J.J. Colagrande

Malcom & Marie is hard to watch in one seating. At times, it's an extremely riveting, emotional, intense examination of a deteriorating relationship and a cross-examination of both art and its muses. Like a few monologues are so gripping, almost triggering, you are glued to the screen. Inevitably, and unfortunately, like a broken seesaw, you are left hanging in the air, and just left there as the movie circles around itself with long, overly dramatic, redundant, overly ironic examinations of art and overly simple examinations of love. In simple terms, it's boring. And we don't care, especially about Malcom's character, whose melodramatic rants will literally give you a headache at times. It took me three attempts to finish watching the movie and I literally had nothing else to do. That can't be good any way you slice it. In creative writing we call a story like Malcom & Marie a bathtub story, which is a tale that doesn't move, or is basically stuck in the bathroom. It's a metaphor for stagnation in writing. However, literally, there are in fact many scenes in this movie set in a bathroom. Sometimes a "bathroom story" can work, Stephen King's Misery pops into mind, but mostly we are taught to avoid them because they fall stagnant and flat. Malcom & Marie falls stagnant and flat. Granted, due to Covid, the movie was limited in production and they were forced into creating a "bathroom story" but that doesn't justify the boring, contrived, laborious nothing of a plot and mostly empty, too ironic writing. Sure, Zendaya & John David Washington are good actors and their talents are on display here. And again, some scenes and monologues are cinematic daggers, but it's a seesaw, and not one you would want to ride again. Want to see a movie about a deteriorating relationship? Check out Marriage Story. This is not that..