Rumours is too smart for me.

A satirical film about the misplaced priorities of global leaders led by Cate Blanchett set against the backdrop of surviving zombies in the woods. This should be the best movie of the year, and yet, here I am wanting those two hours of my life back.

I saw the trailer for Rumours and I laughed out loud, which is rare for me, as a person who is half-dead in side and has no sense of humor. Unfortunately this is a case where all of the laughs are actually in the trailer. That doesn’t mean it’s all bad though. The film kicks off introducing the leaders of the G7 at the Global Summit. The heads of state from Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the UK, the US, and Canada meet up to solve the biggest problems of the world. The set up is delicious and the actors are so committed to the characterizations of their particular leader. Cate Blanchett as the Chancellor of Germany comes off as a cross between Angela Merkel, Hillary Clinton, and Oprah. The President of the United States (played by Charles Dance (Tywin Lannister), who is exceptionally British), is prepared to put in a minimum of effort because he already knows everything and deserves a nap. Italy is just happy to be there. The Prime Minister of Canada went with a devilishly handsome Roy Dupuis as a stand-in for Justin Trudeau with a touch of Emmanuel Macron and a dash of Richard Nixon, oddly enough. Japan and the UK are the only ones prepared to get any work done, but the UK is having an affair and Japan plays a backseat for the entire film.

I’m all in!

After about twenty minutes, the tone of the movie starts to settle in. I’m not sure what year all this is taking place, but the oddly placed usage of melodramatic backing music, the long scenes of exposition, the forced tension between the characters — it’s so 1980s Dynasty run through a filter of The West Wing! Still all in! As the movie went on, I didn’t really understand what we were doing anymore, but every single actor knew exactly what kind of movie they were making and they laid their foundations perfectly in the opening scenes.

Once the set-up is over, we get into the actual journey: the G7 leaders have to work on a statement together. Ultimately, they end up abandoned in the woods, running from bog zombies, wasting 20 minutes trying to save a random Swedish woman, and conversing with an AI set up to catch pedophiles. All of these things should be taking precedence over the statement, but we always come back to it — they have a job to do, which is releasing a statement.

And therein lies the central nugget of the movie. In the face of so many places that could make better use of their resources and leadership, they land on prioritizing an inconsequential statement that the President of the US rightfully says nobody really cares about anyway. This feels like what the film wants to say, but I didn’t need two hours for it.

I don’t know the movie language Guy Maddin and his collaborators speak in. I love animated family films that make me tear up a bit. I love a mystery thriller with a twist. I love a dark drama where three women spend two hours chewing up the screen and delivering quiet monologues. I don’t really get anything out of a political satire sprinkled with absurdist plot devices like bog people rising from the dead and a brain in the woods the size of a Subaru Forester. If you’re going to go there, I want you to go there the entire time. I don’t want a middle third where you decide to become a different movie than the one we started with, and then no resolution in the last act to revisit the plots you opened up. I mean it’s fine. There is possibly some delicate point about unrealized goals that I’m missing here, but I don’t care to explore it because I didn’t enjoy myself. I spent forty minutes fighting to stay awake and another twenty thinking “okay, let’s wrap it up, kids.” I was reading a review afterward on some site saying that Rumours is clearly made by someone who loves movies and this should inspire people to check out his other work. I’d be interested to see what movies appear on his list of favorites, because I’m sure there would be very little overlap with mine, so I am not the target audience for this movie.

I’m going to cleanse my palate and see the family-friendly animated robot movie though. They get me.