‘Don’t Worry Darling’ Review – A Better Drama Behind The Camera Than In Front Of It
The #MeToo movement is one of the biggest cultural scams of the 21st century.
After a guy who they protected for three decades got exposed as a violent sexual predator, Hollywood, the birthplace of cultural immorality, somehow convinced the world that they were the new champion of women’s rights.
Regardless of how they pulled it off, that same industry proceeded to use that same movement as an excuse to repeat the same misandrist message against almost all of their films: Men controlling anything is bad and everything would be so much better if we just let the women be in charge.
Yet, like everything out of Hollywood, this narrative was and is entirely fiction.
Don’t Worry Darling is a film that tries to magnify that message in front of the cameras but, thanks to the behind-the-scenes drama surrounding its production, instead proves that this notion is nothing more than a feminist pipe dream.
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Ever since the start of the #MeToo movement, long-time friend to Harvey Weinstein and alleged participant in his entrapment and abuse of numerous women Olivia Wilde has propped herself up with some help from her Hollywood allies as a feminist icon.
But despite all of this PR work, Wilde’s reputation for being an insufferable individual remained one of the worst kept secrets in the business, and as soon as she began to promote her misandrist fantasy film, her image as a false God for women began to fall apart.
The Don’t Worry Darling roller coaster began in April when Wilde was served custody papers from her ex-boyfriend Jason Sudeikis while on-stage at CinemaCon promoting the film.
Things only got worse from there, as Wilde was later caught in a lie about the exit of the film’s original male lead, Shia LaBeouf.
Though she claimed she took a stand against the actor’s supposedly abusive behavior and demands and fired him from the project, the actor later explained that he voluntarily exited from his role due to scheduling conflicts.
In support of his claim, LaBeouf was even able to provide a video, sent to him by Wilde, in which the director could be seen begging him to stay on.
Unsurprisingly, LaBeouf is not the only person involved with Don’t Worry Darling who has come to have a problem with Wilde, as star Florence Pugh has spent the last few months outright avoiding all contact with the film’s director.
Their beef starting in the wake of the LaBeouf situation, things between Pugh and Wilde eventually escalated to a full blown shouting match over the latter’s constant tardiness and behind-the-scenes relationship with male lead Harry Styles.
That’s right: the same woman who befriended a man who used his position of power to sleep with high-profile actresses is now using her own position of power to sleep with high-profile actors.
Between the hypocrisy of the situation and the fact that it caused Wilde’s split from Sudeikis, Pugh eventually borderline refused to promote the film, with her only notable press tour appearance being a brief pop-in at Don’t Worry Darling‘s Venice Film Festival premiere.
And yet, despite all this, Wilde has still chosen to believe that she and her long-time screenwriter Katie Silberman were the perfect people to tell a story about how weak men have a desire to control women.
Set in the town of Victory, California in the 1950s, Don’t Worry Darling tells the story of Alice ( Florence Pugh) and Jack Chambers (Harry Styles), a young couple living a great small-town life.
Alice is a stay-at-home wife and Jack works for a mysterious company on the secret “Victory Project”, the details of which are explicitly kept from the wives of the town.
Life is a utopia for the Chambers, but when another couple in their cul-de-sac begins to have marriage troubles, cracks begin to form in Victory.
Things only get worse when Alice decides to ask questions about what her husband is doing on the Victory Project – questions that get the attention of Jack’s boss, Frank (Chris Pine), a man who doesn’t take kindly to dissidence.
Don’t Worry Darling is strategically set in the 1950s because, in the minds of intersectional progressive feminists, it was the worst era for women in the history of the United States.
To them, that time when women listened to Patsy Cline and not Megan Thee Stallion, didn’t have to work 60 hours a week to barely afford a rundown apartment, and only had to worry about being a mother and wife was absolutely miserable.
The core of the film’s story revolves around the antagonist of the film, Frank, who Wilde has admitted was specifically based on psychologist Jordan Peterson.
An over-the-top villain who espouses the not-so-subtle message that ‘men are the ones in control of their society’, Pine’s character does nothing but deliver a few ominous warnings in response to Alice’s threats before being rendered entirely pointless by the film’s conclusion.
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Pugh is a good actress, but is forced to play someone who makes so many character-related stupid mistakes that you eventually lose any and all sympathy for her when she finds herself in trouble.
A lot has been made about Styles’ behind-the-scenes relationship/affair with the director.
However, Styles was ultimately the better choice for the role over LaBeouf.
That’s not to say that a better actor couldn’t have done a better job. We all know why Styles was chosen in the first place.
For a film with a 2-hour runtime, Don’t Worry Darling comes off less as movie and more as a two-part episode of The Twilight Zone which runs out of steam before its conclusion.
Even its big reveal is hardly a surprise, given how the film makes only a baseline effort to sell you on it.
Just like any mystery film, the premise of the movie relies on the effectiveness of its reveal, and by the end of this, you will be begging for even an M. Night Shyamalan-level twist.
The twist is so absurd and impractical that upon hearing it, you’ll have no choice but to laugh as a coping mechanism against the reality that you just wasted 2 hours of your life.
Warner Bros is down so bad from dealing with the Ezra Miller and Amber Heard mess, that Don’t Worry Darling is one of the last two films of 2022 the studio has chosen to use their limited marketing budget to promote.
They bumped Shazam 2 off of the 2022 schedule so that they could promote this dumpster fire of a project.
And if this movie was good, people might’ve been able to turn a blind eye to all the behind-the-scenes turmoil.
Instead Don’t Worry Darling wins the award for the biggest all-around cinematic failure of 2022.
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