TV Review - Unicorn Store

I suppose that this film is about Millennial ennui. It's for the college-age or twenty-something people who aspire to be artists who stumble, not really fail, but don't become instantly rich and famous, so they decide to get depressed and crash on their parents' couch or live in their parents' basement, while said parents coddle those adult children. Written by Samantha McIntyre and directed by Brie Larson, this Millennial story isn't judgmental or all that critical of those aforementioned young people or their parents. If anything, this movie in general is about one woman having to learn to be less selfish, but the thing for which she has to be less selfish is a fictional or unreal being, namely the titular animal. Otherwise, the title and whole thrust of this film could be a religious metaphor where the mythical horse could be a substitute for Jesus Christ. It would make this movie more evangelical in its DNA than it seems on its surface.

Oscar-winner Brie Larson (Room and Short Term 12) stars as Kit, an artist who does unique and colorful paintings. She loves glitter especially. When an art show or some kind of presentation of her work fails to excite a select group of people, she has to go back to her parents' house. She lies around depressed and not wanting to do anything. She sees a TV ad for work at a temp agency. She's assigned to a PR firm where she impresses the Vice President who's working on a marketing pitch for a vacuum company. While on the job, she gets a greetings card invitation to an underground place, somewhere in downtown Los Angeles, called "The Store."

Samuel L. Jackson (The Hateful Eight and Pulp Fiction) plays the Salesman, the unnamed purveyor of The Store. He claims that he sells what she needs and what she needs is a unicorn. He's a very eccentric person. He's reminiscent of Jackson's character in Unbreakable and Glass but way more upbeat and less sociopathic. He's also perhaps channeling Gene Wilder in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) but not as crazy. Unlike that children's classic, this movie doesn't provide enough for Jackson to really shine.

Of the three films that Jackson and Larson have done together, this one is probably the lesser, especially for Jackson. In Kong: Skull Island (2017), Jackson is more in the forefront. Captain Marvel (2019) is more a two-hander. This one puts Larson more in the forefront, as she deserves. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if Larson casting herself in the lead was the best choice. Larson is a great actress, deserving of the Oscar she has, and she's been in several comedies, which have utilized her very well, but her presence here isn't perhaps the best to carry it.

She's great in the dramatic moments. Those moments are few and far between. What we needed was someone who's great in the comedic moments, which are more numerous. I guess her role is more or less to be the straight woman in the midst of a maelstrom of weird and quirky characters. She's supposed to be a bit of a quirky character herself but she doesn't quite convince.

Plus, I'm not sure what her character accomplishes by the end. She's told she needs a unicorn, stemming back to a childhood imaginary friend, which she apparently has to release. It doesn't seem like having an imaginary friend is her biggest problem. It's perhaps emblematic of her selfishness, but it never quite connects to me. The relationship she develops with a guy at a hardware store named Virgil, played by Mamoudo Athie (The Front Runner and Patti Cake$), doesn't quite compute for me either.

Finally, the question of whether or not the Salesman is actually going to sell her a unicorn is the central mystery of the film. The existence of unicorns becomes an issue and we're left to wonder if they're real. As such, the film could be a metaphor for religious belief or faith. However, the ending of the film ruins that metaphor by providing an answer yes or no about the existence of unicorns. There's a more ambiguous way that the question could have been answered without being so blunt or literal, but the film chooses to be blunt or literal.

That bluntness and literal way could have been interesting. It could have been done in the same vein as Boots Riley's Sorry to Bother You (2018). It could have been like a lot of magical realism films in how it treats and leans into its magical or fantasy elements. Riley's film was more a warped science-fiction, but it fit in tone with a lot of magical realism films. This one could have also fit in that tone too, but it makes the same mistake as films like Safety Not Guaranteed (2012), a film that shares an actor with this one, that of Karan Soni. The mistake is that it uses the fantasy or sci-fi element as a crutch instead of as a substantive thing.

Rated TV-PG.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 31 mins.

Available on Netflix.