This is a twist on the Frankenstein story with a sexually adventurous heroine whom I really wanted to like. But despite Emma Stone’s amazingly physical performance, the movie was oversaturated with ***. Now believe me, I’m no prude but at some point all the *** in this film just got tedious. Still, it was visually fascinating and worth watching. (And I have no idea why the word *** is censored in my own web site!)
Manohla Dargis wrote this in The New York Times and I agree with her: Like the monster in Mary Shelley’s novel, the movie is a patchwork. In its overall arc it evokes an old-school picaresque; the chapter titles and an interlude in a brothel summon up “Breaking the Waves,” one of Lars von Trier’s movies about a woman enduring a crucible of suffering. Bella scarcely suffers, which is a relief, as is her unladylike gusto and delight in ***. Her pleasure in her own liberation sustains your interest even as all the fussing and strained eccentricity wears on you. “Poor Things” is about the humanation of a monster, yet because Lanthimos isn’t interested in less obvious, blander human qualities like gentleness, the movie grows progressively monotonal, flat and dull. Its design is rich, its ideas thin...
It isn’t long into “Poor Things” that you start to feel as if you were being bullied into admiring a movie that’s so deeply self-satisfied there really isn’t room for the two of you.