Emily the Criminal (2022, dir. John Patton Ford, US) by Kymm Zuckert
Emily the Criminal is an extremely dark sequel to Emily in Paris.
Kidding!
I’m going to start with a spoiler, a very important one: the dog is fine, nothing bad happens to the dog. For a minute there you think something bad is going to happen, but it doesn’t. I swear, I was ready to walk right out of the theatre if it had. Back to the review.
Emily the Criminal is the story of Emily, no surprise there, played by Aubrey Plaza. She doesn’t start out the movie as a criminal, she is just an underemployed young woman with a massive amount of student loan debt, unable to get a better job due to a felony conviction in her past.
She finds out about a thing called dummy shopping, which is credit card fraud. You are given a credit card with a stolen number, a matching I.D., and instructions on purchasing a big screen TV, afterwards you are given an envelope with $200 cash, pretty easy money!
Emily turns out to be pretty good at the dummy shopping, with some slip ups and some dangerous situations, but the money just keeps coming. It’s a slippery slope.
I’ve gotta tell you, I squirmed all the way through this film, it is full of situations that could turn bad, or do turn bad, and then how bad are they going to be? I haven’t cringed so much since I saw Dear Evan Hansen.
The film is okay, on the good side, not great, not bad, but acceptable. What really makes it worth watching are the performances, especially Aubrey Plaza’s. We are so used to her Parks and Rec/Scott Pilgrim vs. the World/etc. persona, poker faced, monotone, sarcastic, hilarious.
She is so good at that, that she just kept being cast to do that over and over, but in this film she moves her face and has an expressive tone, and she is excellent! She is a way better and more natural actor that she has had the opportunity to be, or at least, that I have seen, and I was extremely impressed.
Also in the film were Theo Rossi, the leader of the credit card scam, and a character with many layers, Megalyn Echikunwoke as Emily’s longtime friend, who is in a much different position in her life. Also, in a cameo, the great Gina Gershon, with whom I went to NYU, excuse me, I seem to have dropped this name. She makes the most of a very important scene.
All in all, as stated above, it’s good enough, Aubrey Plaza tears it up, and nothing bad happens to the dog.
Kymm Zuckert is an actor/writer/native Angelino. When Kymm was a child, her parents would take her to see anything, which means that sometimes she will see a film today and say, “I saw that when I was eight, I don’t remember any of that inappropriate sex stuff!” Check out her entire 365 day blog @ https://365filmsin365days.movie.blog