This is why open minds and hearts are always a better way to go through life. Inspiration can come from anywhere. If your heart was closed to “I wanna do a movie about 70s newscasters” Will Ferrell wouldn’t have made one of the funniest movies ever made. The Wachowskis would have never had us take the red pill to enter the Matrix. And John Early wouldn’t have given us this insane tale of Maddie’s Secret, and it’s wonderfully absurd premise.
Early plays the titular Maddie in drag, but the character is female. Maddie’s living an insular but stable life, washing dishes with her best friend Deena (Kate Berlant) for an online content curation company called Gourmaybe. After Maddie’s boyfriend Jake (Eric Rahill) films a food making vlog of Maddie at home, she becomes an overnight viral sensation. Gourmaybe’s boss Zach (Conner O’Malley) elevates Maddie to influencer status, pissing off Gourmaybe’s top influencer Emily (Claudia O’Doherty). But this rise to the top comes with consequences, like say, that secret perhaps rising to the surface.
Growing up in the 1990s I was forced to watch countless after school specials trying to teach me some important lesson of the week, ususally D.A.R.E. related. I never EVER thought those silly stupid films would attract a talent like John Early, but I’m so glad he saw something magical in that stupidity that I couldn’t. I was blindsided by how uncanny his direction is: the shots he’s using like the creepy mirror shots or sex scenes in between porn and soap lighting on a cheap set completely recreate the setups of all those pre Lifetime 1990s movies. The score on top is very May Decembery too, ironically conveying the absurdist dread the movie’s about to go into. Early modernizes the story for 2026, widening his satirical eye towards the food influencer world. It’s a vlog eat vlog world like anywhere else, just with more deeply insecure, less talented but overly confident people, best exemplified by the deranged Conner O’Malley as Zach, leaning hard into his evil boss trope. There’s a fake TV show called The Boar that’s involved too, on the nose but tersly mocking the stupid pitches about food as metaphor all these influencers have to peddle to get more viewers and funding. And holding it all together is Early’s Maddie. Early on he leans into the drag joke putting in a hilarious pregnancy storyline that would have definitely been in a movie like this. It’s definitely amusing too.
But only at first. Maddie’s Secret makes a bold pivot in the middle. The movie’s tone and location shift hard from the silly satire to something much more earnest and emotional. That first 15 minutes Early tries hard to earn this choice attempting to soften the landing for the audience. He’ll figure this out eventually, but in Maddie’s Secret, his first film, some of the audience is gonna get lost here. But I eventually locked back in thanks to some new character arrivals, who really commit 100000%. Vanessa Bayer especially does an incredible job in a small role helping really open Early’s audience hearts wide, and actually causing a few real tears from something so initially silly and surface level. That’s because there’s a universal concern Maddie has that everyone feels at some point in their life, plus the goodwill of Early playing Maddie as a well meaning individual with no ulterior motives: essentially the real human being surrounded by movie archetypes. Bold choices like that make John Early not just a funny actor I want to see, but now a director I can’t wait to see with a bigger budget to see what ingenuity he comes up with next.
For all the people specifically who didn’t grow up in the 1990s, Maddie’s Secret might be a hard sell for you. If you need a primer beforehand, Lifetime movies are a good start at least, especially ones with some sort of crime in the middle, and the clearest, dumbest title you could ever think of. Stuff like “Baby Monitor: Sound of Fear” or “I Do (But I Don’t)” or my personal favorite: “From Straight A’s to XXX”. Never change Lifetime. John Early might need more inspiration from you!