Brie Larson’s directorial debut, Unicorn Store, has been completed for a while, having had its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival back in 2017, but it has long struggled to find a distributor until Netflix picked it up earlier this year. And now, the very week Captain Marvel crossed the billion dollar mark, the film has finally been released. Written by Samantha McIntyre, it follows Kit (Brie Larson), a failed art student forced to move back with her parents, Gene (Bradley Whitford) and Gladys (Joan Cusack). In her attempt to let go of her childhood fantasies and dreams, she takes up a temp office job, but soon receives a mysterious letter that invites her to a place called “The Store,” owned by an equally mysterious Salesman (Samuel L. Jackson), who offers to sell her a unicorn, provided she can prove herself worthy of it.
It’s a strange premise for sure, but it’s held together through a solid grasp in tone and mood, with Larson’s efforts behind the camera evoking the sort of dream-like atmosphere and whimsy of a Michel Gondry picture. However, what the film reminded me the most of was that surge of late 90s “death to the dead end office job” movies that were everywhere at the time, think Office Space, American Beauty, Fight Club, even The Matrix. Obviously, the story here doesn’t go into any direction that resembles The Matrix, but the threads that these kinds of movies often shared, the fear of being stuck, without much of an identity, in a world made up of cubicles, working for chump change while the higher ups reap most of the rewards. What Unicorn Store does is offer a different angle on that thread, naturally tapping into a distinct millennial angst informed by failure and disappointment crashing against their idealism. Make of that what you will.
The whimsy and optimism of the whole thing might test the patience for some people, no doubt, but I was engaged from beginning to end. Part of was mostly because the film is very funny. There’s a good combo of deadpan and awkward humor with a bunch of killer one-liners. The cast is more than talented enough to make those moments pack a punch. Hamish Linklater is especially funny as Gary, the VP of the company that Kit works as a temp for. Whitford and Cusack are also a joy, and Larson has a great back-and-forth with her encounters with Jackson (whose role does flirt with the whole magical negro trope, but he’s so good it’s easy to look past it), as well as Mamoudou Athie’s Virgil, a soft-spoken hardware store employee who ends up helping her construct a stable for the unicorn.
The filmmakers were also unafraid to lean on the femininity in the story, both in terms of aesthetics and thematically. It brings a new spin on the old formula of stories about men who are stuck in arrested development (even if the perspective is still from a white person from a financially stable family). But there are still many things that I was able to connect with, and might do so for others. The idea that you might be a disappointment to your parents, being compared to other more successful peers, struggling to let go of your childhood in the face of dealing with maturity, embracing your creative side no matter what others might think, these are all things that can be considered universal, and they ground the quirkiness into something that is able to resonate.
I ended up quite liking Unicorn Store. For most of it, I found it funny, amusing, warm, charming, kind, and achingly sincere, and before I could even realize it, a scene in the end left me in tears. It’s the kind of film that really sneaks up on you, lulling you in with its light qualities and its humor before fully unraveling and revealing an intimate truth about self and art and the desire to stay true to who you are. I was genuinely taken aback by how hard it ended up hitting me, and it made me appreciate everything else about the film that much more. It’s not a perfect film, by any stretch, there are certain characters I wish we got to see more of, some moments that don’t totally work, some threads that could’ve been more elegantly handled, but it ends on such a powerfully cathartic note that the flaws don’t stand out as hard as they would have under less gentle hands. It’s twee tendencies might end up being too much for some, but for some audience members, it might prove to be something of real value. If anything, it made me curious to see more of what Brie Larson is capable of as a director.