Secrets to a successful life and career.
- Don't whine
- If someone gives you a contract to read . . . read it
- Fix the problem, and not the blame
- Stop playing victim
- When you are young, you are frequently WRONG
Though she didn't whine, Aubrey Plaza, who plays the titular character in Emily the Criminal, does manage to fuck up everything else. However, anyone reading this review will have to watch the film to see if crime does indeed pay.
The movie's plot is about fraud. It's also about preaching of the evils of student loan debt (Good God, does history really begin an hour ago for filmmakers?), and how, through a series of bad job interviews, previous criminal behavior (A DUI and an aggravated assault conviction), Emily finds herself working for a catering company, and an organization that hires dummy shoppers to buy expensive items using stolen credit cards.
To top that, she, and the screenwriters mention her student debt as often as Frazer Crane mentioned his degree from Harvard during the run of "Frazer."
It's annoying. It virtue signals the intention of the filmmakers to blame everyone except the mentally unbalanced Emily for driving drunk; beating an ex-boyfriend (Oooh. She's a keeper!) with a baseball bat; and for being too lazy or too stupid to read her loan agreement.
But, of course, without this Issue Du Jour, we would not have a movie.
Goodness, I miss the good old days of bashing the American health care system in every other wretched TV series or movie to land on a streaming service up until now.
Ms. Plaza is her usual fantastically skanky self, and the performance is stratified, but clear. Theo Rossi is her equal as partner-in-crime, Youcef. Aspriring narcissist, Megalyn Echikunwoke as Emily's "friend" Liz is more shallow than a Joe Biden brain scan. And the best piece of ass since Glynis Johns, Gina Gershon, is absolutely rapacious as the President of an Ad Agency who interviews Emily as though she were a midnight snack.
"Emily the Criminal" is a 90 minute shot of epinephrine, and a clever and unique story. It is not a derivative heist caper. Nor is it some sort of warmed over con game.
The film is very, very good.
But, please, STFU about student debt. Read the contract. If you sign it, pay the money back and stop whining.
Either that, or enlist Daniel Ogawa to post some enabling essay on Facebook about insidiously evil Monopoly Men running the loan departments at banks. I've not seen one of those cloying homages to Trustafarian logic in a few weeks, and I need the laughs.
Netflix
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