The experience of watching How to Talk to Girls at Parties is equivalent to having someone scream in your face for 102 minutes. To be fair, this is a movie about punk music, a style that is notorious for being in-your-face. But beneath the stylish punk rock feel, there's something about Hedwig and the Angry Inch director John Cameron Mitchell's latest that is aggressively unpleasant. Based on the short story by Neil Gaiman, this is a film so profoundly annoying and so infinitely amused with itself that I just wanted the constant noise to stop after a while. The A24 film, which is now available to watch on VOD, has an unrelenting belief in its own cleverness, a belief that is unfortunately unfounded. Punks vs. aliens is certainly a weird and wacky concept, but that doesn't mean it's inherently interesting. Even with Elle Fanning's best attempts to save it, How to Talk to Girls at Parties is a manic, exhausting bore.
Enn (Alex Sharp) and his friends are punk enthusiasts living in 1970s London, and they spend their days traveling to different concerts and giving a big middle finger to authority. One night, while searching for a big-ticket after-party, they stumble into a bizarre event hosted by a group of alien colonists. Well, they actually believe that the party is being hosted by Americans from California. But make no mistake- these are aliens. The colony has explored different planets across the galaxy, and they're currently on their last regeneration. Within this group of aliens, there's a young girl named Xan (Fanning), who is rebelling against her parent-teacher (Tom Brooke) and everything the colony stands for. That's when she meets Enn, who is instantly enamored by her beauty and rebellious spirit. Xan and Enn travel through London, and he teaches her about punk music, British culture, and love. But eventually, Xan will have to make a choice- between this world and her own.
That's the basic thrust of the movie, but it's not all that How to Talk to Girls at Parties has to offer. There's also Nicole Kidman as the domineering queen of the London punk scene, Ruth Wilson as an unsettling and disillusioned parent-teacher, and more general weirdness than you can shake a stick at. All of this sounds so cool and strange on paper, which makes it all the more disappointing that it just.....isn't. Not only is How to Talk to Girls at Parties a loud and obnoxious film- it's also just flat-out boring. I hate using that word as a criticism, but sometimes, it's just true. You would think all the oddities and peculiarities would make for at least a mildly interesting watch, but director John Cameron Mitchell is content to simply overwhelm the audience with bizarre and unnatural events. The film's humor, action, characters, and love story- basically everything the movie has to offer- are all firmly based in its own weirdness. But that doesn't mean it's compelling or amusing- it just means that it's weird.
It also makes the film's reckless jump into sentimentality all the more idiotic. After two acts of loud punk music, endless screaming and yelling, and editing techniques ripped straight out of the early 2000s, How to Talk to Girls at Parties attempts to achieve some sort of emotional ending. It's the silliest jump in storytelling logic, and it presumes that the audience has been somehow invested in Enn and Xan's romance since the beginning. Elle Fanning, one of the more talented actresses of her generation, does her absolute best with what is given to her, creating an intermittently funny portrayal of an awestruck alien. But even she can't make the 48-hour romance between her character and the young Enn click, a failure of the script by Mitchell and Philippa Goslett more than anything else. The finale also presumes that the viewer has any level of investment in the inner workings of the alien colony, a subplot that is barely established in the first half of the movie.
Basically, How to Talk to Girls at Parties spends 80 minutes being a grating, shrill, and hollow punk sci-fi mood piece, and then it abruptly decides to actually have a story. If those first 80 minutes weren't like nails on a chalkboard in cinematic form, maybe the rest would be slightly more tolerable. But when you put it all together, it's an unholy mess of a film, albeit one with a bright spot or two. Fanning's performance is a highlight, but there's also fun to be had with Ruth Wilson's PT Stella, who gets some of the biggest laughs towards the end. These character-centric moments are unfortunately few and far between, mostly because Mitchell is so intent on letting his own style overwhelm everything else. This is a film overflowing with flash and pizzazz, from the unique costume designs to the wild editing. Too bad it's all so exhausting.
