Yorgos Lanthimos The Lobster is one weird movie. I don’t often do well with movies I find to be weird. Some movies that have gotten high ratings with the critics are so utterly dreadful that they are virtually unwatchable. The tone is simple, the dialect is weird, and the actions are peculiar, but the overall strangeness of these movies makes the experience a chore. I know some love Wes Anderson and to each his own. The Lobster feels very similar to one of these Anderson movies, but, oddly enough, it held my interest. While I didn’t understand why a movie so strange needed to be made, I found it engaging, and it really didn’t feel like I was watching it just to say that I watched it. While I didn’t like it and would never watch it again, there were parts of it
I’m not sure any actor has ever changed my initial perception of him as much as Colin Farrell (In Bruges, Pride and Glory) has. He had been in the tabloids as such a bad boy during his 20’s that it was hard to even want to give him a chance. The first movie that I saw him in was Minority Report. He was excellent in that movie, but I didn’t even know who he was. It took subsequent viewings to truly appreciate that he brought just as much to the table in making this amazing film as director Steven Spielberg and leading man Tom Crusie did (this was when Tom Cruise still made interesting career choices and was still a fan favorite of mine). I then remember Farrell making a string of movies (Phone Booth, Daredevil, S.W.A.T, The Recruit) that all were interesting to me, but not at all because of him. I ran him off as a dime a dozen actor who might make a lot of money in a short amount of time but probably didn’t have a lot of staying power (a la Josh Hartnet, Taylor Kitsch, Sam Worthington, Emile Hirsch, Stephen Dorff, Orlando Bloom, and even Paul Walker). The playboy lifestyle he was living, which included a released sex tape and a stint in rehab for painkillers and recreational drug addiction, did nothing to further endear me to him. When he was given the keys to play the lead in Oliver Stone’s Alexander, a movie that had a budget of $155 million but grossed just $34 million domestically, I thought he might be done. But to his credit, he found a different path to restart his career. It’s been one that has seen him take some chances and share the screen more rather than dominate it, starting with a far more subdued Farrell in Terrence Malick’s The New World. And while he’s continued to land a few blockbuster roles (most notably the less than favorably reviewed Miami Vice and Total Recall), he is being remembered more as a supporting actor in gentler or more artistic films such as Saving Mr. Banks, Crazy Heart, Cassandra’s Dream, and The Way Back or some of his more outlandish roles in movies like Seven Psychopaths and In Bruges. After coming to appreciate him more in the last decade, I’ve actually gone back and watched the three films he made before Minority Report, where he was just as outstanding. I recommend two of these three of these films (Hart’s War and Tigerland).
That brings us to 2016 and a little film called The Lobster. Physically, this usual heartthrob has never looked worse. He’s got a massive beer belly and a porn mustache straight out of the 1970s. And he takes on an extremely odd character in a hit-or-miss movie that really could have gone either way with the critics. This movie cost a modest $4 million to make and will likely end at around $10 million just in the United States alone (the film was actually released in Ireland in 2015). I’m guessing most of the budget went to the cast. In addition to Farrell, this movie boasts the likes of John C. Reilly (Step Brothers, The Good Girl), Rachel Weisz (The Fountain, The Light Between Oceans), and Léa Seydoux (Spectre, Midnight in Paris).
The premise is bizarre. It sort of reminded me of Brave New World, a book that I had heard so many great things about but ultimately did not enjoy because of how strange and out there that it was. Farrell plays David, a loner and a loser who checks into a hotel where you have 45 days to find a romantic partner or else you get turned into an animal of your choice for the rest of your life (yes, this is the plot…you can’t make this stuff up). David is with his brother, who failed in his mission to find a romantic partner and is now a dog. David chooses to become a lobster if he cannot fulfill his hope of finding a romantic partner because lobsters live longer lives than other animals. There are bizarre rules at the hotel. The women all wear the same clothes on the same day. There are dances and other social gatherings for this group of strange people to interact with. Masturbation is prohibited at the hotel, but there is a beautiful maid who Ariane Labed (Assassin’s Creed, Before Midnight), who provides moderate sexual stimulation without orgasm. If you violate the masturbation rule, there are dire consequences. David and Robert (Reilly) do their best to find potential mates. Some of the candidates are The Heartless Woman, The Biscuit Woman, and the Nosebleed Woman. When a man and a woman are close to coupling, they are given a bigger room in the hotel.
Another form of recreation is taking a bus outside the city and shooting “loners” we live in the woods with tranquilizer guns. From what I could tell, the loners are basically homeless people who maybe don’t prohibit romance and perhaps don’t conform to many other standards of society. The more loners a given person shoots with a tranquilizer gun, the more days they get added to their initial 45 to find a romantic partner. Keep in mind that there aren’t many people at the hotel and even fewer who might be considered serious prospects. David becomes a little enamored with a short-sighted woman (Weisz) while on one of these hunts. He finds a divide within himself between the life inside the city and a life outside of it. This is when the movie starts to fall apart. As soon as David, Robert, and others leave the hotel for the first time (30-40 minutes in), it feels like a different movie is happening. The light-hearted, goofy drama becomes something a little more, and David almost instantaneously becomes a character that he hadn’t been. It’s a little befuddling…but so is the movie.
All in all, this movie is not great. I can’t recommend it with a straight face. But if you do like movies that don’t follow molds or if you’re willing to venture into something different, maybe you give it a chance. If you are a fan of Farrell, it’s probably a must-watch. He (as maybe the 90% positive score on Rotten Tomatoes) was the main reason I gave the movie a shot. I’m glad I did, and parts of it might stick with me for a while. But I’ll never watch it again.
Plot 6.5/10
Character Development 6.5/10
Character Chemistry 6/10
Acting 7.5/10
Screenplay 6.5/10
Directing 7/10
Cinematography 7/10
Sound 7/10
Hook and Reel 7/10
Universal Relevance 6.5/10
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