Paul Duerson becomes obsessed with world-famous pop star and actor Sofia and kidnaps her in the 1990s, attempting to marry her. Bodyguard Bell (Eric Dane) and boyfriend Rhodes (Jimmie Fails) stand between Paul and Sofia. Jimmy Warden wrote and directed the film and cast Samara Weaving as Sofia. The screenplay draws loose inspiration from a 1996 Madonna-stalking case and follows Warden's taste for grabby real-life premises after Cocaine Bear. Warden stages striking individual scenes with music-video flourishes and bold needle-drop soundtrack choices. The film struggles with tonal inconsistency and a lack of overall cohesion, leaving audience engagement uncertain.
Paul Duerson (Raymond Nicholson) has got it bad for world famous pop star and actor Sofia (Samara Weaving). It being the 1990s, he doesn't have the option of simply being creepy on social media; instead, he takes her hostage and attempts to marry her, as you do, in a period-comedy-horror-thriller that is entertaining enough moment-to-moment, but doesn't add up anything very substantial overall.
Standing in the way of Paul's deranged scheme is bodyguard Bell (a grounded and nicely judged performance by Eric Dane), and rounding out the men in Sofia's life is her NBA player boyfriend Rhodes (Jimmie Fails). Screenwriter Jimmy Warden knows a grabby real-life premise when he sees one. In 1985, a bear ate a massive amount of cocaine and fatally overdosed, leading, in 2023, to the release of the Warden-scripted movie Cocaine Bear.
Warden is not a bad director of individual scenes, with several sequences playing out like miniature music videos, complete with big bold needle-drop choices on the soundtrack. The problem is the overall cohesion, or rather, lack of it there are plenty of cool ideas, and a narrative that strings them together effectively enough, but it's unclear what we're meant to feel about any of it.
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