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Zola Movie Review

Zola is a 2021 black comedy film directed by Janicza Bravo and starring Taylour Paige and Riley Keough. It’s an empty flick.

Zola, a Detroit waitress, is seduced into a weekend of stripping in Florida for some quick cash – but the trip becomes a sleepless 48-hour odyssey involving a nefarious friend, her pimp and her idiot boyfriend. You can make a great movie starring strippers and prostitutes, but this ain’t one unfortunately. Almost nothing here is done to elevate this trashy material based on a viral tweet. The idea of a social media-based movie premise is fine, but the execution not so much.

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Zola is a very cinematic experience, I will give it that. In fact, the technical aspects constitute the only reason to see this vapid movie that has nothing else to offer really. The cinematography is inspired, the color palette is interesting and particularly the editing is fantastic as some of the cuts make for a thrilling ride. The score is terrible, but fitting for the people involved, but visually speaking, it’s quite kinetic.

The performances are also solid across the board with Riley Keough being especially strong. However, the characters themselves are so weakly developed that the performers couldn’t save them for feeling bland and undercooked. These brainless sex workers being portrayed as one-note may be realistic, but for the film I need elevated characterization myself, and I simply did not get it.

The main friendship between the two women was also not all that well developed. It had some potential and the business model was interesting, but eventually it was spread too thin and the supporting characters were your typical gangster pimps with that entire shootout ending sequence being painfully clichéd and uninteresting.

Zola is at the end of the day a film about nothing. I do not understand the message or the point to this movie or why it was made in the first place. The critics would make you believe that this is a very good film, but it’s a mediocrity that can only make you stupid watching it.

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Zola is a film that was based on a viral tweet, which is an interesting source of inspiration in and of itself. The kinetic energy and visuals elevate the trashy material, but only slightly. The rest of the movie offers an uninspired look into the stripping/prostitution business with a standard third act, underdeveloped characters and lack of an overarching theme or message. This was all very vapid.

My Rating – 2.5