Zendaya is in a pickle. A conundrum of sorts that most, if not all, starlets have faced at one point or another during their ascension. The culture of fame has a lot invested in her, with each new movie, television show, stunning dress she dons on the red carpet, and possible marriage, the idea of Zendaya keeps ballooning. As a Black actress, she is in rarefied air as none before her have captivated the mainstream at this massive a level well before her 30th birthday. The Drama, her first of four feature films this year while headlining the final season of HBO’s Euphoria, is a microcosm of Zendaya’s dilemma: movies have figured out how to commodify her star power while also giving her characters that mostly serve and prop up her white male counterparts.
The following review will have mild plot spoilers, including the plot twist that sets the story in motion. We will mark when the plot twist spoiler begins.
The prologue of The Drama, like most good movies, does a fantastic job of being an actual romcom, setting up the universe and the characters that inhabit it. Also, it highlights the film’s eventual problems. Charlie (Robert Pattinson) stumbles across Emma (Zendaya) at a crowded coffee shop. He spots that she is reading a book and, as an icebreaker, Charlie googles a quick synopsis of the book to hold a conversation with her. Clumsily, it works. He scores a date with her and admits the ruse during their first dinner. Though surprised, Emma admits it impressed her, calling him a little freak as a cute jab. As Charlie writes his wedding-day speech and professes his love for Emma, his best friend Mike (Mamoudou Athie) is moved to tears. Pattinson gets to flex a demure comedic charm and grungy handsomeness that signal The Drama is more about his character’s journey rather than Zendaya’s.
The prologue ends with the couple rehearsing a choreographed dance number, showcasing the chemistry our two leads have with each other. On the surface, everything appears to be normal and whimsically fun. Then, as the credits roll over the screen, Ari Aster’s name flashes as one of The Drama’s producers. Moments later, the choreographer curses out the couple when they stop taking the dancing seriously. The one-two punch of seeing “Aster” on screen, whose dark comedy Eddington is still fresh on the mind, and the choreographer going full Mommy Dearest, signaled that The Drama would get much darker than most romcoms we are accustomed to.
During the dinner tasting, the wine is flowing, and the couple, along with Mike and the maid of honor, Rachel (Alana Haim), begin sharing tales of the worst things they have ever done. Between Charlie, Mike, and Rachel, their past behavior ranges from innocuous to deplorable. (*Plot twist spoiler*) When it is Emma’s turn, she drunkenly admits that she planned a school shooting when she was a teenager. While Rachel and Mike are stunned, Charlie initially laughs off the remark, believing it to be too sinister to be true. Rachel, who just admitted to locking a mentally disabled child in a closet, forcing the police to search for him as a missing person, becomes enraged. As the truth sinks in on Charlie, his cool disposition evaporates, and, with days before their wedding, he is left with confusion and terror.
Norwegian writer/director Kristoffer Borgli has a keen eye for comedy but only a half-baked idea of America’s murky and ever-changing political landscape. The Drama shows Charlie reckoning with this hard truth about a person he once thought of as sweet and empathetic. In flashbacks, we see Emma as a teenager at the inception point of her shooter plot. Charlie, in the present, views her as a teen to piece together what could have led to those dark feelings. During this time, there are funny moments in Charlie’s spiral. (The funniest may be Zoë Winter’s brief cameo as the wedding photographer as she goes over the list of who she will shoot… with her camera.) The film, however, lacks when it comes to Emma.
Broadly, The Drama is an expression of this country’s obsessions with guns, and crafting one’s identity as a reaction to their insecurities is interesting. We see teen Emma as she cultivates a shell around herself by believing she will commit murder, and the more she falls deeper into the facade of a gun-toting badass, the more the pain of seeing this character hurts. That hurt is aptly translated through Charlie as he is given the leeway to process this tragic and complex situation. These can be fascinating ideas if the film had any balance between the complexity of the men and women, and if, for even a moment, it had considered Emma as being a Black girl in her character’s conception.
The person who bullies teen Emma is a girl, and the person who shows her any compassion and friendship is a young man. As an adult, Charlie can rattle off the numerous reasons why Emma is the love of his life. When it’s her turn, she can’t. Charlie and Mike extend thoughtfulness and reserve judgment, while the women (including Emma) are hardliners and unyielding.
In this universe, Emma is emotionally tethered to mostly white people: her fiancé, bully, and best friend. To varying degrees, these people fail her. Maid of honor Rachel all but abandons their friendship, embarrassing Emma during her wedding speech. It’s odd that Rachel does not have a Black peer to comfort her emotionally. The most obvious failing of race in The Drama is its posing that a Black woman would be a mass shooter in the first place. For a film critical of America’s deadly obsession with violence (and Borgli is not wrong in doing so), mass shooters are overwhelmingly white and male, so having Emma as this character borders on nonsensical.
When Zendaya is paired against her white male counterparts, they have plenty to do, but she does not. The star power of Zendaya is used to sell tickets, but not meant to showcase the depth of her talent. Robert Pattinson, through no fault of his own, gets to be charming, then sullen, then manic, then hurt, then longing. His performance is great, and his character has an actual arc. However, The Drama is so preoccupied with Charlie choosing her, but it never asks why she would choose him after such an embarrassing episode.
It feels like Zendaya is becoming the biggest bait-and-switch actor of her time. We are sold Challengers, but Josh O’Connor steals the show. She is a face of the Spider-Man and Dune franchises, but is more of a cog in the IP machine within a larger ensemble. This can likely be extrapolated to The Odyssey later this year. The high-drama, soapy, bombastic Euphoria, funny enough, may give Zendaya her best character, as Rue is complex, endearing, and absorbing in ways that none of these other characters can even sniff.
The Drama ends on an ambiguous, though hopeful, note. To its credit, it is refreshing to see men wrestle with accepting complicated women, when mostly it is the other way around. People carry flaws, but they can grow into the person they were meant to be. The Drama, like its characters, is flawed and messy, but there is a twinge of hope that pushes it to an unknown future. It will draw more questions than it can answer, but the swing was worth the attempt.
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