House of Gucci

Starring: Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Jared Leto, Jack Huston, Salma Hayek
Directed by: Ridley Scott
Rating: R
Genre: Drama
2021

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: The wealthy Gucci family slowly begins to unravel with the introduction of an ambitious outsider (Lady Gaga) into the family.

Review:

Tim: I really love Ridley Scott as a director and he has far more hits than misses in his career. He does have some misses, though. I wouldn't say House of Gucci is his worst film (there's at least 3 worse films of his I've seen), but it's absolutely a big miss. I'm kind of stunned it generally got decent reviews. It's not a great movie, not a good movie, it's not even decent. It's sort of okay, I suppose. The Academy mostly agreed, as it was only nominated for 1 Academy Award, for Best Makeup and Hairstyling. I'm glad it didn't win. I did not care for this movie at all.

Scott might have had some vision for this film, but it got lost in execution. This film is completely bloated- there's no reason for this movie to be 2 hours and 38 minutes long. It sounds like a joke, but I truly believe the film is at least 30 minutes too long. The movie takes this approach that the members of the Gucci family are actually interesting and deserve our attention. Based on this film, that's not true. We don't need to do a deep dive into this vapid, dull family. Nothing here is as interesting as the film thinks it is. This continually weighs on the audience, as the whole thing eventually crumbles under the weight of the story. Scott seems prone to excess here when he desperately needed to cut. What results is a film that's never very interesting or engaging and seems completely oblivious to this fact.

The biggest problem with the film is definitely the story. The direction doesn't help, but the script felt so bland to me. I don't recall any especially funny, memorable, or engaging parts until nearly the end. This is a bad foundation, but there's also not much else going on with the film, either.

I was shocked at how ineffective most of the cast seemed. The level of talent across the board here was astounding. When you look at the cast, you are convinced this is going to be a great film. It isn't, and many performances leave a lot to be desired. I believe Adam Driver is a great actor, but he never quite felt right in this character. He's perfectly fine in his performance, but I never felt like I understood who he was as a character. I didn't like his character and I wasn't particularly interested in him. Driver usually makes powerful connections with the audience but he's unable to do that here. Lady Gaga had been flying high because of her Oscar win and her Best Actress nomination for her incredible performance in A Star is Born. This role felt like a major step backward for her. Gaga is awful in this film. She puts in a lot of effort, but her performance always feels exaggerated and showy. It's the kind of performance you'd expect to see in a made-for-television movie. I cringed at most of what she did here. Her accent sounded terrible and her mannerisms and approach to the character never felt authentic. I believe she was woefully miscast here and Scott did her no favors. It's stunning that the two leads- Gaga and Driver failed to live up to expectations so monumentally.

There's slightly better results in the supporting cast, but even that isn't especially strong. Al Pacino is obviously a great actor, but he only seems good here. He does some worthwhile work, and is absolutely one of the highlights, but that's given an already low bar. Jeremy Irons might have given the best performance of the film, so of course it's quite small. A few of my favorite scenes were due to Irons and his strong acting. Jared Leto felt terrible to me. I know he got a lot of attention for his nearly unrecognizable role. I might have felt different had the movie been great, but he feels like a manifestation of the film's unnecessary excess. They should have gotten an actor who looks like Paolo Gucci, not transformed Leto through hair and makeup. Leto is fine, but he seems to take such delight in his over-the-top performance, it kind of ruined it for me. You can see the glee in his eye as he's hamming it up. Good for him, but it doesn't exactly help the film. It creates more of the impression this is a runaway circus. Jack Huston was fine in a small supporting role. It was nice seeing Salma Hayek in a very outside-the-norm performance, but she didn't end up adding all that much to the film. Any number of actresses could have done the same kind of job she does.

As much as I'm complaining about this film, I want to acknowledge that the last 30 minutes is actually really good. That was the only part of the movie that I wasn't constantly aware of the time and how long it took to proceed. I saw that there was 30 minutes left and inwardly groaned. And then, I looked up and the movie was over. For the first time, I was engaged and lost myself in the story. It was actually good. It was a glimpse of what the entire movie should have been. Unfortunately, the strong conclusion does very little to erase the frustration of the first two hours.

House of Gucci should have been a towering achievement, a film that tells a "truth is stranger than fiction" story in a way that entertained audiences far and wide. Instead, it's both flimsy and bloated, a movie that never really gets off the ground. I didn't care for this movie and it's undoubtedly one of the biggest disappointments of 2022.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6



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