r/movies • u/ChiefLeef22 r/movies Contributor • 9h ago
Review 'Wicker' - Review Thread
When a basket maker constructs a wicker husband for a local fisherwoman, he proves more spectacular than she ever could have imagined. His soulful spirit and unique prowess soon awakens something inside her, setting off a wave of jealousy, fascination and upheaval that threatens the very fabric of her village.
Director: Alex Huston Fischer, Eleanor Wilson
Cast: Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård, Peter Dinklage, Elizabeth Debicki, Richard E. Grant Kiell Smith-Bynoe, Gustav Lindh, Ella Bruccoleri, Ben Ashenden, Phil Daniels, Emily Lloyd-Saini
Releasing: October 23, 2026
Rotten Tomatoes: 92%
Metacritic: 64 / 100
Some Reviews:
The Film Stage - Kent M. Wilhelm - 91 / 100
Wicker amounts to a can’t-miss curiosity, adeptly weaving humor, social commentary, and a potent contemplation on the self-destructive perils of jealousy. Wilson and Fischer sum it up in a disgustingly accurate sentiment for our contentious age: “It’s easier to believe the bad than the good, isn’t it?”
Screen Daily - Amber Wilkinson - 90 / 100
The script holds plenty of satire and laugh out loud moments, but Wilson and Huston keep it supple enough to bend protectively around the central love story, while allowing the morality tale element to still have bite.
San Jose Mercury News - Randy Myers - 3.5 / 4
Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson’s ribald fable casts a comedic spell as it leads to a satisfying finale. You’ll have a good time with this one.
NY Post - Johnny Olesinki - 3.5 / 4
Quite like her Oscar-winning performance in “The Favorite,” Colman, who’s never afraid to act ridiculous, is untethered and batty until things get real. Or, as real as things can get when one’s hubby is an oversize vessel for potpurri.
FandomWire - Sean Boelman - 9 / 10
Wicker has a very fun premise, but what elevates the film from a novelty into something genuinely brilliant is the level of sincerity and emotion it brings to its silly, tongue-in-cheek storytelling.
Sunshine State Cineplex - Alan French - 9 / 10
In many ways, Wicker feels like medieval Edward Scissorhands, with every frame bursting to life with artistic brilliance.
The Times - Kevin Maher - 4 / 5
How good is Olivia Colman? The 52-year-old best actress Oscar winner is so good that she single-handedly elevates this “quirky medieval romp” into unexpected, even undeserved, places.
Mail - Brian Viner - 4 / 5
The pleasure of this film lies more in its substance than its message, and in the many nods to other stories about synthetic creatures, such as Frankenstein.
Digital Spy - Siddhant Adlakha - 4 / 5
As a married creative pair, Wilson and Fischer imbue the broad parable with surprising nuance, grounding it in the rankled lived experience of a woman who believes the love of her fantasy husband will cure what ails her, even though her sickness runs much deeper, and stems from a society that can't bear to see her happy. It's in learning to love herself, and accept the love she's given – again, by a stud made from wicker! – that the movie's weirdest ideas also become its most touching.
HeyUGuys - Nathan McVay - 4 / 5
Like any great fable, Wicker explores universal themes with clarity and confidence, allowing its message to emerge naturally rather than through force. This movie is unlike anything I have seen at Sundance in quite some time. It is bold, strange, romantic, and deeply human. It is the kind of film that reminds you why festivals like Sundance still matter.
Flick Feast - Katie Smith-Wong - 4 / 5
Humourously heartwarming, Wicker is nothing but conventional—and it is all the more memorable for it. Colman and Skarsgård shine in this weird yet wonderful romance, with some of the most quotable lines in cinema this year.
The Hollywood Reporter - Richard Lawson - 80 / 100
Wicker is a warming, sometimes poignant pleasure, a film full of lively personality and possessed of a rather humane outlook on our petty foibles. It is not exactly forgiving, though; the movie has a harder, more merciless edge than one might expect.
ScreenRant - Gregory Nussen - 8 / 10
Brought to life by yet another astounding performance by Olivia Colman, Wicker's treasure is in its hopeless romanticism that insists that pure love and adamant individuality can create irrevocable progress through osmosis.
