Drool

Drool is, above all uneven. It’s rare that I find a movie that has parts I thought were incredibly fresh and funny but also parts that I thought were just awful.

 Drool is the story of Anora, a housewife not exactly living her fantasy. Anora develops a friendship with her new next-door neighbour, Imogen. This relationship eventually goes past friendship. Upon the discovery of this, Anora’s husband becomes abusive and she shoots him. After this happens, Anora, her two children and new lesbian lover embark on a road trip to dispose of the body and leave Anora’s old, unfulfilling life behind.

Drool struggles to determine who their main character is. Tabby, the teenage daughter of Anora narrates the film. Tabby is also most frequently the point of view character in scenes but not always. However, the credits and poster both credit her mother, Annora as the main character. Additionally, it is Anora who goes through the major character change throughout the movie and whose actions drive the plot. On top of all of this, it’s also pretty clear that the writers and director don’t have as good a grasp on either of these characters.The best realized character in the film is Anora’s lover Imogene.

I really wish Tabby wasn’t the main character. She is every angst-ridden teenage stereotype in one person. Lots of scenes that had a lot of comic potential are stopped dead in their tracks by her whining about something and this grinds a potentially humorous moment to a halt. I know her character’s supposed to be a stick in the mud, but they took it too far. Her personality ends up being a detriment to the story and certainly the comedy. Tabby is like every bad thought people have about teenagers in one character. Weirdly, I don’t think you’re actually supposed to really hate her? She’s supposed to be troubled and edgy but I think she’s also supposed to be relatable and sympathetic. They failed hard on those last two.

Drool is a dark comedy that only hits that mark about half the time. Instead of the dark humour for equally dark situations usually employed by the genre, Drool instead makes it a game of opposites. Extended, dark scenes or stories are then punctuated by a clever one liner or a really juvenile sense of humour. The humour is often way too jarring given some of the dark stuff going on and the script doesn’t know when to scale it back or which jokes are appropriate for their subject matter.

Drool also delves a little too far into some stereotypes and ends up kind of racist. Imogen is a bit of a sassy black woman stereotype but I let that one slide because this movie is a comedy so some caricaturization is likely to happen. Also, I don’t want to suggest that because it’s a stereotype, black women can no longer be strong and funny. But then Imogen’s benevolent boss, Kathy K. comes into the picture and yeah, the film sort of takes a trip down stereotype road. As much as the black characters are the most helpful, likable and funny characters, they also fail to break out of stereotypical sassy black woman mold. Overall, it’s just really clear whenever black characters are onscreen that Drool was written by white people

Despite all the negatives in this review, Drool does have aspects that worked for me. First of all, the humour does occasionally work. There’s a scene at the end where the family is finally burying their father in Kathy K’s backyard and Tabby notices several other makeshift graves and has a brief expression of shock/concern on her face. That bit of silent comedy totally worked for me. There’s another bit where they need to ice their father’s body as they drive it across country but unable to find ice, they just dump a bunch of slushies on it. I liked that bit. That’s some good dark humour.

Mostly though, everything good in this movie comes from Jill Marie Scott’s portrayal of Imogen. She is a ray of fucking sunshine and pretty much every line she says is golden. This character owes some credit to the writers but mostly it’s down to Scott’s portrayal of her. She’s fabulous. When she’s around, for the most part, the movie totally works and I see what they’re going for. I really can’t express for brilliant this character is.

Drool annoyed me about 50% of the time, yes, but it also legitimately made me laugh and made me care about the characters. Jill Marie Scott seriously carries this movie and makes it worth watching. Even the seriously awful character of Tabby can’t completely drag this movie down. Tabby and Imogen basically represent the dichotomy of this movie in character form- one is a good, likeable, vibrant and funny character. The other is none of those things. Had Drool made Imogen the main character, I think I would have loved it. As it stands, Drool is a seriously mixed bag.

Overall rating: 5.2/10

Other WLW films in similar genres