We have dog heads on chickens, pig heads on chickens, duck heads on goats, an animal I can't even conceptually grasp at all, and a black and white movie that is just slightly less than black and white; more like almost kinda black and sorta close to white. Like someone fucked with the contrast just enough so you'd notice it wasn't black and white. And maybe the black shadows are black and the white highlights are white, but I am having a hard time seeing it. I think the contrast changes randomly just to fuck with you.
Nevertheless, Emma Stone, playing the role of Bella Baxter, is absolutely remarkable in this role. Willem Defoe looks like his face was patched together by a kindergartner and some duct tape, but that doesn't diminish his role as the crazy physician Godwin Baxter at all. Rami Youssef plays the role of one of Dr. Baxter's students Max McCandles, and he is brought into the home to "gather data" but Godwin is trying to get him to marry her.
He's a little awkward at best around her. And then he asks Godwin "hey, aren't you fucking your daughter?" I suppose that's reasonable considering the incredible absurdity of it all so far. Godwin explains in rather unnecessarily graphic detail that he's a eunuch and it would take same power to run London as it would to give him any sort of sexual function.
Mark Ruffalo appears as Duncan Wedderburn, the family attorney? I'm guessing as he's drawing up a contract of marriage and all. His character is also fucking weird and looks like he's on opium.
To cut an extremely convoluted story, which about 10 minutes into the movie doesn't really matter at all, Bella committed suicide while pregnant prior to the beginning of the movie. Godwin Baxter finds her, and her unborn baby still in her womb. Through some mysterious and weird medical process, he's able to take the unborn baby's brain and put it in Bella's head. And somehow this works to the extent that Bella is able to somewhat function in society. Ish.
Bella and Duncan, who as I mentioned, was actually setting up a contract for Max to marry Bella, instead run off to Lisbon. At some point he stuffs her in a crate and takes her to Athens, and they wind up penniless in Paris. Over the course of the movie, Duncan becomes more and more jealous and insane because Bella can't seem to keep her vagina to herself; including being a prostitute to live.
Just before the end of the movie, we finally meet Bella's actual husband Alfie, who turns out to be a psychopathic murderous maniac. At some point, Bella drugs him, drags him back to Godwin's home to Max, and they put a goat brain in his body. And everyone lives happily ever after.
There's a lot of weird fucking going on in the movie, which Bella usually enjoys for the most part. The cinematography is absolutely brutal, as I might have mentioned earlier. From pin-hole cameras, to wide-angle shots which may cause you to vomit if you aren't careful, this movie was designed to give you brain damage.
The movie switches randomly from black-ish and white-ish to color. At first, I thought it was just depending on whether you were in the past or present, but at some point that doesn't even make sense. I thought the oddball camera angles and lens changes meant something too, but I'm afraid I couldn't figue it out at all.
I'm not really doing this movie justice with this review, but I can't watch it twice. I really can't.
So if you are in the mood for a watch-once-and-possibly-vomit movie, please, by all means, watch Poor Things.
Migraine inducing cinematography: 1.
Puking in my mouth a little bit from the "music": 1
Weirdly not sure if I enjoyed Duncan and Bella "jumping furiously": 5
The way Godwin describes the atrocities his father put him through with such creepy nonchalance: 3
Tits and ass: 7
Mixing heads and bodies of different animals for fun: 5
Figuring out the significance between the black and white and color scenes: 3
Figuring out the significance between normal, crazy angle, and wide-angle lens shots: 3
The absolute marvelous cast and their talented acting skills that pulled off an otherwise insane movie: 8
Actually seriously debating whether Emma Stone is my new celebrity hall-pass: 6
Which brings this movie's rating to a completely insignificant 4.2.
Take whatever headache, nausea, anti-vertigo or motion sicknes medication you use before watching the movie, turn the volume down, and make sure the closed caption is on in the language of your preference before watching, and you might get through this movie unscathed.
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