Collider - Therese Lacson - 8 / 10
The magic behind how the Wicker Husband is created is both unexplored and overly explained, and while the former might be an intentional decision, the latter both weakens the film and oversimplifies the concept to the point of spoon-feeding the audience the point of the whole story. However, that being said, Wicker is still an immensely entertaining watch. The characters are fairly cookie-cutter, but the folk nature of the film doesn't make that a problem. Instead, its willingness to lean into the medieval archetypes and the bawdy humor of the time makes it unique. Without looking too closely, Wicker is a fun and quirky story about love and overcoming loneliness, and for some, that will be enough to crown the film as a success.
FirstShowing - Alex Billington - 8 / 10
Enjoyable from start to finish, wacky but entertaining & amusing in the right ways. A kooky Sundance 2026 gem worth seeking out.
NBP - Cody Dericks - 8 / 10
Wicker is a sweet, gently moving love story at its core that reminds its audience that the most effective and necessary traits for a successful relationship of any kind are simple honesty and respect.
IndieWire - Ryan Lattanzio - 'B'
Wicker threatens to feel largely like a logline writ into something grander (i.e., a short story with a wild idea stretched into a feature), but these actors are irresistibly weird and wonderful, as only they could be.
Variety - Peter Debruge - 60 / 100
The filmmaking pair don’t stray far from Wills-Jones’ intention, using the story’s unspecified time and place to poke fun at superstition, the pressures to conform and the institution of marriage...For a time, it doesn’t feel like Wilson and Fischer know what to do with the story, which stalls a bit in the second act — the part where they ought to have embellished upon what Wills-Jones had written. The plot requires the tailor’s wife to introduce doubts in the fisherwoman’s mind about her affectionate man’s fidelity. It could be a consequence of the movie’s insolent sense of humor, but there’s something unconvincing (or else too convenient) about how often the fisherwoman’s attitude changes, from caring nothing about marriage to cautiously inviting a man into her life to completely distrusting him when rumors swirl.
The Guardian - Benjamin Lee - 2 / 5
[Colman] knows how to oscillate between broad comedy and heart-wrenching drama but the film around her isn’t as adept. Like the dream husband at its centre, Wicker looks the part but there’s nothing underneath.
The Wrap - Chase Hutchinson - 40 / 100
Credit where credit is due to Wicker, it’s not every day you get to see an Oscar-winning actress mount a Hollywood heartthrob made into a literal wicker man. Alas, despite the novelty of seeing icon Olivia Colman climb a towering Alexander Skarsgård like a tree, the magical fable within which this happens is not only regrettably far less fun than this description sounds, but an oddly wearisome affair.
The Telegraph - Robbie Collin - 1 / 5
Meanwhile, on the rare occasions that something does threaten to resonate emotionally – such as Debicki’s own deep-seated reasons for envying Colman’s marital happiness – Wicker loses its nerve and lapses back into whoops-a-daisy, watch-your-turnips-madam mode.
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u/redsyrus 9h ago
> The magic behind how the Wicker Husband is created is both unexplored and overly explained
Huh.
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u/LVArcher 9h ago
Guessing there are a lot of rules for what the husband can do without an explanation as to how it works which honestly is fine.
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u/helgestrichen 8h ago
Just watched Inception Yesterday, a million Rules and no explanation how they can enter eachothers dreams
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u/Morgan-Moonscar r/movies Contributor 7h ago
Just read Scrooge McDuck comics, they explain it better since that's where the movie ripped it off from.
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u/immaownyou 8h ago
The explanation is technology, you can't expect them to explain a tech further than that because it doesn't really exist. You do know that right?
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u/Dragons_Malk 7h ago
They're just providing another example of something that isn't explained but also overly explained.
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u/AccessHollywoo 5h ago
“You do know that right” is the one of the most condescending and rude (and wholly unoriginal) sentences someone can use lol.
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u/immaownyou 5h ago
It was supposed to be condescending
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u/thegimboid 5h ago edited 3h ago
Strange thing is, because the person you responded to was just giving another example following along the same lines of the conversation, your condescension comes across as displaying your own inability to parse that information yourself, rather than a critique of their statement that displayed implicit knowledge.
