Girl, Break Up with Him: ‘Malcolm & Marie’ Review

Malcolm & Marie is a really good short that keeps going for another hour and twenty minutes. The artistic endeavor, the result of Covid-era boredom and big Hollywood money, is indulgent and claustrophobic. The first and last twenty minutes do hit as Zendaya gives us the best that she’s got. But is it worth the wait? The specter of the disease that’s shut down most of the world and keeps us apart looms, a ghost haunting the edges of our vision as we settle in for an extended domestic dispute laid out in black and white on 35mm film. It felt like hearing a listener letter on The Read and being a kid listening to my parents fighting throughout the house all night. If that sounds like a good time to you—and I say this with 0 judgment…mostly—then this is the nearly two-hour watch for you. “Girl, Break up with Him”

“Break up with him.” I wanted to say after that first twenty minutes of fighting. Then they made up and fought again for the next hour-plus of the film’s run-time. Is Malcolm & Marie bad? No. Is it good? Sometimes. Is it too long? Absolutely. It’s a passion project on a big budget and distributed by a major streaming service. It’s you plus your mans and nem getting together to make a movie except all of y’all are celebrities with beaucoup bucks. And, instead of slanging the Venmo link to your project, Netflix is shooting it to its 182 million subscribers.  

MALCOLM & MARIE (L-R): ZENDAYA as MARIE, JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON as MALCOLM. DOMINIC MILLER/NETFLIX…