In general, I tend to go to the multiplex far more often than I will watch a new movie on streaming services. Don’t ask me why. I have no idea. Every so often, I pick out a streaming movie, and every so often, it’s even good. Why go with Nightbitch? Well, the plot description from the Hulu blurb was intriguing by itself. That title is something of an eye-catcher. And I consider Amy Adams my favorite working actress. Why wouldn’t I give this one a go?
Let me just say, it’s an odd movie no matter how you slice it.
Based on a novel of the same name, Nightbitch is the story of a nameless Mother (Adams) who is feeling extreme stress and exasperation. Her equally unnamed toddler son (Arleigh and Emmett Snowden) is the sort of kid who, asked his name at a library event, shouts out the F-bomb instead. The Mother had, in the past, quit her job as an artist to raise her son as a stay-at-home mom, but she’s somewhat regretting that decision. She does love her son, but she likewise doesn’t really know what she’s doing here. Her likewise nameless husband (Scoot McNairy) means well, but he goes away on routine business trips for days at a time, and even when he is home, he’s seemingly incapable to doing routine child care tasks on his own. Every so often, the Mother will seem to respond to someone saying something to her in an honest way only for the movie to reveal this is more like a daydream as, in reality, she gives the more cliched and expected answer.
But then something odd happens: the Mother starts transforming into a dog. It’s small things at first: extra facial hair and maybe her teeth are sharper. She sprouts what seems to be a tail at the base of her spine and some extra nipples on her torso. But the funny thing is being a dog seems to be somewhat liberating. Sure, it isn’t going to go well for the family cat, but it may give the Mother the confidence she needs to be the sort of person she wants to be. Plus, she’s apparently the neighborhood alpha because the other dogs in the area keep bringing her presents. What is going on? And can the Mother find a good balance between motherhood and personal fulfillment?
To get the obvious out the way, Adams is great in this. It looks like she put some weight on and wore minimal make-up for the movie. It’s a bit easy to forget she turned 50 this year, hardly the age of most new mothers, but she manages to pull off the role with all the necessary stress and exhaustion of a new mother trying to figure life out. You can feel her anger over her clueless husband’s actions though she never quite hates or resents him that much. Likewise, her son is a source of stress and occasionally embarrassment, but she still cares for the boy. And sure, she may doubt that she should make friends with other mothers simply because they are other mothers, but she ends up making friends with them anyway while her doggie side isn’t always completely beneficial.
But beyond that, the movie didn’t really seem all that clever. There’s nothing I would point to and say it’s bad or weak or anything, but I just felt like the story was something I had seen before, and the only thing really elevating it was Adams’s performance as the Mother. Heck, in many ways, this is another version of the Charlize Theron movie Tully, only this time, the mother is turning into a dog instead of imagining a nanny who only shows up at night. I really like Adams here, but she’s about the only thing here that I think is particularly good in an otherwise average movie.
Grade: C+
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