Don’t Worry Darling is a real disappointment. Here’s a movie that has such an intriguing premise, a gifted cast, and admittedly impressive production values, but it ultimately suffers a story that bounces from clichés to contrivances and it leaves little to the imagination except to say that it’s a good-looking clunker.
Florence Pugh and Harry Styles star as Alice and Jack Chambers, a married couple living in the idyllic California town of Victory in the 1950s. Jack works for a company that created the town. He’s a workaholic while she’s a traditional ’50s housewife.
The women are told to submit to conformity and not go outside the town to the headquarters where their husbands work. Olivia Wilde who directed the movie also has a role as Alice’s best friend who tells her to stay in Victory where it’s safe.
Chris Pine plays Jack’s boss and the leader of the town who has a project that will take Victory to new heights.
However, Alice begins to see cracks in her seemingly perfect world while everyone believes she’s paranoid including Jack.
Don’t Worry Darling could best be described as one part The Stepford Wives, one part The Truman Show and even a little bit of The Matrix believe it or not. The problem is that I think Wilde and her screenwriters saw these movies and took too many ideas from them.
The movie starts out promising but lacks any suspense because we know there’s something wrong and it just serves as a frustrating contrivance until the characters catch up to it. We wouldn’t have a movie if some of these characters were smart right off the bat.
When we do get to the finale that attempts to explain the mysteries of Victory, the plot has dragged us around so much with so many complications that by the end, it’s murky, anticlimactic, and unsatisfying.
I’m all for complexity, but I also think that complexity should be synonymous with coherence. As it is, Don’t Worry Darling is very much a missed opportunity.
Grade: C
(Rated R for sexuality, violent content and language.)