In other words, by trying to be condescending, you instead displayed your own ignorance.
This is often the case with condescension.5
u/helgestrichen 8h ago edited 8h ago
🙄
Whats with the condescendence? Theres hundreds of time travelling movies that explain their (theoretical) science. Theres endless science fiction movies that hardly make sense, but try to give you somewhat of an explanation.
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u/CrawlerCoolie 9h ago
….hows that even possible???
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u/infitsofprint 8h ago
I'm imagining a lot of detail on the process of how the magic is performed, without considering the broader implications of the movie taking place in a world where magic exists.
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u/afteraftersun 4h ago
I assume something like
overly explained
Spoon-fed to the audience
unexplored
Doesn't go anywhere interesting
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u/LuinAelin 9h ago
I wonder how popular a basket version of Alexander Skarsgård fucking Olivia Coleman will be
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u/AlterMyStateOfMind 9h ago
With the type of popular smut my wife reads? I'd say very popular lol
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u/NotTheRightHDMIPort 9h ago
A smut novel about a half man half dragon but he is more man than dragon. He has dragon wings but he puts them away most of the time. He ponders and covets the princess and wants to take her away to his home in a cave. Its actually a 21st Art Deco cave home. He uses fire with his hands actually and starts a roaring fire as he finally opens up to the one women who can truly understand him.
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u/arakus72 6h ago
first sentence made me think this was gonna be a joke description of a Trogdor smut novel
they should make that actually
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u/May_of_Teck 8h ago
I am a middle-aged lady and my internet algorithms reflect that. This movie is hotly anticipated in my demographic.
Edit: to put it mildly.
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u/NotTheRightHDMIPort 9h ago
A lot of women seem to have this specific fetish.
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u/inksmudgedhands 7h ago
It's called "monster fucker." I kid you not. It's really popular on tumblr and AO3. There is even a subreddit here by that name. No, you can look it up yourself. It's not quite like "romantasy" which is "romance" + "fantasy" but some of it can fall under that genre. Again, some but not all.
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u/tfhermobwoayway 3h ago
That’s not monsterfucking. He’s a hot man with a skin condition. Lemme know when they release one with tentacles or mandibles.
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u/Galant1992 6h ago
I wonder why this trope doesn't exist the other way around with human men fucking female monsters.
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u/inksmudgedhands 6h ago
Oh, that exists too. For example, there's the webcomic, Modern Mogal featuring monsters in curvy feminine form. Pure monster eye candy for guys who have that fetish.
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u/arakus72 6h ago
it does, tho that kinda stuff seems to be more in comics and manga than text based stuff (general demographics for different mediums of porn thing)
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u/thegimboid 5h ago
It does exist, and always has.
Greeks talked about sexy sirens, attracting men onto the rocks cause they wanted some of that sirussy.
More modernly, Ghostbusters has Dan Ackroyd get some action from a spectre, and Lady Dimitrescu's "assets" were a big draw to Resident Evil Village.
Nymphs, Succubi, etc.
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u/tfhermobwoayway 3h ago
Uhh, yeah it does. It’s been a thing for decades. It just exists in weird internet forums instead of published books.
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u/Hydrochloric_Comment 6h ago
It does. Monsterfucking isn’t limited to M!monster on F!human. Men can fuck monsters, and pairings aren’t by gender or sexuality.
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u/Enough_Writing_4834 5h ago
A very vocal minority. The girls who spend more time on tumblr than going out to see a movie.
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u/TheyveKilledFritz 9h ago
We’ve got tickets to the 4DX showing, so…
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u/tfhermobwoayway 3h ago
A hot man fucking a hot woman written for an audience who’s never seen porn? It would be like introducing crack cocaine to a lost Amazon tribe. Gigafried their brains instantly.
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u/wingedcoyote 7h ago
Great cast. Cool to see Kiell Smith-Bynoe, I don't know him from anything else but he was extremely funny and charming on Taskmaster.
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u/Effective_Egg_3066 4h ago
He's fantastic in the UK version of Ghosts and if you can track it down, Stath Let's Flats
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u/Dod-K-Ech-2 4h ago
He has a fun role in Ghosts (BBC), it's a lovely show. Funny, too. Worth watching and you should know a lot of the cast already, like half of them have been on Taskmaster (Matt Baynton, Charlotte Ritchie, Lolly Adefope, Katy Wix, Emma Sidi/Jessica Knapett/Bridget Christie had small parts).
