to take away from this movie, and at the end of the day, that’s just about the most frustrating thing any movie can do. With a little bit of style and absolutely zero substance, Don’t Worry Darling is a 2.5/5 (and that’s probably too generous).