"Zola" Is Hugely Messy Without Being A Huge Mess
Starring Taylour Paige, Riley Keough, Nicholas Braun and Ari’el Stachel
Rated R
Comedy, drama
Run time: 1 hr, 26 min
Directed and written by Janicza Bravo
In theaters June 30, 2021
“This is messy. You’re messy.”
I’ve never wanted to use a quote from a movie more in its review. This description that Zola (Taylour Paige) says to Stefani (Riley Keough) sums up the entirety of this film, which is extremely evident if you have seen the trailer, or the Twitter thread the story came from in the first place. It’s a saga full of dancers, questionable characters, lies, sex work and even - if it is all to be believed - guns and near-death experiences. I had no idea how they were going to adapt a series of 148 tweets into a feature film, and the trailer felt just dizzy and twisty enough that I was baffled, so I was incredibly, truly surprised when I walked out of Zola adamantly declaring that somehow, this was a pretty great movie.
Without giving away any of the twists and turns of the story about, as Zola says “me and this bitch fell out,” it’s a wild freaking ride. Zola is a waitress and part time dancer who meets Stefani when she shows up in the restaurant where she works. The next day, Stefani invites her to go dance at a club in Florida where they could make a bunch of money. Probably against any gut instinct she has, Zola says yes, a 20ish hour road trip inside and then, really quickly, things go from zero to eighty. Everything Zola was told seems to be a lie, including one of the people she drove to Florida with. And the story never really stops escalating.
This movie is as gritty and nasty as the sordid details it tells. At times, it’s extremely unsettling. I could have gone without the multiple lengthy shots of people in bathrooms or the full-frontal montage of naked dudes that literally made a man in my showing shout out an expletive in exasperation and disappear from the theater for the duration of the scene. Thankfully, this was a small percentage of the film, and after the semi-rocky start, it turned around to be a darkly comedic almost-thriller, filling me with an oddly enjoyable anxiety I think I was supposed to feel when watching Uncut Gems. Despite Stefani being a “demon” as Keough has described her in multiple interviews, she’s truly fascinating, and I’m still not sure if she’s a victim or the ultimate villain.
This movie is 87 minutes of insanity. There’s no other way to spin it. If you don’t know the full story of the Twitter thread, don’t look it up. It’s so much more fun to go along with the movie hanging by the seat of your pants. However, there is many an article, Reddit post and interview you can dig into if you’re like me and desperately want to consume every bit of information about how much of this “based on a true story” movie is actually true. And I highly recommend doing just that. Go in blind; read up later. Let Zola side eye and grimace through her tale and take you on the ride. If you can handle a handful of cringy moments, it’s well worth the watch.