Emily the Criminal

I will forever be a champion for Aubrey Plaza's acting chops based on her performance in 'Black Bear.' If you've not seen it, rectify that ASAP. Here, Plaza does a good job with the material, and mostly conveys the fear she has exploring these new "business opportunities" which are both illegal and dangerous at times. The main problem is, while executed rather decently, the idea here is really not all that original and the kind of tone they're going for has also been done before, and most importantly, done much better in films like 'Uncut Gems' or 'Good Time' (same writer and directors on those, I should add), the latter of which I also highly recommend. If you're looking for something in that vein, you may enjoy this, but overall i just found it rather predictable and flat, and Plaza just wasn't enough to get this over the finish line. 'Emily the Criminal' is one of the areas President Obama and I are going to need to agree to disagree on after he included this in his top films of the year list for 2022, so maybe take his word over mine if you had your eyes on this one?