{"id":9725,"date":"2023-01-05T18:08:42","date_gmt":"2023-01-05T23:08:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=9725"},"modified":"2023-03-11T20:37:09","modified_gmt":"2023-03-12T01:37:09","slug":"glass-onion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2023\/01\/05\/glass-onion\/","title":{"rendered":"Glass Onion."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I loved Knives Out<\/a><\/em>, even acknowledging some of its weak points, because the core mystery was done so incredibly well \u2013 including plenty of misdirection \u2013 and the dialogue sparkled with all kinds of humor, not least from the detective Benoit Blanc. Writer-director Rian Johnson signed a deal with Netflix to produce several sequels, the first of which, Glass Onion<\/em>, appeared on the site right before Christmas. Glass Onion<\/em> gets the humor stuff right, arguably even more than the original, and adds a second character who outshines Blanc, but the mystery is inferior to its predecessor and there\u2019s nowhere near the effort to mislead the viewer that a strong mystery film or novel should have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Glass Onion<\/em> does give us Blanc (Daniel Craig), this time on a Greek island owned by billionaire tech bro Elon Musk<\/s> Miles Bron (Edward Norton), who is hosting a weekend murder-mystery party for five of his friends. Blanc received an invitation, but Bron didn\u2019t send him one, so the latter is confused but also pleased to have someone so famous at his gathering. The other guests include Andi Brand (Janelle Mon\u00e1e), who co-founded Alpha with Bron but was forced out in an ugly legal battle; Connecticut Governor Claire DeBella (Kathryn Hahn), who\u2019s running for Senate on Bron\u2019s dime; Lionel Toussaint (Leslie Odom, Jr.), Alpha\u2019s chief scientist; Duke Cody (Dave Bautista), a Twitch streamer and men\u2019s rights activist; and Birdie Jay (Kate Hudson), a model, fashion designer, and total dingbat. Birdie\u2019s assistant and Duke\u2019s girlfriend are also along for the ride. It\u2019s very And There Were None<\/em>, along with any of several Poirot novels where he\u2019s invited to a gathering and ends up solving a murder (like Cards on the Table<\/em>), so of course someone here ends up dead and Blanc has to solve the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Glass Onion<\/em> is stuffed with humor of many kinds, including the ongoing satire of Bron, who is insufferably pretentious but also prone to malapropisms and rather transparently full of himself. He\u2019s also in love with his gadgets and consumes conspicuously. On the other end of the humor spectrum, Hudson is hilarious as a fatuous and truly not very bright sendup of a type, one not unconnected to Hudson herself, since she\u2019s the founder of Fabletics and Birdie started an athleisure line of her own. The film takes place around May of 2020, and we meet Birdie as she\u2019s holding a giant, maskless party, while her assistant Peg refuses to give her back her phone because Birdie tweeted a slur (or more than one). I actually enjoyed the lower-brow humor, not least how dimwitted Birdie can be, than the satire, which was a more hit than miss but still a bit inconsistent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mystery, however, doesn\u2019t live up to that of the first film, where suspicion was spread across a wide array of characters, and the script kept trying to redirect your attention to different suspects. Here, there\u2019s one most likely culprit, and the film doesn\u2019t spend much time trying to make you think it\u2019s anyone else. I didn\u2019t want that person to be the killer, because it was the least inspired choice of all. You might know who it is just from that description, which is unfortunate, but I think speaks to the way the ending here disappointed me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s still a rollicking time, though, almost never letting up on the humor, and it\u2019s buoyed by a great performance from Mon\u00e1e, one of the best of her career. Mon\u00e1e has always showed talent but she hasn\u2019t had many opportunities to act in strong films since Moonlight<\/em>. Her role here is far more challenging than it might first appear, as that character has unexpected layers to it, and she\u2019s up to the task, whether it\u2019s delivering dry humor, mockery, or faux-intellectualism, or acting the spy or even a little bit of the action hero. She even outshines Craig, who\u2019s in fine form as Blanc but has far less to do this time around than he did in Knives Out<\/em>, at least in exploring or growing the character. He has one scene right when all the guests sit down to dinner and Bron explains the rules for the murder mystery (the game, not the real one) where he goes full Blanc in the best way, and I hope in future films we get more of that. Glass Onion<\/em> is like one of those Christie novels where Poirot doesn\u2019t even show up until the second half of the film \u2013 you\u2019re still entertained, but you want more of the character you really paid to see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there\u2019s the bombastic ending, which ties a few things together, including the necessary fulfillment of Chekhov\u2019s gun, but goes on quite some time after the killer is revealed. Knives Out<\/em> ended so perfectly, tying up every loose end while gently mocking itself and the conventions of the genre, that the shift to a very Hollywood-style resolution was surprising \u2013 it\u2019s hard to imagine Poirot or Miss Marple or even Tommy and Tuppence in that situation, which was more befitting of the Continental Op, if even that. What leads up to the slam-bang finish is pretty clever, and the immediate aftermath is a satisfying comeuppance as well. I don\u2019t mind fireworks per se, but I guess I wanted this film to adhere to its genre\u2019s style more like the first one did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s a lot of words about what was wrong with a movie that I ultimately liked, but you can\u2019t talk about Glass Onion <\/em>without comparing it to Knives Out<\/em>. Where the first film might have been a little too by-the-book when it comes to the genre, Glass Onion<\/em> got away from it more than I\u2019d like. I\u2019m here for all the Benoit Blanc films, but I hope the next one has more of him and a stronger mystery, with all of the same kind of humor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I loved Knives Out, even acknowledging some of its weak points, because the core mystery was done so incredibly well \u2013 including plenty of misdirection \u2013 and the dialogue sparkled with all kinds of humor, not least from the detective Benoit Blanc. Writer-director Rian Johnson signed a deal with Netflix to produce several sequels, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1290,1327,100,215,219],"class_list":["post-9725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2022-movies","tag-2023-best-adapted-screenplay-nominees","tag-detectives","tag-movies","tag-mysteries","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9725"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9727,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9725\/revisions\/9727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}