Will there be an audience for this? Maybe. In theory, I am the kind of viewer who would respond to this kind of music-driven sci-fi madness. But from the opening scene to the last silly plot twist, How to Talk to Girls at Parties is a near-disaster, an amalgam of bad ideas, terrible choices, and dreadful execution. Even if you can get past all the screaming and yelling (there are literally characters who use screaming as a weapon) and narrative stupidity, you'll find a dreary and thoroughly unappealing film on a visual level. For all of its infinite creativity and supposed cleverness, How to Talk to Girls at Parties is drab and lifeless.
THE FINAL GRADE: D+ (3.8/10)
Images courtesy of A24 Films
Enn (Alex Sharp) and his friends are punk enthusiasts living in 1970s London, and they spend their days traveling to different concerts and giving a big middle finger to authority. One night, while searching for a big-ticket after-party, they stumble into a bizarre event hosted by a group of alien colonists. Well, they actually believe that the party is being hosted by Americans from California. But make no mistake- these are aliens. The colony has explored different planets across the galaxy, and they're currently on their last regeneration. Within this group of aliens, there's a young girl named Xan (Fanning), who is rebelling against her parent-teacher (Tom Brooke) and everything the colony stands for. That's when she meets Enn, who is instantly enamored by her beauty and rebellious spirit. Xan and Enn travel through London, and he teaches her about punk music, British culture, and love. But eventually, Xan will have to make a choice- between this world and her own.
That's the basic thrust of the movie, but it's not all that How to Talk to Girls at Parties has to offer. There's also Nicole Kidman as the domineering queen of the London punk scene, Ruth Wilson as an unsettling and disillusioned parent-teacher, and more general weirdness than you can shake a stick at. All of this sounds so cool and strange on paper, which makes it all the more disappointing that it just.....isn't. Not only is How to Talk to Girls at Parties a loud and obnoxious film- it's also just flat-out boring. I hate using that word as a criticism, but sometimes, it's just true. You would think all the oddities and peculiarities would make for at least a mildly interesting watch, but director John Cameron Mitchell is content to simply overwhelm the audience with bizarre and unnatural events. The film's humor, action, characters, and love story- basically everything the movie has to offer- are all firmly based in its own weirdness. But that doesn't mean it's compelling or amusing- it just means that it's weird.
It also makes the film's reckless jump into sentimentality all the more idiotic. After two acts of loud punk music, endless screaming and yelling, and editing techniques ripped straight out of the early 2000s, How to Talk to Girls at Parties attempts to achieve some sort of emotional ending. It's the silliest jump in storytelling logic, and it presumes that the audience has been somehow invested in Enn and Xan's romance since the beginning. Elle Fanning, one of the more talented actresses of her generation, does her absolute best with what is given to her, creating an intermittently funny portrayal of an awestruck alien. But even she can't make the 48-hour romance between her character and the young Enn click, a failure of the script by Mitchell and Philippa Goslett more than anything else. The finale also presumes that the viewer has any level of investment in the inner workings of the alien colony, a subplot that is barely established in the first half of the movie.
Basically, How to Talk to Girls at Parties spends 80 minutes being a grating, shrill, and hollow punk sci-fi mood piece, and then it abruptly decides to actually have a story. If those first 80 minutes weren't like nails on a chalkboard in cinematic form, maybe the rest would be slightly more tolerable. But when you put it all together, it's an unholy mess of a film, albeit one with a bright spot or two. Fanning's performance is a highlight, but there's also fun to be had with Ruth Wilson's PT Stella, who gets some of the biggest laughs towards the end. These character-centric moments are unfortunately few and far between, mostly because Mitchell is so intent on letting his own style overwhelm everything else. This is a film overflowing with flash and pizzazz, from the unique costume designs to the wild editing. Too bad it's all so exhausting.
Will there be an audience for this? Maybe. In theory, I am the kind of viewer who would respond to this kind of music-driven sci-fi madness. But from the opening scene to the last silly plot twist, How to Talk to Girls at Parties is a near-disaster, an amalgam of bad ideas, terrible choices, and dreadful execution. Even if you can get past all the screaming and yelling (there are literally characters who use screaming as a weapon) and narrative stupidity, you'll find a dreary and thoroughly unappealing film on a visual level. For all of its infinite creativity and supposed cleverness, How to Talk to Girls at Parties is drab and lifeless.
THE FINAL GRADE: D+ (3.8/10)
Images courtesy of A24 Films
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