'Not Okay' is not not okay
Hulu
Combine “Ingrid Goes West,” “15 Minutes of Shame,” “The Fallout” and, I guess, “Shattered Glass” and you get “Not Okay,” a very-OK attempt to reckon with society in the internet age, or the internet at a time when society only exists in person to an extent. Or something.
Zoey Deutch (who I still find most effective in small doses, like “Everybody Wants Some!!”) stars as Danni, who fits the general idea of a privileged white girl who is vaguely lonely and desperate to be seen but lacks the detail that would ground her as a real person. She’s so desperate, in fact, that she posts fake Instagram images of her in Paris to try to appeal to an influencer in her office (Dylan O’Brien) who seems to be unironically attempting to be a Channing Tatum self-parody. If you think that sounds low, it’s nothing compared to Danni deciding, after a group of deadly bombings take place in Paris while she’s supposedly there, to maintain her dishonesty even after she becomes an unlikely celebrity as an American survivor of the attacks.
While the way this unfolds usually falls on the wrong side of contrived—and writer/director Quinn Shephard is almost always wrong in attempting to make “Not Okay” a satire; its lunges at comedy are weak and sad—a rough opening gives way to a movie worth wrestling with. In Rowan (the excellent Mia Isaac of “Don’t Make Me Go”), Danni finds not just a close friend but an ally as a representative for activism in the face of personal tragedy (Rowan survived a school shooting), never mind one of them being an impassioned, traumatized generational voice and the other being a total fraud. Meanwhile, Shepard grapples with not just the danger of vaulting someone to a position of influence too quickly but the notion of narcissism as a coping mechanism, with fear driving people either toward making a difference or retreating into the self as a grasp for safety.
The already-tired trend of dividing the movie into chapters doesn’t work. A lot doesn’t work, actually. But I find myself defending “Not Okay” for its effort to confront being young and uncertain in a country that is rickety, to put it very mildly. “Spontaneous” and “The Fallout” are both far more successful in approaching this discomfort. But you can feel “Not Okay” trying to figure out how to handle all of its thoughts and feelings, like the rest of us.
B-
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