I think the reason this movie has such a low rating (and some bad reviews) is that it suffers from an *extreme* version of the discrepancy between the actual movie and the movie that is advertised. To look at the poster you'd imagine you're in for some sort of "Weekend at Bernie's Fashion Week" or "Zoolander 2: Derelicte meets Dead". The movie is good, but it's nothing like that.
The movie is a genuine black comedy. I'm a guy who likes his comedies laugh out loud (think "There's Something About Mary"), and this is not that type of comedy. It's amusing, but there's nothing especially laugh-worthy in it. This is, rather, absurdist comedy, the sort of thing you watch because you can't believe anyone would think that way and you want to see how much more awfully they will behave.
A movie that criticizes the fashion industry is not especially daring; what makes this one work is that the satire is so well-structured and, simultaneously, over-the-top but also completely organic. You don't see ham-handed rants against capitalism, modeling agencies and the rest (except for one rather ham-handed sequence against documentary film-makers); rather what you see is an oddly compelling story that just happens to show terrible things along the way.
One final reason to watch: the model star of the show, Cynthia, played by Ivy Levan, looks insanely like Jennifer Lawrence throughout the entire movie. It's uncanny, and I don't know to what extent it's deliberate, but adds well to the whole air of "reality but unreality" of the piece.
The movie is a genuine black comedy. I'm a guy who likes his comedies laugh out loud (think "There's Something About Mary"), and this is not that type of comedy. It's amusing, but there's nothing especially laugh-worthy in it. This is, rather, absurdist comedy, the sort of thing you watch because you can't believe anyone would think that way and you want to see how much more awfully they will behave.
A movie that criticizes the fashion industry is not especially daring; what makes this one work is that the satire is so well-structured and, simultaneously, over-the-top but also completely organic. You don't see ham-handed rants against capitalism, modeling agencies and the rest (except for one rather ham-handed sequence against documentary film-makers); rather what you see is an oddly compelling story that just happens to show terrible things along the way.
One final reason to watch: the model star of the show, Cynthia, played by Ivy Levan, looks insanely like Jennifer Lawrence throughout the entire movie. It's uncanny, and I don't know to what extent it's deliberate, but adds well to the whole air of "reality but unreality" of the piece.