Verity

Pop Culture Happy Hour

The hosts review the film adaptation of Colleen Hoover's erotic thriller Verity, starring Dakota Johnson as a ghostwriter who uncovers dark secrets about a

Key takeaways

• Dakota Johnson's deadpan performance is compared to Aubrey Plaza but criticized for lacking emotional range, with Aisha Harris calling her the 'Dua Lipa of millennial leading ladies.'
• Anne Hathaway delivers a standout voiceover performance as the catatonic Verity Crawford, showcasing remarkable vocal acting despite being largely off-screen.

Main topics

• Film adaptation challenges
• Dakota Johnson's acting style

Notable quotes

"I look at her as the Dua Lipa of millennial leading ladies. She gives us next to nothing."

Conclusion

The episode offers a nuanced critique of how popular romance-thrillers translate to

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) In a war zone, reporting is a deadly gamble where you have to balance risk and reward. For one Fox News reporter, that calculation ended in tragedy. The one person would have been injured. listened to the advisory. Who's responsible for setting limits on reporting in a war zone when lives are on the line? Listen now to the Sunday story from the Up First podcast on the NPR app. Public Speaker 3 (0:24) media is a rare space built entirely around curiosity, community, and great storytelling. To keep this vital resource thriving for everyone, join NPR+. You'll protect independent journalism and enjoy perks like bonus episodes and more. Keep public media going today at plus.npr.org. The Headboard. Of the bed. Oh, this is hard to watch. The headboard is key. It is a moment that I think you can get away with on the page. But when you put it literally on camera, it becomes incredibly silly. Speaker 3 (1:00) The best-selling novel Verity is an erotic thriller about marriage, manipulators, and of course, murder. And Speaker 4 (1:07) now it's a new movie. Verity is led by Dakota Johnson and Anne Hathaway, and it's a story of deceit that wants you to keep guessing until the very end. And maybe even after that. I'm Aisha Harris. Speaker 3 (1:20) And I'm Linda Holmes. And joining us today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour is Jordan Cruciola. She's the editor of the action movie newsletter, The Action Desk. Hey, Jordan, welcome back. Speaker 5 (1:30) Hello. Thank you for having me. And I dare say I am a perfect third chair for today's conversation. Speaker 3 (1:38) Very nice. Very nice. All right. Verity is based on the novel by Colleen Hoover, who you might know from either her many, many bestsellers or her previous film and TV adaptations. They include, of course, the not at all controversial It Ends With Us. Here, the story concerns Loewen Ashley, played by Dakota Johnson, a struggling novelist who gets the unusual assignment of ghostwriting the final books in a series by a superstar writer. writer named Verity Crawford is played by Anne Hathaway. Verity has suffered serious injuries in a car accident that make it impossible for her to finish the books herself and even to communicate with anyone, although her near catatonic state is being kept quiet. Josh Hartnett plays Verity's husband, Jeremy. He's caring for her and their young son in their creepy mountain home. He brings Lo in there so she can read all of Verity's notes and drafts and outlines. But as Loewen starts going through Verity's stuff, she finds an unusual manuscript that seems to be more of a journal than a novel. And as we see parts of Verity's life in flashbacks, Loewen starts to wonder exactly what she doesn't know about these people. The film is directed by Michael Showalter, whose diverse resume includes everything from Wet Hot American Summer to the Hathaway-starring romance The Idea of You. The film is from Amazon MGM Studios, so we should note Amazon supports NPR and pays to distribute some of our content. Verity is in theaters now. Jordan Cruciola, I'm going to start with you. How did you like Verity? I Speaker 5 (3:17) am a big fan of Verity. And the way Verity kicks off within five minutes of the movie, as is referenced in the conversation just before we started recording, perhaps the most grotesque meet cute of all time between Lo and Ashley and Jeremy, Josh Hartnett and Dakota Johnson. Really, that's a tone setting moment. And then we are just off to the races from there. And I was flying. I was flying this whole time, guys. I'm all in for Verity. Speaker 3 (3:48) Now, see, this is the interesting thing, because I know Jordan well enough to know that Jordan likes a big movie. Jordan likes a movie that swings real, real hard and goes real, real big. Please refer back to Jordan and my conversation about The Front Room. Speaker 5 (4:03) I'm going to call it one of the great pop culture happy hour episodes of all time, is what I'm going to call that. Speaker 3 (4:06) Which we both treasure to this day, starring Brandy. Just find The Front Room, find the episode. Find The Front Room. Jordan likes a big... movie. I think I actually wanted this movie to be bigger. And Speaker 5 (4:19) I think that's a great instinct. Yeah. I could have gone for bigger. I could have gone for crazier. Speaker 4 (4:23) Yeah. How about you, Aisha? What did you think? Well, before every Dakota Johnson movie I see now, I think to myself, is she going to act in this one? Maybe? Speaker 5 (4:35) I love her. I love her, Your Honor. Speaker 4 (4:38) And the answer has consistently been shrug. Maybe. Maybe not. I look at her as the Dua Lipa of millennial leading ladies. She gives us next to nothing. And this movie even references the fact that she gives us next to nothing multiple times. At one point, Jeremy says to Loewen, I don't know if you're calm or in shock after that very grotesque meet cute. Sure. Yeah. Like that can happen. That's a normal reaction to having someone get plastered by a car on a bike and blood is all over you in the first few minutes of this movie. That's normal. But then later on. He comments again and she says, I have resting bored face. And I'm like, yes, you do. For a movie character, that's a little bit of a problem. That is a problem. And so like this movie is so sleepy for the first, I don't know, 20 minutes of this movie before Anne Hathaway's character really kicks in and like brings some life into this story. This movie should be bigger. It should be campier. It should be. way more in the realm of something like The Housemaid. Yes. And I'm not saying Sidney Sweeney is that much better of an actress, but like, I think at least Sidney Sweeney kind of knew what kind of movie she was in. I think she's weirder. I think she goes bigger. Yeah, she Speaker 5 (5:49) loves big. She's good at big. She doesn't have holdback in her in a genre movie. Speaker 4 (5:52) Correct. And look, this is a kind of different character. Loen is a little different character, but like, I kept thinking to myself, like, who does disaffected deadpan? way more effectively than Dakota Johnson. And I kept coming back to Aubrey Plaza. Aubrey Plaza should have been in this movie. It would have been a little bit more interesting. I think she would have leaned more into Showalter's brand of camp. There's also issues with the script and the pacing. I don't think it's all in Dakota Johnson, but she's not helping. And so I found this movie to be frustratingly just not. fun enough. I can go past all the kind of ludicrous machinations and the silliness. Like, I actually wanted that and I wanted more of that. And this movie was not doing that. I have not read the book, so I don't know how closely it hews to the book. Speaker 3 (6:41) As I understand it,