Everyone has one great movie experience. You know. That 1 movie you’re watching; you start to realize it’s truly something special. You look around, and everyone is realizing the same thing, so you are all sharing in this special thing going on. Then there’s a movie like Serenity, where I got shushed by a woman, thinking she was watching a drama, because Serenity in my mind is clearly a comedy of loopiness. Movies like Serenity are destined to become cult sensations, and I for one will gladly champion it on it’s audacity alone.
Serenity is the name of the boat captained by Baker Dill (Matthew McConaughey) in the tiny island of Plymouth. He’s Ahab, and his Moby Dick is a giant tuna that he’s dying to catch. He’s so obsessed with reeling in this big tuna that he’s behind on payments to his creditors and first mate Duke (Djimon Hounsou), resorting to prostituting himself to the beautiful Constance (Diane Lane) to make ends meet. Out of the blue, his ex-wife Karen (Anne Hathaway) comes to Plymouth. She is remarried to an abusive ahole, Frank Zariakas (Jason Clarke) with Baker’s son in tow. Scared and out of options due to Frank’s power, she asks Baker to take Frank out fishing and murder him for a cool $10 million.
Not a bad setup for a thriller right? And Steven Knight has pulled off tough concepts in the past (Locke is amazing, please seek it out). However, right from the get go, things are weirdly off. Constance and Karen talk like they’re in a 1920’s Private Eye mystery, using phrases like “What brings you round these parts?” clashing mightily with McConaughey’s island speak. At this point, I’m going, what the hell is going on? Then there’s this introduction of Jeremy Strong’s Reid Miller, who’s consistently missing Baker by a minute or so before he goes fishing. Seems weird for someone so deliberately dressed. These are just little things by the way, we get Baker jumping naked off 25 foot cliffs, salesman pitching fishing equipment at 2:30 in the morning during a massive thunderstorm, questions about underage prostitution. I could go on and on. So whatever feelings I was supposed to be having for the central story was completely overwhelmed by the craziness going on surrounding Baker Dill.
This is all leading to a big, Usual Suspects like revelation designed to make you rethink all that bonkers nonsense happening for the first hour+ of the movie. However, in real time, your mind starts doing a “Wait, WHAT????” maneuver, rethinking what you saw while trying to follow along where the movie is trying to take you know, opening more questions then answers. I will not spoil what the reveal is because it’s simultaneously confusing, hilarious, and heartbreaking and would ruin Serenity, because, whoa, that final 30 minutes is nothing short of beautiful insanity for the viewer. Not only are you asking questions like what is the point of Diane Lane’s and Djimon Hounsou’s characters, but Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway start dialing up their performances to Nicholas Cage levels of acting. This nonsense is being juxtaposed with this cruelly and manipuatively dramatic other story going on, which completely unmoors Serenity from any sort of reality anywhere, but this unmooring is so unhinged that half of the audience will start giggling at everything, while the other half will be shushing them in search for the movie’s “deeper meaning.”
I believe the technical term for Serenity’s story is wackadoodle. Wackadoodle movies are trying to be something special, and fail so spectacularly that you’re as invested as if it were special, maybe more so. If everyone thinks your movie is great, no one really watches it over and over again. If a few people think your movie is amazing and everyone else thinks it sucks, like Serenity, we might have ourselves a Tommy Wiseau like midnight movie on our hands for eternity.