The Golden Raspberries delayed their own announcement of 2020 dishonors to coincide with that of the Oscars, as they always do, and one of the nominees has reminded me of my own problematic position on a 2020 movie.
It's actually a 2021 movie for all intents and purposes, but those are the times we live in.
And it's actually a movie that has already gotten a different kind of "golden" nomination -- a Golden Globe.
When I went to see Sia's feature directorial debut, Music, back at the end of January, the ticket seller did something I thought was sort of unusual for someone in her position: she badmouthed the movie. She hadn't actually seen it, but thought it was possible to badmouth it on reputation alone. "Good luck with that," she told me. "I understand it's pretty rough."
In Australia, this use of the word "rough" -- assuming my memory is correct and this is actually what she said -- would colloquially be understood as "bad," not "emotionally challenging" as an American might interpret it. You know, like "rough sledding."
When I came out of the movie, though, I thought she'd misheard. I understand why she gave me the warning, but I thought Sia largely pulled it off. I was conscious that I might be going against the grain of the popular perspective on the movie, but I gave it a 7/10 on ReelGood when I reviewed it. I don't let ticket sellers who haven't actually seen the movie bias my reviews, whenever possible.
My limited affection for Music seemed to be justified when, lo and behold, Sia's film turned up among the Golden Globe nominations just a week later. Not just one nomination, for the film itself as best musical or comedy, but a nomination for Kate Hudson as best actress in a musical or comedy. At the time, its inclusion surprised me more on the basis of its release year, as I thought this was a genuine 2021 release (and in most years would be), than on the basis of its quality. Though I was also surprised to see this apparently shit movie, according to the hearsay propagated by theater ticket sellers, embraced as decidedly not shit.
Music didn't win any globes, which I think would have been the biggest surprise of all. And probably would have started to fade into our collective memories if not for the Razzie announcement.
Music didn't just slide in there with one nomination, but it was almost leading the pack. It was nominated for worst picture, worst actress (also Hudson), worst supporting actress and worst director. In fact, if not for Dolittle and the Netflix movie 365 (gotta watch that now), which led with six, Music probably would have gotten a lot more headlines than it did.
Perhaps that ticket seller had her finger on something after all.
The Big Problem with Music, of course, is that it does that thing that is an absolute cinematic no-no: It casts a normally abled actress as a person with intellectual disabilities. It "goes full retard," to use the intentionally offensive parlance of Tropic Thunder.
This actress, Maddie Ziegler, is a veteran of a number of Sia videos. She was cast for her abilities in the dance numbers that populate this film and dramatize the title character's inner life. Turns out, she's also an actress of some ability. I don't suppose I found her portrayal 100% free of the reasons we are legitimately worried about normally abled actors essaying these roles, but it could have been a lot worse. And I thought the character was ultimately sweet. If you decide you are forced to do this for logistical reasons, like the actress needing to perform complicated dance choreography for the role, Ziegler walks that tightrope about as well as you might hope. (That's not to say a person with autism couldn't also be an amazing dancer, but I suspect it's considerably less likely.)
Of course, as it turns out, most critics stopped at "normally abled actress as a person with intellectual disabilities."
When I saw how the Razzies had rained scorn on Music, I had to do something I hadn't yet done for this film: check out its Metacritic score. With this new information that contradicted the praise of the Golden Globes, I guessed it was worse than I thought it might be. I guessed 37. It was worse than that: 23.
Ouch.
Of course, at that moment I started to panic about my own review. Had I gotten this really, really wrong?
The 18 Metacritic reviews are divided between mixed (six) and negative (12), without a single positive review in there. The highest individual score listed was 60, which I suppose is only ten points lower than my own converted score of 70 would have been. But still, giving the movie a better review than the 18 other critics on Metacritic gave me a wave of nausea that reminded me of other extreme outlier positions I've held in the past, like my affection for the universally loathed The Emoji Movie. (Fortunately, I had the good sense not to review that one, a consequence of seeing it a good two months after it actually came out.)
