Locked Down

 2021, d. Doug Liman - hbomax

 Toasty already wrote about one mediocre 2020-year-of-our-COVID movie, so how about another?  We're bound to see many, many, many of these crop up this 2021, I wonder if it will be like our Hallmarkies where we have to gauge them against each other because otherwise they're not real movies...?  Well, here we have a "romantic-comedy-drama-heist" COVID picture.

 So, yes, you heard right.  There is a "heist" (that's actually just a theft) in this film that is so ridiculously set up that it winds up being not some big orchestrated plan, but rather a crime of opportunity where puzzle pieces absurdly start placing themselves together so obviously...I mean it's got to be meant as satire, right? But satire of what?

This film is also one of opportunity, where it seems like "hey, we have access to Harrords of London for one night during this COVID shitstorm, what can we do with it?". The "heist" seems so inorganic to the rest of the movie, which itself is a light drama -- or quasi-comedy -- about a divorcing couple forced to lock down together. 

The first two acts really get into the Marriage Story meat of their relationship, and I love how both Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor play it out, teasing the backgrounds of these characters and how they wound up here. There's some zoom cameos from the likes of Ben Stiller, Stephen Merchant, Mindy Kaling and Ben Kingsley (in great form) that remind you that a lot of talented people got bored being stuck at home. It's fun, actually, in a weird way, if you're not triggered by all the COVID stuff.

But that third act...you know I was thinking I'd be there for it...but it kept pushing the level of absurdity, and kept raising stakes that didn't need to be raised, and I couldn't get fully on board with it. All the drama/tension/humour should have stayed in the will they/wont they (both steal the thing and get back together), but no, they had to just start putting dumbass barriers in their way leading to a postscript which seemed to imply that no one was checking up on this very weird scenario that was largely caught on camera. It's as if they were just winging these Harrods scenes and didn't have time to reshoot for logic or consistency.

My limited research (aka Wikipedia) says : (from)a screenplay that Steven Knight had written that July (2020) over a dare....(t)he film was shot over the course of 18 days. Due to the limited resources and short production window the order of several scenes needed to be adjusted". It's a professionally made movie, but these seams show through.

Ejiofor making bread though during the credits kind of brought me back around. 

Didn't hate it, kida liked it.