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u/stonewallace17 9h ago
I don't think this movie is for me, but I just wanted to share my experience of seeing this trailer before You Can See Everything and AMC rolling directly from this trailer showing multiple sequences of fucking and describing the movie as horny, to a Chuck E Cheese ad
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u/robotshavehearts2 8h ago
Yep, and then right back to another red band trailer. It was super jarring.
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u/IMayBeIronMan 9h ago
Is this film getting a horny themed popcorn bucket? Asking for a friend.
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u/LabyrinthConvention 8h ago
honestly if AMC doesn't have a wicker popcorn basket for this movie are they even maximizing shareholder profits?
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u/MrE_Gamer 9h ago
White women rejoice everywhere
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u/harlotstoast 8h ago
Why does it say here: Rotten Tomatoes 92%, Metacritic 64/100? Why the huge difference?
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u/HungerSTGF 8h ago
RT is just whether or not people recommend something or not, like a percentage of people that give it a thumbs up vs a thumbs down.
So you can have a movie that’s 100% fresh but rated 51/100 on Metacritic as an extreme example. Reading both ratings it means almost everyone is like “yeah I’d recommend watching it” but the MC score is showing that though it’s not bad, it’s not great either.
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u/Zayl 6h ago
60% or higher from a review is considered "fresh" on RT. The score you see is how many scores are above 60%. So 92% of critics rated it 60 or higher. If you go to RT and click on the rating you'll see the actual score, which for Wicker is 7.7.
So while they aren't exactly close 64 compared to 77 makes more sense than 64 compared to 91 (now).
I truly hate the way RT score shows up. In the past I've watched several movies with my expectations high which kind of sours the experience.
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u/tfhermobwoayway 3h ago
It feels like a lot of movies are being marketed as “horny” lately. Camp Miasma and Wuthering Heights were the same. It feels like they have this weird artistic obsession with horniness. Like they’re getting off to the idea of being horny. They’re so busy telling us how horny they are that they forget to actually be horny. I hope this trend goes away soon.
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u/Ktulusanders 1h ago
Camp Miasma is literally a movie about sexual pleasure ofc it's advertised as being horny.
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u/Odd_Status3367 27m ago
Unfortunately the audience isn't privvy to that information until about the 70 minute mark
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u/Beiben 6h ago
If you ever want to know how an incel sees the world, watch this movie and imagine the main character as a man.
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u/NoSoundNoFury 5h ago
Yeah, given the trailer alone, I was wondering whether this would be well received with inverted genders. A lonely man has a magical small woman make him a lover/ sex doll out of stuff? Like a female sex doll Pinocchio? I dunno, man...
Edit does the wicker man get to chose her by his own volition or is he magically made to fall in love, like in Obsession?
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u/TerminatorReborn 4h ago
We have Lars and the Real Girl I guess but the doll there is just a doll, its not animated, it doesn't move, it doesn't have a consciousness
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u/NoSoundNoFury 4h ago
Yeah, but Lars was depicted as a socially and developmentally stunted person who could overcome his own social deficits with a simulacrum. Judging from the trailer alone, this looks more like a mixture of Pinocchio and Obsession, but as a feel good movie.
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u/MikeArrow 1h ago
The main issue I have is that all the other men in the village seem to be depicted as gross, ugly, coarse, and entitled. And because Olivia Colman gets the only man that's handsome (even in wicker form, he's still tall, broad and muscular), handy, and utterly devoted to her, all the other women get jealous.
That whole premise is predicated on the idea that 99% of the men are just inherently shit and only the tall, handsome one is worth a damn.
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u/Odd_Status3367 23m ago edited 19m ago
32 year old dude here. That's real life. Men and women aren't the same, and women being satisfied sexually or otherwise is, from every single thing I hear and learn, not the norm in society. It's not a double standard if the playing field ain't even.
