circleWhile the film itself may fade quickly, it will take a while for people to tire of repeating the phrase “Amy Adams is a night bitch.” The six-time Oscar nominee, coming off a recent losing streak in obscure try-hard flops like Hillbilly Elegy and Dear Evan Hansen, plays a goofy, slightly cruel character in a movie with one of the most ridiculous and attention-grabbing titles of a traditionally self-conscious Oscar season. If only it had been as bold and playful as the title and logline about a frustrated suburban mom who transforms into a dog. But the movie is barky and inoffensive, which is a shame for the actress and, for now, for the writer-director who has been so reliably vindictive.
Marielle Heller has yet to make a major flop with three very first-time smash hits: Diary of a Teenage Girl, Forgive Me, and Have a Nice Day. But she can't figure out how to turn Rachel Yoder's scathing, absurdist novel into a worthwhile film. The movie is more self-indulgent pointing and nodding than cleverness or cruelty, and while its targets are valid and understandable (motherhood is hellish, husbands are uncaring, society at large is misogynistic), its overly didactic approach is repetitive and ineffective.
Adams is having a better time than usual, at least. Playing the role of a former artist who has given up her job to care for her son, she has moved from the city to the suburbs, swapping her exhibition at MoMA for a job frying frozen hash browns for breakfast. She loves her son deeply but also resents the role she now plays, suffering a loss of identity, agency and self-consciousness and failing to bond with the mothers around her. She also finds herself increasingly at the mercy of anger. Like many women, she has learned to carefully manage and suppress it, but with every thoughtless remark made by her husband (Scoot McNairy) and every thankless task thrust upon her, something begins to shift.
Her transformation from mother to dog doesn't quite amount to the gruesome body horror of the novel, and it's that castration that the film struggles with: a gonzo concept that remains a bit tame in execution. Filmmakers have long used the horror genre to comment on the violence of childbirth or the foreignness of parenting, but the commentary here feels too superficial and sitcom-like, with Heller overusing a daydream format in which Adams imagines her reactions rather than actually experiencing them. From the knowing laughs at the film's Toronto premiere, it's clear that audiences empathized with many of these rough moments — her husband doesn't get it, the other mothers understand more than she'd like — but there's a difference between highlighting something that happens often and making a pointed comment about it.
This isn't necessarily the right role for Adams; more extreme dog-like behavior would be a struggle for most. But it's a change, and after living the cheesy life of an Oscar contender, it's worth it. It's not as weird as it should or could be, but it's still a lot weirder than most of this awards season (the film was originally going to be released directly on Hulu with a Best Actress campaign in mind, but was moved to a theatrical release). Adams is most comfortable in this mode since her best performance in 2018's wonderfully creepy miniseries version of Sharp Objects. She feels like an actor who could benefit from holding her eccentricities a little higher, and hopefully this will finally give her the courage to do so more.
But she's trapped in a film that feels like a stale, monotonous sketch, its satire of big cities, modern art and the base nature of suburbia having been around for a lot longer than movies want to admit. And the central dog concept grows tired quickly, relegated instead to a sentimental paean to the magic of motherhood. Maybe there was room for both, but in the end, light takes up more space than darkness, and Night Bitch is, after all, Night Bitchit needed a more salacious, nocturnal edge. Damn you, Night Bitch.
