Despite starring Toni Collette and featuring a conniving family with designs on a relative's will, the black comedy 'The Estate' is no 'Knives Out.'
One would think that Collette’s character, Macey, with whom’s perspective we are aligned throughout, would be the hero of this film, but it’s a challenge to identify with her passive-aggressive people-pleasing, her character defined only through her relationship to men .
Craig has crammed the only character exposition and motivation into a truly appalling animated opening-credits sequence set to a jazzy blues tune. We see the animated stick-figure avatars of Macey and her sister, Savanna , working in a cafe left to them by their late father, and a foreclosure notice from the bank.
When they find their cousin Beatrice and her husband, James , already ensconced in Hilda’s New Orleans mansion, with another cousin, the lecherous Richard , pulling up outside in his Porsche, it’s war. Scatological mishaps and sex crimes ensue as the cousins fight to be Hilda’s favorite. It turns out that Beatrice and James want the money for their struggling restaurant , and Richard, who prefers Dick, just wants a new Porsche. Though Richard has a strange cousin fetish for Macey, his forthright manner and Duchovny’s relaxed delivery make him the only funny character in the film, and quite possibly the only cousin worth rooting for.
Watching “The Estate” feels like being gaslit as we attempt to understand the purpose of anyone’s actions, or find any humor in these morbidly bleak antics, when there is simply nothing there. It’s not funny, it’s not satirical, and it’s not worth your time, or Toni Collette’s. Hopefully it was a nice trip to New Orleans.
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