Where The Crawdads Sing, the lavish new movie from Sony Pictures, has been resoundingly defeated by critics.
The film is an adaptation of Delia Owens' best-selling novel and stars Daisy Edgar-Jones, best known for her roles on Normal People and Hulu Horror Fresh.
Set in two timelines, the story first follows the life and adventures of a girl named Kya as she grows up isolated in the North Carolina swamp from 1952 to 1969. The second timeline follows an investigation into the murder of Chase Andrews. , a local celebrity. in Barkley Cove, a fictional seaside town in North Carolina. Andrews had a relationship with Kya, who is now 19 years old.
Jones plays Kya, with The Kings' Man star Harris Dickinson playing Andrews. Olivia Newman, director of the acclaimed sports drama First Match, is helming it, working from a script by Lucy Alibar, who won plaudits for her Beasts Of The Southern Wild screenplay. Reese Witherspoon is one of the producers of the film.
Where The Crawdads Sing hits US theaters today (July 15) with the UK release date coming a week later on July 22. The film is a priority for Sony Pictures and has been supported by an extensive marketing campaign. However, the money that Sony poured into their latest film did not sway the reviews, giving the film an outright blitz.
How bad do we speak?
Loads of one-and-a-half and two-star reviews, plus a 34% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (opens in a new tab) with many critics going to town on the movie.
Deadline's Todd McCarthy (opens in a new tab) was particularly harsh, calling the film "...a ripe-for-adaptation melodrama that's been squashed, squeezed and withered into a massive, tasteless mush," while Robbie Colin of The Daily Telegraph (opens in a new tab) kicked the boot even harder, calling Where The Crawdads Sing "a familiar bucket of deep-fried Southern bucket" and wrote of Jones and Dickinson's performances that neither of them ".. . overcame the sick sentimentality of the material, nor did it dispel the general aura of goofy phoniness."
Derek Smith of Slant (opens in a new tab) called the film "...an enormously bland derivative affair", while Barry Heartz of The Globe and Mail (opens in a new tab) said that "... neither heartbreaking nor exciting, it often feels like an expanded version of a Hallmark movie of the week." AO Scott of The New York Times (opens in a new tab) was particularly scathing, writing that "...the temperature is terribly mild, as if a Tennessee Williams play has been sent to Nicholas Sparks for rewrite." Oh.
Jocelyn Noveck of the Associated Press was equally damning, writing that "all the hoopla and flair surrounding a story that has sold more than 12 million copies can't completely mask a sometimes campy, often uncomfortable story, often even though most of the lines are spoken by Daisy." Edgar-Jones," while Lovia Gyarkye of The Hollywood Reporter called the film "...the kind of dull moral fantasy that feeds America's misguided idealism." Not ideal for a marketing campaign, right?
However, there were some good reviews amongst the heap of bad. Emily Zemler of Observer.com called the film "a strong and satisfying adaptation", adding that "...there will surely be viewers who find it banal or melodramatic", and Owen Gleiberman of Variety wrote that Where The Crawdads Sing is." ..a film about fighting male intransigence that has the guts of its helpless spirit."
Analysis: Will these criticisms silence the locusts?
They're certainly not ideal, as Sony tries to convince would-be overheated, busy moviegoers to avoid the sun and go to the movies.
If the movie had gone straight to a streaming service, a big splashy campaign and a rising star in Daisy Edgar-Jones might well have been enough for a lot of people to give it a shot. But dramas like this tend to live or die by the hype that surrounds them.
Perhaps enough of the 12 million people who bought Delia Owens' book will be curious enough to go see it? Probably not, but it should have another life when it comes to Netflix later this year.
Where the Crawdads Sing isn't the only lavish drama to be panned by critics. Find out exactly what critics had to say about the Netflix version of Jane Austen's Persuasion in our review roundup.