Zendaya and Pattinson's Strangest Movie Yet Hits HBO Max Friday
The best-reviewed thing arriving on streaming this week is also the strangest. The Drama lands on HBO Max this Friday, July 31, and if you skipped its spring run in theaters, this is the one to fix. Kristoffer Borgli, the Norwegian director behind Dream Scenario and Sick of Myself, took Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, two of the most watchable stars alive, and pointed them at a wedding that quietly falls apart. It made 126 million dollars on a 28 million budget, which for a weird A24 comedy is a genuine phenomenon.
Here is the setup. Zendaya and Robert Pattinson play a couple who are certain about each other, right up until the week before the wedding, when a revelation neither of them can un-know gets loose. Borgli's whole register is comedy that makes you wince, and this is his most accessible swing without ever going soft. Critics called it a tonal tightrope walked with real poise, and both leads are doing career-best work in it.
So who is it for? If your idea of a good night in is a film that is funny and deeply uncomfortable in the same breath, this is the streaming pick of the week. It is not a cozy rom-com. It is a sharp, prickly one about how well two people really know each other. Robert Pattinson has spent a decade proving he will always take the strange road (Good Time, The Batman), and Zendaya keeps choosing directors with a real point of view (Challengers, Dune). Here they meet in the middle, and it works.
Your Friday night, sorted
If The Drama lands, wind back through Borgli's other uneasy comedies, then run a Zendaya or Pattinson double feature off the rail below. Two of the biggest stars alive made a genuinely odd little movie and it became a hit anyway. That is worth a Friday.
