Dumplin'

Yup, another positive review for a teen coming of age movie. I'm a sucker for these, sue me. Faults out of the way. The conflict between Willowdean (the main character) and her best friend is forced and rushed. They're lifelong friends, they have one fight, and suddenly, they don't like each other? Sure. And there's some pacing issues, especially in the middle, as the same points get repeated in different ways. This didn't have to be almost 2 hours long. Okay, now that that's out of the way, let's talk about why this movie is different and fun and intelligent. Her mom is a former beauty pageant winner, and runs the pageant she won decades ago. For her mom, pageant life is everything, and Willowdean despises it, partly because of the inherent shallowness of it all, but also because of self-esteem issues. Willowdean is a plus-sized girl, and because she's angry at her mom's focus on outward beauty and the feeling that her mom sees her as lesser than the skinny, petite girls in the pageants, she can't accept the idea that she has value and beauty. So she enters the beauty pageant as a protest, and two other girls who don't fit the pageant mold -- another plus-sized girl, Millie, who is optimism personified and genuinely wants to win, and a lesbian, Hannah, who hides her femininity both physically and emotionally who joins to fight the patriarchy -- join in as well, and suddenly, her protest is a cause. The movie is about Willowdean's journey to accept herself and accept the idea that people around her don't see her as she sees herself. She doesn't understand why Millie believes she can win it, because Willowdean is as judgy about herself and other fat people as she assumes other people are. Hannah is Willowdean's anger writ large, taken to the most militant extreme, and highlights how Willowdean is really fighting for her mother's validation. And her best friend, Elle, who also joins the pageant in solidarity but then starts to actually take it seriously, is supposed to represent the confident, pretty, skinny girl she wants to be ... until she finds out Elle is just as wracked with self-doubt and body dysmorphia as she is. Her mom, who lost a ton of weight before the pageant she won all those years ago, is so consumed with beauty because she's scared to lose it, because it's all she's let herself have over the years. All of the characters are played smartly without reducing them to caricatures, and they're instrumental in WIllowdean (played excellently by Danielle Macdonald) in helping Willowdean find herself and come to understand that what's on the outside is not what defines the person. Two things I especially loved that this movie does that other coming of age stories don't have the balls to do: first, even though she gets the guy in the end, she doesn't win him over. He has been in love with her from frame one of the movie, and she has convinced herself into not believing it. Even when he outright says it, she tells him he can't and negs herself and says he should be with someone like a pageant girl. So when they finally get together in the end, it feels more earned; she didn't win his love like a prize because it was already there. She just had to get out of her own head and accept it was real. The second thing (spoilers) is that she doesn't win the pageant. In fact, she's disqualified, and she's okay with it. It would've been so easy to have her win and push the moral with a narrative choice we know would never happen in real life (because beauty pageants are anachronistic). Dumplin' knows that isn't how it works, and it doesn't want to Willowdean to find that self-worth and validation through a phony, saccharine ending; she finds it through self-discovery. The pageant was a tool. She didn't enter it to win, and the movie knows it, so it doesn't violate that idea for the feel-good moment. She earns the feel-good moment on her own. Plus, if you need more reason to watch this, it's got a Dolly Parton soundtrack, and some drag queen-inspired performances that are a delight. So, yeah, a pretty good movie. I even convinced myself as I wrote this it deserved a higher score than I initially thought. Charming, well-acted, capably directed, and honest about its intentions all the way to and through the end. Can't ask for much more.