Last night my nephew and I went to the Broadway for Death of a Unicorn, a movie we were both looking forward to, and we had a blast watching it. Lawyer Elliot Kitner (Paul Rudd) and his estranged daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) travel through a wildlife preserve to spend the weekend at the home of Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant), a wealthy pharmaceutical executive who is dying of cancer, his wife Belinda (Tea Leoni), and his son Shepherd (Will Poulter). Elliot wants the visit to go well because Odell is a potential client but Ridley is not very enthusiastic and is further traumatized when he hits and kills a unicorn. They eventually confess what they have done to the Leopolds and, because contact with the unicorn has cured Ridley's acne and Elliot's allergies, Odell believes it will cure his cancer and has his scientists experiment on it. Ridley begins researching the mythology surrounding unicorns and warns against this but, when the dust from the unicorn's horn cures Odell, he, his family, and even Elliot want to sell it to the highest bidders which angers the other unicorns in the area. This is obviously a satire criticizing the evils of big pharma and corporate greed but, while it is really funny (Poulter and Anthony Carrigan, who plays the silent and put-upon butler Griff, steal the show with their hilarious performances), I especially enjoyed the interactions of Rudd and Ortega as a father and daughter who discover what is really important in life. The unicorn sequences in the third act are absolutely wild (I was rooting for the unicorns as they hunt all of these despicable people) even if the visual effects are sometimes a bit sloppy. This has a lot of really bonkers tonal shifts but they all somehow work and it is so much fun. I recommend seeing it with a large late night crowd.
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