'The Drama' a good film for the grownups

If you have young children, you should take them to see "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie." It's the biggest box office success of the year. But if your kids are older, or you just want to see a movie for grownups, "The Drama" is a good alternative. The film is available now only in theaters. One bright and crisp morning Charlie (Robert Pattinson) walks into a coffee shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Before he even makes it in the door, he notices a beautiful woman sitting in the window reading a book. Charlie is immediately entranced. When Emma (Zendaya) gets up to retrieve her coffee order Charlie takes a quick peek at the book she left face down on the table. He hasn't read the book, but pretends like he has, uses it to break the ice with Emma, an in to ask her out on a date. It works. The two begin a storybook love affair. The couple are imminently compatible and quickly become inseparable. Two years later they are living together and are about to get married. They are so simpatico that they even want to use the same stories of their life together in their wedding speeches. Then comes one fateful night that changes everything. They are out with their married friends Rachel (Alana Haim) and Mike (Mamoudou Athie). The couples are taste testing a meal for the wedding, including more than a few glasses of wine. The conversation leads them into an unusual situation where they agree to reveal the worst thing they have ever done, and they will keep it secret from everyone else. They were expecting interesting answers, not horrible revelations. Mike, Rachel, and Charlie go first. They each did some pretty bad things, especially Rachel. But the revelation from Emma tops them all. It is disturbing, a secret so bad that Mike, Rachel and even Charlie start to question if they really know Emma. Charlie questions whether he even wants to marry her after knowing what she did. "The Drama" is aptly named. The first half of the movie is all about the great relationship between Charlie and Emma, how they are made for each other meant to be together. The rest of the movie is filled with tense and uncomfortable drama. Can Charlie accept what Emma did and still marry her? Can he ever stop thinking about it? Will Rachel force herself to attend wedding as the maid of honor? The plot of the film, such as it is, is a strange one. Not in the way that weird things happen, more like the story is unique and untold. Maybe unusual is a better way to describe the plot. It's not even a plot really; instead it's all about how Charlie can live with this one revelation by Emma, a revelation that leads to mayhem. The only minor quibble with the story is that it causes so much discussion and hand-wringing angst that toward the end pace of the movie and the action, such as it was, got a little tedious and tiresome. Even a bit boring. Then the ending revved the story up again and redeemed those few moments where I was fidgeting in my seat. The third act was easily the best part of the film, which is unusual these days. How did the actors do? Zendaya not only performed well, but she was a great choice for the role. She's so sweet and innocent that it's hard to imagine her character as the villain, the one who did the most despicable thing in her past. Robert Pattinson (does he ever comb his hair?) is a bit of an anomaly. Sometimes he is fantastic, sometimes terrible. He was somewhere in the middle in this movie, mainly due to overacting at a few crucial moments. It was to the point that I lost sympathy for him. If the intention was to despise the character Rachel even more than Emma, then Alana Haim did a great job. Have I seen better movies this year? Yes. But I have also seen many more movies that were much worse. It was worth the money and time to watch a movie for adults with an original story.\ Grade: B+Rated R for sexual content, some violent/bloody images, language throughout and brief drug use.•••Bradley Griffith is local attorney and longtime film buff. Watch the film's trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zmKcUa4Xxk