Movie Reaction: Professor Marston and the Wonder Women

Formula: (Wonder Woman * The Imitation Game) / FiftyShades of Grey

It's not that often that I come into a movie theater not really sure what I'm going to get out of a movie. If I see it in a theater, at the very least, I've seen a trailer for the movie. The director/writers/stars give me an idea about it. There are times when even that isn't enough though to know what I'm in store for. Normally, that works out well for me. In 2016, this mostly blind approach brought me Eye in the Sky and Denial which were my two biggest sleeper delights of that year. I haven't taken many chances on movies in 2017, partly because I've been looking into them a lot more beforehand and because the release schedule hasn't had as many dull periods. Since I decided that Happy Death Day was going to play out its premise in the first 20 minutes and I didn't feel like taking a trip back to 1998 to see Jackie Chan and Pierce Brosnan in The Foreigner, I decided to try out this little biopic about the inspiration behind Wonder Woman.

The poster and title suggest that Professor Marston and the Wonder Women is a pretty standard biopic about about an author (Think: Walt Before Mickey, Saving Mr. Banks, Rebel in the Rye, Genius, Finding Neverland, or the upcoming Goodbye, Christopher Robin). In ways, that's what it is. The story is framed around Prof. Marston being interrogated about his inspiration for the character. The actual creation and rise of Wonder Woman is very much an afterthought though. The majority of the film is about Marston's unorthodox relationship with his wife and another woman. The three of them are all in love with each other, an equal, three-way relationship. The film covers almost two decades of this. Williams and Elizabeth Marston (Luke Evans and Rebecca Hall) meet Olive Byrne (Bella Heathcoate) when she's a student at Radcliffe College, in the shadow of Harvard, working as their teaching assistant. They are working on creating the early lie detector. The three of them fall for each other, which leads to professional problems. They eventually move in together and raise a family. Marston is a Professor of Psychology with theories about dominance, inducement, submission, and compliance that he later sneaks into the Wonder Woman comics. That happens on the side though.

I had a pretty shitty experience seeing the movie that I'm pretty sure has soured my opinion of the movie itself, so I won't go too deeply into this. That would be unfair to the film.

The movie tries to be about too much. The relationship between the Marstons and Olive is the core of the movie and could've filled the entire run time if it wanted. Everything else takes the backseat to that. There's a lot of else though. The invention of the lie detector, Marston's teachings about the DISC theory, and the creation of Wonder Woman all don't really get enough time, even though writer/director Angela Robinson finds some smart ways to tie them into each other. At times, the movie feels like Walt Before Mickey. At times it's Loving. It has moments of Mona Lisa Smile even. I like what the movie is doing in theory more than I cared for the actual execution.

The lead three performances (Evans, Hall, Heathcoate) carry the movie and do a good job making me care about the characters. The movie rarely feels like it's including the sexual kink for lazy or sensational reasons. The film just doesn't get to explore everything as deeply as it wants. By the end of the movie, I felt a lot like Connie Britton who is from the decency group protesting the Wonder Woman. She proves that Marston absolutely has an agenda in the comics but doesn't understand what that agenda is, even after he tells her what it is. Similarly, I heard all the points the film is making, but I'm not sure what it is hoping to do with those points.

Movie Theater LVPs: This demerit goes to the little shits who snuck into the movie for the first half hour. Let me set the scene. When the movie started, there were only two people in the theater: me and an older, overweight gentleman who offered me a rather dire Ghost of Christmas Future view of myself. So, already a slightly awkward configuration for a movie with some kinkiness in it. Then, a couple 8th graders* snuck in and sat in the back row. They spent the next half hour playing the equivalent of the "Penis" game and occasionally outright loudly playing what sounded like pornography on one of their phones. This went beyond the standard levels of distraction that I'm used to. I could barely hear the movie at points. I didn't want to engage, because I could tell that's what they wanted. I was silently fuming though. I missed a significant chunk of the film while I mapped out the most socially acceptable way for me to get up and yell at children. I didn't want to miss an even larger chunk of the movie by leaving the theater and getting a manager. Thankfully, they got tired and left after a while. By then, the damage was done. I was seeing red for most of the movie after that and I let it ruin the whole thing.

*They were probably even younger than that, but "8th grader" is an easy shorthand for "awful young perseon".

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend