Early on in “The Drama,” Charlie (Robert Pattinson) and Emma (Zendaya) are practicing for the first dance at their wedding. They’re doing one of those old-timey, heavily choreographed routines. You know the type – the kind where you’re too busy thinking about the next step to worry about the fact that everyone is watching you during what’s meant to be an intimate moment. Charlie and Emma giggle their way through it, doing fairly well – but not well enough for their “Full Metal Jacket”-esque dance instructor.
They’re good, she says, but still have a lot of room for improvement. It’s here where Emma breaks, wondering out loud why they can’t just dance normally to a song they love. The whole thing just feels a little performative. Miss “Full Metal Jacket” shoots back with the unfortunate truth that all weddings are performative – less about the bride and groom than the hundreds of people they’ve invited to witness just how perfect and in love they are. And for Charlie, that performativity is kind of the point.
There are little nods to Charlie’s obsession with how others see him leading up to the first act reveal in Kristoffer Borgli’s black comedy, the reveal that forces Charlie, for the first time seemingly ever, to consider how he feels about something rather than how the world at large does. When a game of sharing secrets goes a little too far – recontextualizing everything Charlie thought he knew about his beautiful, perfect, kind fiancé – “The Drama” becomes a darkly funny, cringe-tastic and chaotic takedown of humankind’s obsession with the way we’re perceived.
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