1. I don’t understand movies set outside the Anglosphere where everyone is speaking English with an accent but slip into their native language randomly. This is Italy. Everybody would be speaking Italian, but it’s made for Hollywood, so they speak English. I get that. But then there is no need for anyone to ever say anything in Italian if we’re going with the illusion that they all speak English with a thick accent. I wish every director would stop doing this.
2. Everybody is in the same movie, except Jeremy Irons. He came to work on a run-of-the-mill Hollywood adaptation of a true story, and everybody else came to a community theater production of Fashion Godfather. It’s like he doesn’t realize what kind of movie he’s in until he’s in the room with Jared Leto and thinks, “oh…we’re doing this kind of acting.”
3. Jared Leto’s Paolo Gucci is one of my least favorite movie characters of all time because he’s unnecessarily buffoonish and there was no need to make him that way. And because they wrote the character as an utterly incompetent manchild, they put Jared in fat prosthetics to drive the point home. For what? It is 2021. There was so much outrage of Sarah Paulson wearing a fatsuit to play Linda Tripp because they could’ve just gotten a larger actress to play her. Where is the outrage for Jared Leto doing fat cosplay to portray a character that wasn’t even fat and is only depicted that way to make him stand out from his fashionable family?
4. Lady Gaga is not a good actress. She’s not a bad actress, but y’all give Stefani a lot. She was fine in A Star is Born and she’s fine in House of Gucci. Literally just fine.
5. The first 10 or 15 minutes are actually charming. I didn’t expect Stefani to be good at that kind of character, but she actually pulls off Doe Eyed and Besotted quite well.
6. Everyone is laughing while watching the movie, but are you having a good time? No really — do you want to be laughing? That’s my thing with the tone. It is very clear that these people are making a very serious film about Gucci and the shoehorned bits of levity are meant to break the tension of this very serious film. But you’re only supposed to laugh then. If you are giggling throughout, the movie has missed its mark. Unintentional camp is just bad moviemaking. It’s bad direction and it’s bad screenwriting.
7. There are plenty of height differences more extreme than Lady Gaga at 5’1 and Adam Driver at 6’2. I’m not sure why that became a story, but it’s really not that notable. Plenty of short women star in movies with tall men. Kristen Bell is 5’1 and Jason Segel is 6’4 in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, plus Jason gets his big ol’ hog out for it. I don’t need breathless reporting about any other category of inches.
8. Kind of more interested in a Tom Ford biopic . I didn’t know he was from Texas and I didn’t really know what Gucci was like before he took over the reigns.
9. Al Pacino is having a great time and for me, he’s the only one who managed to be over the top without going over the edge. Everyone else is either playing it safe or jumping off a cliff, but Al is comfortably perched upon the precipice of taste without going over.
10. Stunning cinematography. Fantastic wardrobe choices. It’s very pretty to watch.
11. I would like a movie survey from the people who loved this movie where they also list their top ten films, because I’m not sure who this is for. People who I assumed would hate it seem to either love it or at least not be bothered, and people I assumed would love it wanted to walk out. I feel like there’s some overlap of people who liked Austin Powers and A Star is Born with this movie in the middle and I can’t think of a more painful Venn Diagram.
Score: 4/10
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