Bad Behaviour Review - Colossal Disappointment
Former child starlet Lucy (Connelly) seeks wisdom from Elon Bello, her spiritual guide (Ben Whishaw). However, Lucy notifies her daughter Dylan (Alice Englert), a stunt performer preparing for a hazardous fight scene, before she joins him in a solitary retreat in a stunning mountain resort. Unfortunately, Lucy's ugly side starts to come out as she sets off for the retreat. To make matters worse, when Lucy is partnered with a young influencer named Beverly (Dasha Nekrasova), with whom she must engage in a mother-daughter role-playing exercise, her bad behaviour hits an astoundingly new low.
The concepts that Englert's feature debut attempts to explore are startlingly void and incomprehensible. The plot notably struggles to keep the audience interested in the reasons behind the characters' actions and conduct without resorting to drastic measures. It's challenging to pinpoint the origins of Connelly's Lucy's bizarre outbursts until the movie's conclusion. Even so, the script spends so little time giving sufficient answers that everything established in the first two acts is rendered meaningless and fragile. Connelly makes every effort to persuade viewers that this ominous comedy is entertaining. Even so, this lifeless movie cannot be given new life by her captivating performance.
In one part of Bad Behavior, it seems as though a strong movie could be on the horizon. Connelly's Lucy data-faces challenges that force her to think on herself and communicate what she has learned. These moments, though, never remain long enough to provide even a semblance of clarity. Its high potential is instead squandered by the ludicrous plot and awkward conversation, which leads to a meaningless demonstration of anger control, introspection, and healing. If the majority of the movie had been as good as the final 25 minutes, one might be able to overlook all these shortcomings. It arrives a little too late, though, and only serves to emphasise how much of an opportunity Englert's debut was.
Bad Behaviour is such a letdown, filled with ridiculous scenes and terrible dialogue, that it nearly seems like a parody. What, one would wonder? of a subpar film. The idea that there is something interesting to watch behind this fantastical image may be the hardest to grasp. However, deliberate decisions are taken to do everything than present a fantastic film. And despite Jennifer Connelly's passionate and excellent performance, the issues of codependency and toxicity within mother-daughter relationships were just not well-executed. This is without a doubt one of the biggest disappointments in recent memory, as is obvious.