“Emily the Criminal” sounded like an enjoyable romp. The title rolls off the tongue amusingly, the way Gilda Radner’s Saturday Night Live character, Emily Litella, did.
“Emily” is reminiscent of “Thelma & Louise.” Thelma (Geena Davis), a mousy woman suffocated by a lousy husband, learns how to rob people at gunpoint after watching JD (Brad Pitt) demo his armed-robbery pitch in a motel room. When later financially backed into a corner, she tries it on for size and discovers the method fits her like a glove. “Thelma & Louise” was a fun movie though.
Dreary But Important Social Commentary
“Emily” turns out to be more of a dark, dreary, depressing tale, located in and around catering kitchens and parking lots. It’s got some cocaine partying in club bathroom stalls, some aloof Korean roommates, and involves a racially cacophonous band of citizens and undocumented workers, living lives of varying degrees of financial precarity.
The feature film debut of writer-director John Patton Ford (shot on a low-budget over three weeks during the pandemic), “Emily the Criminal” tracks art-school grad Emily (Aubrey Plaza). She’s from New Jersey and she punches the clock, delivering work lunches to downtown corporations and sketching portraits in her car between shifts. Her existence is every artist’s worst nightmare.
