THE STORY – Soft-spoken actress Laura Franco’s life crumbles. She regains her voice after encountering a terrifying but oddly charming Monster living in her closet.
THE CAST – Melissa Barrera, Tommy Dewey, Edmund Donovan, Kayla Foster & Meghann Fahy
THE TEAM – Caroline Lindy (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 98 Minutes
It seems that for years, film fans have been yelling into the void, hopelessly professing there is a drought of romantic comedies. Long gone are the days when a new Friday-night release entails two hot 30-year-olds meeting by a happy accident in a beautiful city before proceeding to have whimsical misadventures as they fall in love. Despite this long love drought, the recent success of “Anyone But You,” starring Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell, showed movie studios that audiences are ready to embrace love once more, or at least lust. The people want romcoms, and Caroline Lindy’s feature debut “Your Monster” is here to give the people exactly what they want, just not in the form they might expect.
“Your Monster” immediately drops its audience into emotional turmoil as we meet our lead, Laura, an aspiring musical theater actress dealing with a cancer diagnosis. Played by Melissa Barrera, Laura is quiet, sweet, and kind of a pushover. A montage of her cancer treatment is interspersed with clips of her life prior to her illness, which is straight out of a typical romantic comedy. In these flashbacks, she lives with her boyfriend Jacob (Edmund Donovan), who is writing a musical with Laura and promises she will be cast in the lead role. Every time he gets stuck on a line of a song, Laura fixes it with a smile on her face, never asking for credit. Their relationship seems perfect until, in typical bad-movie-boyfriend fashion, Jacob unceremoniously abandons her in the hospital when her illness becomes too difficult for him to handle.
It’s a lot to process in the first ten minutes of a film, but “Your Monster” doesn’t waste a moment of its 98-minute runtime. The film is brilliantly paced; Lindy knows precisely how to keep the energy high while letting her actors ruminate in the comedic melodrama of the story. Laura spends much of the opening act wailing and eating pie in her pajamas as she sends embarrassing texts to her ex, and Barrera plays it with comedic ease. It’s indulgent in the style of early 2000s romcoms but never dull or derivative.
After moving back to her mom’s beautifully decorated and seemingly empty New York City townhouse, Laura is determined to wallow, and who can blame her? Just when her life gets a bit too sad to watch, we meet Monster, who is charismatically played by Tommy Dewey. Somewhere between a lumberjack and a werewolf, Monster is, well, a humanistic monster who appears to be living in her closet. Dewey is utterly delightful in this charming, hairy, and sensitive role; Monster can come across as grouchy, rude, and just scary enough that it’s believable that Laura would be intimidated by him. In their first meeting, he demands she leave the premises, giving her two weeks to find somewhere else to live as she bawls loudly. As the two must learn to live together, the film veers into slightly predictable territory story-wise, but like all good romcoms, you likely won’t mind its conventional storytelling tropes, especially when the twist on the material is this fun. The relationship dynamic between the characters is compelling, as the actors’ chemistry can be felt in every scene they share. It’s a little bit saucy, and the jokes are funny, if sometimes corny.
There’s nothing particularly groundbreaking about the filmmaking in “Your Monster.” It follows the standard romantic comedy formula: a female lead who can’t stick up for herself, a horrible ex-boyfriend, a flighty best friend, and the list goes on. Despite this, “Your Monster” feels refreshing as it’s evident so much love and care was poured into every aspect of the film, making it feel reminiscent of classic romcoms such as “When Harry Met Sally.” From the meticulously dressed townhouse to the prosthetics on Tommy Dewey, the clothes are able to convey not only who these people are but also how they feel in that moment. The musical theater setting also works well as a backdrop for the story and provides Barrera ample time to show off some really impressive vocals as Laura desperately tries to get back the role promised to her. It also allows Donovan to really have fun with the obnoxious director role, most notably when he starts the table read with a Malala Yousafzai quote to great comedic effect.
The true heart of this film reveals itself when Laura realizes how much she has to learn from Monster; when she is a pushover, he demands what he wants. In a story that is about more than just love, he teaches her to unleash the Monster within. Barrera is strikingly charismatic, taking on the majority of the emotional work in this film. She is able to convey her character’s transformation from a pathetic, privileged girl to a woman who is capable of being nasty and angry. Monster can push her into becoming a better version of herself, less whiny and self-pitying, and it comes off as earned and emotionally believable. It’s a rare thing for a leading woman in a romcom to be rude and aggressive and for the audience to be completely on board with her behavior, but it works here.
“Your Monster” isn’t going to change the world or win a bunch of awards. Still, between the passionate performances and the energetic filmmaking, it is a solid mid-budget romcom, providing audiences with a fun twist on a genre they know all too well. It’s the feel-good romantic comedy we have all been waiting for this year.
