Movie Review: Opus

2.5 stars out of 5

This seemed up my alley: A reclusive pop star makes a comeback after 30 years. And the reclusive star is played by… John Malkovich! Oh, remember our carefree Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich days? We were so young and carefree! Could this offbeat film capture that old Charlie Kaufman-era magic? I would find out!

Also, I felt like it would be a comedy. A satire, more specifically, of popular culture and the changing state of media and all that au courant stuff. But you know what kind of movie this is? This is one of those, a bunch of people are invited to a faraway place and then bad stuff starts happening movies. Is there a name for that genre? The Menu. That Channing Tatum one from last year which I haven’t seen. The Hulu series A Murder at the End of the World which I stopped watching after 34 minutes.

Our cub reporter is Ayo Edebiri from The Bear. She’s accompanying her boss, the season-2 Australian White Lotus manager Murray Bartlett, to a remote compound filled with Malkovich sycophants to cover the big album release. Also invited are Juliette Lewis, up-and-coming Amber Midhunter, and a few more actors I didn’t recognize. And indeed, bad things started happening.

Malkovich brings his A-game. His character seems part Michael Jackson, part Leonard Cohen, part… I don’t know… Malkovich. He has fun being weird, philosophical, deadpan, “sexy.” Edebiri doesn’t stretch much from her Bear character: the patient, persistent assistant who maybe knows better than the boss. Oh, Buster Bluth plays Malkovich’s publicist, that’s good for a smile.

So, not awful, but not great and not nearly as fun as it could’ve been. Keep trying, debut writer/director Mark Anthony Green; you had some of the right pieces but ultimately I felt abandoned somewhere between the 7th and 8th floors.