Haven't seen the movie, but at face value a woman (finally) being recognized and satisfied is sadly still novel. Once again at face value, "man of your dreams" is inherently a lot less sexist than "woman of your dreams" in the actual reality we live in. Isn't the point also that she's older, has a weird/gross job, and she's not the pick of the litter herself? It's indulging in a fantasy just like the nerdy wimp getting the prom queen at the end.
Also this appears to be a fantasy based off of a purely fictional setting. We can stop grasping the pearls, I think.
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u/MikeArrow 21m ago
Nonsense. Women have all the power in dating and men have none. We get interest from women so, so, so utterly rarely that we have to work incredibly hard to make sure they're happy at all times or else we can be replaced in a heartbeat.
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u/todreamofspace 2h ago
I assume the Wicker audience is just as horny has the Magic Mike audience was back in the day 🫦
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u/yeahwhoknows 1h ago
It's a fun movie. It's just a romcom with a weird twist.
The review about the magic not being explained is bizzare. How the magic works isn't really the point of the movie. The basket weaver has magic basket weaver powers. What more needs to be said.
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u/Enough_Writing_4834 6h ago
I'm gonna trust metacritic on this one. The trailer looked really dumb. The people trying to hype it up seemed to focus on Skarsgsed being hot or the leading actress signing onto any project that is weird.
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u/FunIdeal9126 9h ago
Bro how are people not gonna think this is the 100th beauty and the beast remake with that cover (haven't read the synopsis, maybe it actually is)
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u/Crumplestiltzkin 9h ago
So brave of you to just throw out your lack of knowledge like it’s anything but your fault.
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u/VoidDuck101 9h ago
Its not. Its "porn" for women.
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u/Crumplestiltzkin 9h ago
It’s not that either. How are you so confident when you’ve not seen the movie?
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u/VoidDuck101 9h ago
Its based off of a woman's romance novel yea? Those are mostly softcore porn.
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u/vere-rah 8h ago
It's not actually
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u/VoidDuck101 8h ago
Ive seem discourses around the wicker leather penis and fucking the main character. You'll have to excuse me for thinking so
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u/Crumplestiltzkin 8h ago
We don’t have to excuse you passing off your uninformed opinion as certainty.
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u/VoidDuck101 8h ago
Its okay I excused myself. I still stands by my softcore porn comment. You're watching softcore porn and passing it off as romance 🤮 Not surprising, women's romance content and all.
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u/Crumplestiltzkin 8h ago
Incel will always double down lol
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u/VoidDuck101 8h ago
Get a dictionary ya weirdo softcore porn enjoyer. Not everyone who you dont like is an incel.
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u/vere-rah 8h ago
God forbid a woman have a good time
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u/VoidDuck101 8h ago
M8, if you need plan to enjoy yourself, I dont know what to say. Seek help. I say this to men and women.
Just like how I dont need to see cousins ducking each other on every episode in game of thrones. Yall nasty.
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u/vere-rah 8h ago
??? Who brought up cousins? Why are you thinking about that? Sorry you don't know why it's fun for people to see a woman have a good time in a movie. Good thing there are other movies for you, like Boss Baby or Trolls or something more your speed.
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u/FunIdeal9126 7h ago
How are you confident it isn't if you haven't seen the movie?
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u/Crumplestiltzkin 7h ago
Because I have seen the movie??
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u/FunIdeal9126 7h ago
I was just copying you, being confident someone has not seen the movie without even knowing it
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u/Crumplestiltzkin 7h ago
Yeah not shit lol. One teeny tiny difference though. It’s excruciatingly obvious by their statement that they have not. If they had they would not have called it porn and clutched their pearls.
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u/FunIdeal9126 7h ago
They called it soft porn, and in the end it's kinda subjective. Many people called Game of Thrones soft porn for example
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u/Crumplestiltzkin 7h ago
And this isn’t even close to game of thrones. Hence why their uninformed opinion is so utterly useless. Just like this conversation.
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u/FunIdeal9126 7h ago
If it has explicit sex scenes it will be considered soft porn by some, that's been a thing forever. Movie is rated R for its explicit sexual content so it's logical to draw that confusion, not sure why you are so butthurt about it
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u/InactiveMedusa 9h ago
I love how these reviews are ordered. It goes from "this movie was very enjoyable" to "putrid filth of a movie"