Metropolitan, Barcelona, and Last Days of Disco are three great movies. Damsels doesn't come close. What made the others work so well, besides the acting, direction, and sets, was the writing: Stillman managed to create characters who were also caricatures, cartoon figures who were also so real it boggled the mind, how he could balance the thin lines between parody, satire, and life.... Damsels is basically a pale imitation. The writing is flat, the dialog doesn't pop, and all in all, the characters remain caricatures. You don't care about any of them. There's not even a semblance of a plot. And there's a terrible enforced dance ending. It's generally true in movies that aren't musicals that, at the end, if all the director/writer can do is have them get up and dance, something is very wrong. The only thing that saves it at all is Gerwig's performance, which is pitch perfect. The others go nowhere, and no one cares.
Review of Damsels in Distress
