Glitz and glamour only get you so far, and in my experience, most rational people can only take so much before the overindulgence makes them feel sick. That’s House of Gucci, the showy and silly crime drama from director Ridley Scott inspired by the true story of the Gucci design family in the 1980s and 90s.
The movie delivers on the promised fashionable glamour and glamorous fashion that makes the Gucci family story interesting to watch. And even though it’s an enjoyable movie, what’s missing is the element of escapism and fun.
An inescapably serious tone throughout the movie that makes it hard to relax watching it. When the cast is behaving in a campy, over stylized manner in such a serious movie, it’s hard to decide if what we’re seeing is credible or supposed to be a parody. In the end, it’s neither.
The real-life story that inspires the film is that of Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga) and Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), following their marriage as it goes from romance to their fight to lead the world famous Gucci fashion label and business.
Lady Gaga has been heavily promoted as the film’s star (and rightly so), though it’s not the same star vehicle like her stronger performance of A Star is Born was in 2018. She’s the main character, yes, but few of the movie’s best moments are hers.
How does the rest of the star-studded cast approach the task of portraying these both real life and larger than life people? The work varies greatly from the excellent to the ridiculous.
On a sliding scale of the six principal characters, Al Pacino’s Aldo Gucci is by far the best, coming closest to performing a believable caricature. Gaga lands somewhere in the middle. She makes each of Patrizia’s goals and tactics clear, but it’s sometimes overplayed.
At the bottom is Jared Leto, playing the preposterously wacky cousin Paolo. He has the hardest job playing an untalented fashion designer who is both a comic relief and antagonist. He’s the most memorable of the cast, but his unfunny lines are badly written and delivered with an elitism that grows weary fast.
House of Gucci’s biggest problem is its run time. At nearly three hours, the editing is too generous showing the intricate web of the Gucci family instead of focusing more deeply on Patrizia and Maurizio’s relationship. That’s made even more clear when Maurizio changes his feelings for Patrizia so quickly at the end of the second act.
This is the fifth movie in the last two months with a run time longer than two and a half hours, and having so many movies run this long unnecessarily is getting annoying for regular movie goers.
In my opinion, only one of those five of them has justified the length, and strangely, it’s Scott’s The Last Duel, his far superior movie from last month (which also co-stars Adam Driver.) In this film, Driver’s Maurizio at one point explains the cursed temptation of his family’s wealth: “Once you have a taste, you want a a bigger slice, and soon you want all of it.”
Most audiences, like myself, will have had enough fun after the first hour and find the rest to be a slow-paced, overlong slog to the climactic finale. The cast and production design are mostly fun, but there’s just too much of it.
House of Gucci
6 out of 10
14A, 2hrs 38mins. Crime Biography Drama.
Directed by Ridley Scott.
Starring Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Al Pacino, Jared Leto, Salma Hayek and Jeremy Irons.
Now Playing at Film.Ca Cinemas, Cineplex Winston Churchill and Cineplex Oakville & VIP.
