2/10 I’ve been told that Swedish writer/director Ruben Östlund has made some great, satirical films and that many of those films have won lots of acclaim (2017’s “The Square” comes to mind). Even this movie won the Palme d’Or, which is the highest honor at the Cannes Film Festival. Imagine my surprise when this overly long snooze fest turned out to be one of the most boring and overrated movies of 2022. Before I explain why this movie sucked and should be avoided at all costs, I will give the movie credit where credit is due. The only elements that really work here are the acting and the very end of the movie. One frustrating thing about the ending however, is that the movie finally takes an interesting twist at the end and just as things finally turn exciting, the movie is over. The acting really is the highlight here with everyone giving terrific performances. Dolly De Leon as Abigail stood out the most for me and her transformation from the first half of the movie to the second half was easily one of the best aspects on display. The production and costume design do a strong job of displaying the class warfare between the mega rich on a super yacht and the regular staff who must always do as they are told. Unfortunately, that is where the positives end. “Critics” love to heap praise on bad movies that contain social commentary, regardless if the social commentary is unoriginal, obvious or lacking all subtlety and nuance. We have seen it in everything from Adam McKay’s latest dud to Jordan Peele most recent disappointment. This movie continues the trend with the completely unoriginal “rich people are bad and shallow” message, which is an over generalization, ironic in the sense that these movies are made by rich people and despite being labeled as comedic, is anything but. Besides the movie’s obvious and unearned social commentary, the movie goes on for an hour longer than it needs to. The movie pushes two and a half hours and you will feel every excruciating second as nearly every scene overstays its welcome. The movie is split into three acts and you could essentially cut out the entire first act and it wouldn’t change the movie at all. While I initially thought the first act existed to provide character development for our two leads Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (Charlbi Dean Kriek), they are only two in the ensemble and don’t really remain the leads once the movie moves into the second and third acts. Östlund takes about twice as long to get a point across as he needs to. If you’ve seen the trailer, you will see that as the yacht is rocking back and forth, people began to get sea sick and start vomiting. This could have taken five to ten minutes to show but instead is stretched to almost half an hour of the same, repetitive actions being shown on repeat. He beats the dead horse when he should have moved on long ago, which was frustrating. I pride myself on being a patient viewer who enjoys films that are slow burns but this movie just drags and drags, wasting its solid performances. With weak social commentary and a running time that will waste your entire evening, “Triangle of Sadness” made me sad that I wasted my time watching this garbage at all.
#TriangleOfBadness / #TheHavesAndHaveYachts / #SeeHowTheySink / #MarxMyWords / #NowYouSeaMe / #WhitesSquall
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