Did you guys know making art is super hard, and working for a living makes you die a little each day? Unicorn Store, directed by Captain Marvel herself, wants to remind you how without art, life is miserable, hot, cruel garbage. Thank goodness this movie has Larson, because with out her, Unicorn Store would be miserable, hot, cruel garbage.
Larson, pulling double duty acting and directing, casts herself as Kit, a recent college artist who has had her work eviscerated by grey suit wearing art critics. With nowhere else to turn, like all great indie films, she returns home to her lame parents Gladys (Joan Cusack) and Gene (Bradley Whitford) who have the “lame” job of using outdoor adventures to help disadvantaged kids work through their problems. That job sucks for Kit though, who uses a temp agency to land a job at a magazine company pushing a vacuum cleaner in their latest article. While doing her temp job, Kit gets invited to a place called “The Store,” where Kit meets “The Salesman” (Samuel L. Jackson). He tells her that this store will sell her what she truly wants: a unicorn, if she creates a place to live for it.
Larson saves Unicorn Store from becoming a mainstream movie watcher’s indie movie hell. The screenplay swerves into every sinkhole movies like this fall into: broken artist moves back home, dorky parents, weirdo locals, one nice friend, quirky lead, manic pixie plot device. ALL OF THEM. This is in spite of the fact that the writer clearly knows these checkboxes, and calls them out every now and then, completely taking you out of the reality the movie so desperately wants you to buy into. Ugh. Larson, thankfully, has talent for days, so she walks this truly amazing tightrope of being entitled, depressed, and effervescent all at once. Her directorial style I would describe as workmanlike, though she has a flair for colors, that’s for sure. I would maybe like to see her with a better screenplay the next time she tries. She does the best she can with her cast too, letting Joan Cusack, Bradley Whitford, and Samuel L. Jackson just do what they do best, and carrying Mamoudou Athie through his horribly written character to be at least someone the audience likes and roots for.
I’m going to stop writing about Unicorn Store now. Just thinking about it makes me grit my teeth with how whimsical the story thinks it is, and how it falls flat on its face like Kit’s Vacuum pitches. Netflix has lots of other stuff thankfully. I’m gonna watch Room again to remind myself that Larson can really mesmerize when the material is great like that film’s.