Review of Mainstream (2021) by Chromate — 02 Jan 2022

When watching the trailer, this movie seems like another "call out" to the culture of mainstream media, a subject that while interesting, has clearly been done before (and is pretty touchy for most audience members).

It's true; this story might not have a unique purpose, but it still stands out from the rest. It felt like a mixing of nostalgia and modern concepts that were incorporated delicately for an appealing feel.

This direction helped refrain from feeling like the movie was trying to drown the audience by keeping overwhelming moments brief, but at the same time still being able to draw emotion from all around good performances.

These performances from the actors really helped keep these characters alive, and in short amount of time character relationships were able to feel natural and simultaneously confusing. This confusing factor is what kept the film from becoming another tiresome critique on our generation's fixation on social media and the internet.

It kept you asking questions, which kept evolving the characters, relationships, overall messages and themes. The ability to get the audience to ask themselves the questions is incredibly important is because it makes the audience understand more (and feel better about themselves) as it allows them to do the deep thinking, instead of handing them everything on a silver platter.

It doesn't automatically give you a target. You don't know who the "bad guy" is, or what he represents (even at the very end!) It's incredibly captivating, and I'm glad that Coppola was able to convey this.

Additionally, the cameos of real influencers were not as obnoxious as I anticipated them to be since around a good half of them felt natural enough. I wouldn't call this a fantastic movie, since this theme is overdone and "Mainstream" brings nothing new to the table, but I appreciate the route that directors and writers took for what they wanted to do.

It's a piece of art, and I can see all the little pieces of passion poured into it from its team. It definitely doesn't deserve such a low score.