But then I noticed something interesting: the user score. That score exactly equalled my own 7.0 rating of the film (Metacritic includes the decimal point in this calculation), based on a lot more than 18 opinions.
That's right, among users of Metacritic, Music has a staggering 113 positive reviews, 48 negative reviews, and somehow only four mixed reviews. I guess you either love it or you hate it.
With these new data points, I started to feel a bit better about my own positive review. I mean, if you're a critic, you're likely to turn your nose up at what the rabble thinks of any movie. But if you go back to the guiding principles of why you started reviewing movies, one of those was to make useful recommendations to average moviegoers. My review of Music would have steered at least 113 people in the right direction.
This is the latest strong bit of evidence about a disconnect between critics and the people they write for. There may be a lot more film snobs going into film criticism than ever before, as the cheery working professionals who championed popular entertainments are steadily retiring. I don't know why that would be -- the industry should have been peopled with snobs from the start -- but the obvious gulf between critics and audiences on Music has to mean something, and this may be it.
It seems to be an example of the way our core assumptions fail us sometimes. A core assumption is that a movie where an actress goes "full retard" is going to be patently offensive no matter what. It isn't going to matter if there are subtleties in her performance, moments where she held back and opted for a less showy way of demonstrating the traits of the character's affliction. But a movie about a person with autism can't be all moments like that; she has fits and moments of extreme agitation, and for those critics who judged Maddie Ziegler harshly, the moment the script called for one of those moments, they started writing the review in their head.
Let's be honest, they started writing the review even before they watched the movie. It helps that Sia is an easy target. She's got a unique combination of traits that make her easy to pick on. For one, she offends critics by suggesting that anyone can direct a feature film, even a musician who theoretically excels in a different type of artistic expression altogether. (Though Sia has been directing her own videos for some time.) Then she's got that eccentric public personality that includes airy fairy statements and wigs that cover her eyes entirely. This is a person they can pile on without getting a guilty conscience.
The critics are right that Music should not have worked. But the truth is, it does. And you have to review the movie you're seeing, not the movie you assume it will be.
Of course, the community of critics is no monolithic entity who do any one thing for the same set of reasons. I have to assume there are plenty of critics who did give Music a chance, but it still didn't work for them, possibly as much for their antipathy to Sia's colorful dance numbers featuring silly outfits (I said she had a "Teletubby aesthetic" in my review) as for Ziegler's casting or performance. And in fact, I noticed the critic who has the highest listed review of Music on Metacritic -- Tara Brady of The Irish Times -- states in the part of her review they excerpted, "Ziegler's performance is the best thing about Music." I'm not sure I agree, as I did sort of go for the dance numbers and for Hudson's performance, but I'm glad she had the courage to say what she did.
But back to the Golden Globes and the Golden Raspberries. One thing that's for sure is that the Globes' endorsement of Music, even if having some validity according to me, is a bad look for them in a year in which the Hollywood Foreign Press has gotten some of its worse PR ever. That body has come under fire this year, quite rightfully, for having almost no racial diversity, and I'm sure its decision to honor Music only contributes to that sense of its fatal tone deafness.
In truth, even though I like it, Music would never have made my own nominee shortlist. It's one thing to say a movie succeeds on its own terms; it's quite another to say it is among the best of the year. And at least I can provide some separation between myself and the Hollywood Foreign Press on that one.
In determining who votes on the Golden Raspberries, I noted Wikipedia describes the voting body as being comprised of "filmmakers and very opinionated film buffs from around the world," and that members hail from "all 50 states and every continent except Antarctica." (That's good; I'm glad that neither climate scientists nor penguins are taking time from their busy schedules to trash the worst movies of the year.)
I wonder if the Razzie voting for Music was a direct sign of outrage at the Golden Globes, and that maybe if the movie hadn't already been singled out by that body, it would have just slipped under everyone's radar as a problematic movie that wasn't as problematic as it seemed like it should have been. Instead, now it will live in infamy as a movie straddling the line between a dubious best and a dubious worst of 2020.
And all this for a movie that didn't even come out that year.
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