Your Monster (2024)
My pick for your Valentine's Day date night movie
Romantic comedies are allegedly “having a comeback” but very few capture what I love about the genre: often too self conscious about their cheesiness with characters too self aware to fall in love in the most ridiculous way possible.
To indulge in a cliche, what I want in a romcom is to have my heart ache. I want the leads to have actual chemistry, beyond just being hot (why are these particular hot people into each other? Subpar romcoms do not answer this). I want to be yelling at the screen for the leads to stop being stupid and kiss already. In this sense, Your Monster (2024) succeeds in being one of the best romantic comedies I’ve seen in a while.
You shouldn’t go into this thinking it’s a stereotypical entry in the genre. It’s about struggling actress Laura Franco (Melissa Barrera) falling in love with the monster in her closet. Think 27 Dresses meets The Shape of Water. Laura starts the story as a bit of a doormat. She has a decent excuse: her boyfriend leaves her while she’s undergoing cancer treatment, and she’s forced to move back into her childhood home. It’s through her relationship with Monster (Tommy Dewey) that she learns to stand up for herself. It works both as a love story and a neat little metaphor about embracing your inner rage.
Also surprise! It’s a bit of a musical. Laura is forced to be in the ensemble of the play she wrote with her ex-boyfriend, when she had been promised the lead role. A conceit like this requires the music to be good and the two numbers that appear in the story feel believable as songs that might appear in an upcoming broadway show. It’s remarkable that first time writer and director Caroline Lindy decided to commit to this aspect and is able to pull it off.
Lindy includes a lot of nice tactile details in this story. She and cinematographer Will Stone are able to capture the historic details of Laura’s brownstone without ogling at it like an Architectural Digest home tour. Laura’s wardrobe of knit sweaters and corduroy overalls feel like tangible expressions of her too soft nature. There’s a great recurring visual joke at her front door, every time Laura opens it the house number simply reads “no” under her.
It makes me eager to see what Lindy can do with more experience and maybe a bit more budget. The only disappointment I felt with Your Monster was in the ways that it felt a little too small. Monster’s prosthetics look great, but I wish he looked less like a Buffy villain of the week and a little more full Shape of Water fishman. The ending also felt a little sudden, like the story was reluctant to answer the questions it has posed. I don’t need every little thing spelled out for me, but there is a slight unfinished quality that keeps the conclusion from feeling like full catharsis.
Despite these limitations, Your Monster still gave me that romantic comedy feeling I crave: getting swept up in Laura and Monster’s relationship, like an excited third wheel just hoping I get to watch them get together. It’s about embracing big emotions – falling in love, wallowing in sadness, and letting your anger out of the closet a little – as the characters do it, you get to indulge in it too.
If you want you can also read my off the cuff Letterboxd review here.
Each month I will try to highlight an organization that’s important to me, in a small attempt to help out In These Trying Times. While financial donations are great, there’s also other ways to get involved in community building work — volunteering, building relationships with neighbors, offering up skills and services you might have.
This month I’m shouting out Transgender Law Center.