THE STORY – Mona Friedman feels stuck in her tedious suburban housewife life. When a role with a community theatre company arises, she jumps at the chance to try out. To her surprise, she lands a spot in the production. Hard-headed theatre director Jerry sees a spark in Mona and pushes her to test the limits of what she can bring to the role. Which she does, obsessing over nailing her first performance.
THE CAST – Julianne Moore, Paul Giamatti, Halle Bailey, Jesse Eisenberg, Cara Buono, Craig Bierko, Eldar Isgandarov & Bernadette Peters
THE TEAM – Jesse Eisenberg (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 105 Minutes
In so many small towns across the country, there are these dedicated groups of people, most of whom have day jobs, who nevertheless dive headfirst into community theater productions. They give it their all, no matter what level of stage they’re on, and it’s something to admire greatly. It’s vulnerable to put yourself out there like that, opening yourself up to critique, especially when production values may be low. It takes a special kind of person, a unique sort of confidence, to get up on that stage. Mona Friedman, the main character of Jesse Eisenberg’s latest film “The Debut,” does not possess this sort of confidence. Or maybe she just doesn’t show it right away.
Julianne Moore brilliantly inhabits Mona, a sweet but self-conscious, overlooked housewife who finally makes a decision just for herself: she auditions for a local community theater production of “Nosy Neighbors” (Entirely invited by Eisenberg for this film). It’s a spur-of-the-moment decision, not based on any sort of stage experience (She has none), but a choice that gives her life a desperate boost of energy. To her surprise, after a shakeup of the cast that’s been rehearsing for weeks already, she books the role of Ms. Danielle, the super of the building at the center of the musical. But her lack of experience becomes an obvious problem once the director sees Mona. Paul Giamatti plays Jerry, the “biggest name in New Jersey community theater.” He’s a big deal (To them), and acts like it, running this cast through the wringer during rehearsals with stern but honest and sometimes encouraging feedback. Jerry has a lot to work on with Mona, but when she starts diving deeper and deeper into her character, the once tepid and soft-spoken Mona finds her voice in more unexpected ways than one might expect.
While Eisenberg’s Academy Award-winning “A Real Pain” found acclaim for its grounded comedy, “The Debut” takes a completely different approach. This is absurd and almost surreal right from the beginning. There’s an over-the-top cutesy kindness bubbling through most of the cast of “Nosy Neighbor.” Halle Bailey (“The Little Mermaid”) plays the lively Stef, overflowing with theater-kid-kindness for Mona, while Colton Ryan plays a performer growing increasingly frustrated with Mona’s inexperience. Her family, on the other hand, are largely robots who ignore Mona’s very existence. Her husband Howard (Patrick Fabian) only seems to acknowledge her presence to ask if she’s made dinner yet. As such, believability, in terms of how characters speak and behave, isn’t necessarily the goal of this movie. It’s unabashedly goofy from start to finish, getting nearly non-stop laughs for the duration of its runtime.
Very quickly, Jerry becomes determined to dig deep into Mona’s soul to find some sort of reality to this performance (Which largely consists of asking the other characters in the production, “Where’s the rent?”). He tries to emulate a sort of “Whiplash”-like intensity with Mona, breaking down her walls and artifice at all costs. Giamatti has played many ruthless or forceful roles, but his intensity matches Eisenberg’s silly tone seamlessly, as does his warmth. He’s brutally honest with Mona, but you can tell he truly wants to bring something special out of her. The crazy part is it works. Moore infuses Mona with so many layers that we can see the wildness deep inside her begging to break through the suffocating life she’s currently living. For years she’s been bottling up her feelings, letting her family and friends talk over her. But as she discovers the character of Ms. Danielle, she begins to uncover her true self. Letting herself plunge into something and be passionate about something for maybe the first time, she’s breaking free and finding out what she’s capable of. Moore holds absolutely nothing back as Mona, commanding the screen as only she can and delivering one of her finest performances in a career filled with many of them. She fully transforms Mona from the bubbly, polite, kind, smiling woman we’re first introduced to into an intense but capable performer, into…something else altogether, as she can’t figure out how to turn this creative process of hers off once it’s activated. It’s a remarkable high wire act of tone, dramatic antics, comedic timing and soul-piercing humanity that earns your sympathy.
And the film keeps getting wilder and wilder as Mona attempts to find the reality of Ms. Danielle. The antics in the third act get so bizarre, in fact, that it eventually starts to get too preposterous for its own good. While it remains hilarious, if you aren’t on board with unapologetic absurdity, this won’t be the film for you. Thankfully, Moore and Giamatti fully deliver broad, theatrical performances that keep the viewer engaged despite the tone shifts. One scene in particular, where Jerry pushes Mona to deliver a line convincingly, is a massive standout for these two powerhouse performers. This isn’t a dark comedy or something with a more dramatic edge. This is a pure, laugh-out-loud comedy with entertaining but unrealistic characters.
Even with a much zanier film than his last, Eisenberg brings an even greater depth as a filmmaker this time. He and cinematographer Drew Daniels (“Anora,” “Waves”) weave together numerous long takes that let the audience take in the world of this community theater. It’s also packed with many visual gags (One involves Mona always asking to hold, but never lighting, a cigarette), showing Eisenberg’s flawless comedic timing through the film’s editing. He even wrote original songs for the film to flesh out “Nosy Neighbor,” a fictional musical meant to emulate something Steven Sondheim might’ve written in the 70s. It’s a believably terrible musical, but Mona gets a standout solo sung numerous times throughout (“New York chewed me up / but didn’t spit me out”), including once by Bernadette Peters that is quite catchy.
While not everything works as flawlessly as it did in “A Real Pain,” Eisenberg clearly has leveled up as a director and is full of admiration for anyone who can dig deeper and pour themselves out for their art. It’s scary to be that vulnerable, and Eisenberg’s personal brushes with the fear and anxiety of performing are fully inhabited by Mona, as is the levitating freedom she feels when you truly lose yourself onstage. It is an ode to acting, an ode to community theater, and it challenges us to do the scary thing anyway, even if it could cost you everything.
