I’m tough on movies, and I’ve criticized plenty that have had their merits. The utterly wrongheaded Emilia Pérez, though, has none. It enters catastrophic waters as early as its second full musical number: surely mine isn’t the only mouth from which an involuntary “oh, no” escaped when a lawyer began sauntering through a sex change clinic, ordering major surgeries like groceries. As a bandaged ensemble joined in, harmonizing cheerily from operating tables and wheelchairs, I realized with growing dread that the Academy had brought something unholy into the light: an experiment from the lab of political correctness gone horribly, intrinsically wrong; a landmark of faulty acclaim; Crash but worse, much worse. This tale of a mass murderer who gets off scot-free (nay, becomes a hero) after transitioning to a woman is every bit as problematic, reductive, and ethically unserious as it sounds, and even its music makes Joker: Folie a Deux sound melodiously lively. Watch it, and enjoy the surefire privilege, next year, of saying about an undeserving nominee: “At least it was no Emilia Pérez!”
–Jim Andersen