House of Gucci is a movie I went to reluctantly… and, indeed, bailed on going to for three or four days until boredom drove me to the theater (it happens). I don’t have a fashion sense and, indeed, it may have had it surgically removed from me as a baby. I know nothing of Gucci or its history other than it’s upscale and social media influencers these days run around calling things Gucci that, odds are, are not Gucci.

So… not the target market?

But I was surprised that I was kind of enjoying the movie even though it never felt particularly alive. I had that feeling throughout… I was never bored, but I was kind of emotionally removed because I found this flick insanely passionless. Even in the rare instances when Al Pacino does his Al Pacino thing, the tone, mood, and pacing of the movie around him remained inert.

What this movie needed, I was thinking at many point while watching it, is more camp. Or more sleaze or more melodrama or more… life. I mean, it’s the story of stabbing and backstabbing at a fashion company starring Lady Gaga… overwrought camp was created for this singular opportunity. And yet the movie just feels so inert, so flacid, so lifeless even in instances where it calls for exaggerated drama.

Now, to be fair to the movie, if I realized at the time that it was Jared Leto buried under all that makeup and exaggerated Italiano accento, maybe I’d have seen at least some camp. I was surprised to find out only after that Leto was playing a giant Italian meat-a-balla.

But that doesn’t explain the other actors, especially walking plank of wood Adam Driver (a guy I normally like). Not sure if he was miscast or if he was meant to be a bland nothingburger of a person. I think maybe that was the point? The guy who ultimately takes over the brand is not a fashion guy or even particularly interested in fashion (or interesting in general). Which… ok… fair enough.

Lady Gaga was fine though even then I felt she needed more energy, more vim, more vigor. Probably only the last twenty minutes did we get that from her. And Salma Hayek.

So… yeah… this somehow both did and didn’t work for me. I was engaged in the film at least. It’s kind of fascinated that I was never exactly bored by the flick and yet I spent the whole movie thinking of all the missed opportunities. Weird.

Score: 78