There's always that one title, every year, which is greeted with glowing reviews at Telluride and/or Venice only to come back down to earth once it starts hitting other fests and gets seen by a more robust batch of critics. Remember last year, when Kathryn Bigelow's "A House of Dynamite" scored raves at Venice? Or 2017, when Alexander Payne's "Downsizing" was the next big thing at that same fest, only to deflate once it was more widely seen?
This year, that "award" goes to Jesse Eisenberg's "The Debut," which skipped Venice and had its world premiere at Telluride, where rave after rave got published, to the point that once the fest ended it had a wow-worthy 90 on Metacritic — albeit from a small sampling of six or seven reviews.
The minute I took my seat for the first Toronto screening of Eisenberg's film, at the beautiful Princess of Wales theater, expectations were sky-high that this could be one of the defining films of the fall. After all, Telluride pundits were already declaring it a best picture contender and Julianne Moore the best actress frontrunner.
Now, listen, having attended Venice and Toronto this year, I won't sugarcoat anything: the fall festival slate has been weak. I'll soon publish my list of the ten best films I saw these last two weeks, and yes, "The Debut" will be there somewhere, but I can't say it's a flat-out great film. It's a ton of fun, a blend of surreal comedy and theater satire, and Moore absolutely deserves the raves — she basically carries the film, elevates it — but it's a very silly affair, with not much depth to it, and certainly not as impressive as Telluride attendees led us all to believe.
Anyway, that 90 on Metacritic has now fallen to 74, with three times as many critics chiming in, and a few of them are only modestly positive: The New York Post (3/4), IndieWire (B), Next Best Picture (7/10), ScreenRant (7/10) and The A.V. Club (B). The Guardian, The Daily Beast, The Film Stage, TheWrap and IONCINEMA all on the mixed side.
It was no surprise that "The Debut" didn't place in the top three of this morning's TIFF People's Choice announcement — bested by three films that gathered far more buzz at the festival: "La Bola Negra," "I Play Rocky," and "Being Heumann." Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't even a top-five vote-getter, as “Club Kid,” "Wild Horse Nine" and "Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother" seemed to play far better at the fest than Eisenberg's film.
In "The Debut," Moore plays a New Jersey housewife, Mona, who stumbles into a community theater production after the local star drops out. The setup — a tyrannical director played by Paul Giamatti, a cast that treats him with reverence, an original score Eisenberg wrote himself — starts off as backstage comedy but eventually turns into something closer to an over-the-top psychological spiral. Eisenberg has zero interest in realism from the opening scene onward; the implausibilities are purposeful, meant to convey a dream turning into an unhinged comedic nightmare.
What we have, in the end, is a film that works as surface rather than substance, as sensation rather than emotion. And I'm fine with that. This is just not the heftier film I expected. Eisenberg has made a surreal nightmare of a comedy, one that's a step up in polish from his last film, the Oscar-winning "A Real Pain." It helps that Moore is wildly unhinged here — this performance is something to see, and some of her strongest work in years. (Has any other actress played the lonely housewife better than Moore has these last 30 years?) I'm sure plenty will like "The Debut" as much as I did, but there was just no good reason to call it the next big thing when it's a delightful goof with an Oscar winner at the center.
The film will star Hugh Jackman, while Hugh Grant and Owen Cooper are circling roles. Jack Thorne, who is red-hot, thanks to his acclaimed Netflix series’ "Adolescence” and “Lord of the Flies,” wrote the script.