Your Monster is a romantic dark-comedy spin on Beauty and the Beast. It is a mish-mash of humor, romance and musical theater that works better, and for longer, than it probably should. The last act didn’t really do it for me, ending in a way that is kind of a letdown, despite not exactly being a betrayal of the story’s direction. The charm of the performers, as well as some amusingly straightforward writing, carries this past its clichés for a while. It is funny how it subverts expectations, while simultaneously following a predictable formula. It’s enjoyably simple for most of the run-time, until it gets a bit too ambitious(?) with an annoyingly ambiguous final stretch. This is still disarmingly fun, even if I have no idea who its audience is.
Laura is in a bad place. She just got out of the hospital after having surgery for cancer, her longtime boyfriend broke up with her and the play he wrote for her to star in is about to begin production without her. While moping around her childhood home, she stumbles upon a monster in the closet. Their friendship shakes her out of her depression and gets them both to start living.
Your Monster (99 minutes, without the end credits) splits Laura’s life into two sections: her sad professional life (the play and her ex) and her sweet private world with the monster. The scenes between her and the monster are definitely romantic comedy. Melissa Barrera and Tommy Dewey have great chemistry and the screenplay provides them with suitably silly dialogue. He is an angry loner who cares about her and she is so heartbroken with her current situation that she forgets that he is a human-eating beast very quickly. Their scenes together are frequently funny. This is the stuff I liked so much.
The other aspects of her life are far less fun. The theater scenes keep feeling like they are going to result in music, but then hold back. Her ex is an unlikable jerk, and not in an entertaining way. She needs that antagonism to draw her personality out. The unfortunate part is how significant her ex’s behavior is to the plot. I would’ve preferred more of the play (and the monster) and less of him. He isn’t funny; he is just mean and derivative. Though I suppose this element of the movie offsets the fantasy of the romance with a dreary reality, it isn’t particularly entertaining.
Without giving anything away, writer/director Caroline Lindy toys slightly with the reality of the monster. Laura’s time with him is so insular that it begs the question: is he real? I honestly cannot tell if the audience is meant to be asking that question. Does Laura really find love with a hairy monster? Or is he an allegory for the rage she has suppressed for so long? Either of those approaches could be satisfying. I don’t know which one Your Monster takes. That is very frustrating.
There is a whole lot to like here. Melissa Barrera and Tommy Dewey are both good. Dewey, especially, seems to be having a ball playing this ridiculous character. Their banter is fun. That easily got me through about 75 minutes of this. Maybe it was my hopes at that point, but the movie did not do what I wanted from then on. Perhaps that is more a me thing and other people won’t be as disappointed as I was. The fact that the rest of this was good enough to disappoint me at the end is sort of a recommendation of its own.
3¼ out of 5
Cast:
Melissa Barrera as Laura Franco
Tommy Dewey as Monster
Edmund Donovan as Jacob
Kayla Foster as Mazie
Meghann Fahy as Jackie Dennon
Written/Directed by Caroline Lindy
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