on a positive note, i really loved the gore effects, they're all awesomely nasty. unfortunately this is the dumbest movie of the year i think. i understand that it's a satire and therefore a humorously simplistic portrait of the entertainment industry, but the depiction of hollywood is so far removed from reality that nothing lands. the main character is a hugely famous celebrity from hosting a......primetime aerobics show? dennis quaid plays his harvey weinstein-like producer (literally named harvey, for all the morons in the audience) more like a swishy gay guy than a lech. the most important entertainment event imaginable is hosting "the new year's eve show" on "the network". at one point qualley goes on a late night talk show that appears to just be called "the show". i'm sorry, it's just lazy.

i'll tell you one moment that really pissed me off. so the person who alerts moore to the existence of the substance is this good looking young doctor with a prominent birthmark that we see in a handful of close-ups, so we're sure to it. later in the movie, moore encounters an old man in a diner. here are the ways that the movie clues us in to the fact that this old man is both on the substance, and also the same as the young doctor:

1) he makes insightful comments about the experience of being on the substance
2) we get a close-up of the birthmark which we saw earlier
3) we get a flashback to the young doctor and his birthmark
4) he drops the numbered keycard which lets someone into the substance delivery mailroom
4) when he bends down to grab the keycard we see that he has the scar caused by use of the substance

and it's like jesus christ do you think i'm an idiot? there's stuff like this all over the movie, the edit putting ten thousand fine points on ideas that anyone with two brain cells to rub together should have caught on to. few things frustrate me more than a movie that talks down to its audience.

more significantly though, and maybe i just missed something, but i don't think the premise of this movie actually makes any sense? they keep hammering home that moore and qualley are "one person" but it never seems like they are. they are distinctly separate consciousnesses with different goals and ambitions. it's the dynamic that drives the entire narrative!

which begs the question, what exactly is moore's character getting out of this? the only thing the substance does for her is create an independent sexy clone who gets to live her own life, which moore doesn't appear to benefit from in any way. in fact she IMMEDIATELY begins to resent her younger self. i never was able to grasp what the appeal of the arrangement was for her. she's not getting to actually live the life that qualley is allowed to have.

the narrative confusion creates an unfortunate thematic confusion. what is this movie trying to say? beauty standards for women are bad, naturally. but the movie is strangely more judgmental of moore's character for using fake-ozempic than it is about the mysterious creators of the substance, who never appear except to chide the female leads for their selfishness and stupidity. in the finale, when the two finally destroy each other, the film treats their fate with such sneering cruelty. it's hard to take the film as a critique of society when the only object of critique seems to be the women who are trying to live within it (this is a knock-on effect of the bowdlerized quaid character, who never feels like a threat). sad to say about a film with such fun practical effects but i thought this was pretty much a trainwreck.