Not Okay Movie Review: Starts From The Comedy And Ends In The Drama In A Coherent And Fluid Way (2022)

Stars: Zoey Deutch, Mia Isaac, Negin Farsad

Director: Quinn Shephard

Streaming Platform: Hulu and Disney+

Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and half stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

Not Okay is a grotesque film that tells a grotesque story and has a grotesque protagonist. Consciously. The film, written and directed by Quinn Shepard, is available on Hulu and Disney+ from July 29, 2022, and promises to create quite a few discussions, ironically online. Produced by Makeready, the film is keen to make it clear to the viewer immediately: attention! The protagonist of this film is unpleasant. And we add: the protagonist of this film is weak but skilled, irritating but awake, in a nutshell: grotesque. And unfortunately, also representative.

Not Okay Movie Review: The Story

Danni lives in New York and is a photo editor. She defines herself as a zillennial, that is, a person between two generations: millennials and Gen Z. Like many of her peers, she is chronically insecure, depressed and dissatisfied with her work. Her parents are wealthy but a little absent, she wants to become a writer but the editor of the magazine she works for doesn’t seem to think she’s capable. Colin doesn’t consider it. She then decides, thanks to her skill in photoshop and her in-depth knowledge of Instagram, to completely pretend a writer’s trip to Paris. In those days, however, a series of terrorist attacks will hit the French capital, and Danni will find herself trapped in a lie bigger than her.

Not Okay Movie Review and Analysis

In front of us, we have Danni, an adult woman who poses as a fifteen-year-old. She is obsessed with trends; she speaks like Urban Dictionary. To hear her nobody loves her, nobody understands her, nobody understands her atavistic pain. When she decides to lie, not to deny that she was among the people affected by a terrorist attack, but to get carried away by the flow of her lie, Danni does it simply because she likes attention. She writes an article riding the desire of her peers to complain, to recognize themselves, to feel their pain legitimized. The article explores, things get difficult to control.

Although taken to its extreme consequences (Danni will approach a girl who lost her sister in a school shooting, Rowan, through a help group for people who have been involved in violence social pyramid of online fame), and peeling it of all its layers of irony, sarcasm, and detached bitterness, this story proves surprisingly real. Virality is an unknown and multifaceted monster, an uncontrollable monster that explodes unpredictably and changes lives. We see it every day. Seventeen-year-olds on TikTok see their views multiply, drop out of school and work, and transform into these always-online entities. Consciously or not, they create characters. The more you like, the more you are seen, and the happier you are. It’s all good if it’s all bad. Everything is useful to the voracious monster of virality.

There is no condemnation, only an ironic and contemptuous recording of reality. This is why it is very difficult to see this film from the outside, with detachment, and consequently to judge it. It is wrong to justify Danni, to treat her as a puppet in the hands of the inhuman laws of social media. It is wrong to blame young people (she is a grown woman, and the best character in the film is a high school student), but it is also wrong to think that the consequences she will face are somehow correct. In conclusion, Not Okay is a challenging film, especially for those who live there on social media and often wonder about their mechanisms.

The attempt to combine Danni’s actions with a story that was both a support to its evolution and that at the same time underlined its turning points and problems are tearing itself apart with a narrative that mixes too many points of interest, not keeping a firm grip that slips out of hand. both to the young woman and to the film that sees her as the protagonist. From activism to friendship, from support groups to the issue of weapons, Not Okay tries to be entertaining and provocative but ends up not completely satisfying either of the two souls of the film, forcing it to stay on the surface on youthful themes and visions that have been the same and better reported in various products between TV and cinema.

Even the spirit of the protagonist of Zoey Deutch seems to move in a non-compliant way according to a delineation of her character to which various shades belong, but of which very little is possible to grasp except the suggestions on her depressive state and a search for fame that does not, however, it distorts a gentle and empathic basis. The character is confused by her deeds, she is pleased with them and yet at times, she is on the verge of confessing, until the avalanche of truth forces her to face the “shitstorm” as another process of contemporary notoriety, the one that is certainly not required even if inevitable. given the outrage of his statements.

In trying to think about many aspects, Not Okay ends up not dwelling on anything going on the contrary to weaken its narrative. Just like a new trend on Twitter or the internet meme of the day. After the initial spark of a film that could have delved into the troubled social community, the Hulu and Disney+ film too soon turns off the spotlight and quickly becomes a thing of the past. There is only one thing to remain certain: between Not Okay and Emily in Paris, the Americans should leave France alone for a while.

Not Okay Movie Review: The Last Words

Not Okay tries to analyze contemporary society and how it relates to social media but fails to bring any original vision either in the description of its protagonist or in the events of the film. We underline that it is a lucid reflection on the effect that social networks can have on those who have a pathological desire to be loved, noticed, or pitied. Zoey Deutch turns into a liar with no possibility of redemption and allows the film, through her, to move from comedy and satire to drama and touch on very serious and bitter reflections on the era we are living in.