Brie Larson already had some credits to her name when she landed her first lead role in the feature film Short term 12 in 2013. Starring as a supervisor for troubled teens in a group home, Larson received dozens of award nominations from critics associations and established herself as an actress to watch. She proved that attention wasn’t wrong with the heartbreaking 2015 drama Room in which she played a woman who was held captive in a single room for several years before escaping with her young son. Room was released to a wide audience and received critical acclaim, winning more than half of the 131 awards for which it was nominated. Larson was highly acclaimed for her powerful and nuanced performance, and she earned her first-ever Best Actress Oscar win at just 26 years old.
In the years since Larson gained the most sought-after recognition in the industry, she has proven just how versatile she is as an actress. Unlike her previous appearances in emotional small-scale projects, she was next cast in the coveted role of Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers in the MCU’s massive 2019 superhero blockbusters. Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame. Although Larson received a deluge of internet reactions from trolls that left her wondering how long she’ll stay on Captain Marvel, the film received critical acclaim and was a huge box-office success, becoming the first female-led superhero film to hit a billion dollars. . Despite the hate she has received, Larson will return to the franchise in the 2023 film the miraclesand is suspected to appear in Avengers: Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars in 2025. She also plays in Fast Xthe upcoming Fast & Furious episode.
Outside of her prolific career as an actress, Brie Larson has also tried her hand behind the camera. In an interview with IndieWireLarson described her childhood while writing and filming movies in her garage. She said, “I’ve just been making movies all my life…I think this has been part of my way of expressing myself for a long time.” While waiting for the right feature film, Larson grabbed her hand at directing two short films –The arm in 2012 and Weighting in 2013 – both of which were well received. It wasn’t until 2017 that she released her directorial debut with the whimsical fantasy comedy Unicorn Shopwhere she played.
The Story of Unicorn Store
In an interesting twist of fate, Brie Larson auditioned to star in the movie Unicorn Shop several years before its final release, but didn’t get the part. At one point, Rebel Wilson was attached to the project led by Miguel Arteta, although it never came to fruition. Larson then jumped at the chance when she was approached to direct. “It really got me excited because the script resonated with me,” she said Varietygoes on to describe the work she put into the project while filming the MonsterVerse movie Kong: Skull Island. “I would sit on a log in the jungle with a pen in my hand, mapping things out,” she said.
Unicorn Shop is a truly unique movie. It follows a disillusioned young woman who has been kicked out of art school, moved back in with her parents and finds herself in need of a ‘real job’. Kit has a lively personality tinged with naivety; a woman who follows glitter wherever she goes; she’d rather stay in her bubble of childish wonder rather than live the “adult” life her parents — adorable quirky camp counselors played by Joan Cusack and Bradley Whitford — want for her.
Shortly after landing a temporary job at a PR firm, Kit receives an invitation to The Store, where she encounters The Salesman, also known as Samuel L. Jackson in a bright pink suit with tinsel in his hair. He offers Kit the chance to get what she’s always wanted: a real live unicorn. However, before Kit can be rewarded with her own unicorn to love her forever, she must become “the right kind of girl” and is given a series of tasks to complete to prove she’s worth it. In the process, she befriends a hardware store worker turned carpenter Virgil, played by up-and-coming actor Mamoudou Athie. Athie has repeatedly praised Brie Larson’s directing and acting, comparing the Unicorn Store feel to Michel Gondry’s Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. With the most grounded perspective of any of the characters in the film, Virgil helps Kit believe in her true abilities and validates her ethereal outlook on life.
Themes
Brie Larson told The Los Angeles Times regarding Unicorn Shop“I feel like this film is an abstract self-portrait of myself.” Unsurprisingly, then, many of the themes the film tackles are common to young women in general, and especially those pursuing creative career paths. She added: “It’s a metaphorical journey of not just my experience of being an actor and learning to be true to myself in the face of people telling me no or that I was wrong or telling me to change, but the was also my experience directing this film.”
There were several cases in Unicorn Shop where the feeling of being told how to present yourself in order to be accepted or successful was tackled, most notably by the character of Kit’s perverted boss Gary, played by Hamish Linklater. At one point in the film, he tells her, “There’s a superstar somewhere deep, deep, deep inside you. We just have to take off all these layers and leave her out of there.’ And isn’t that exactly what every woman in the entertainment world has been told? Eventually, Kit comes to the realization that she doesn’t have to live by the words of men like Gary and her highly respected hack of an art professor. Realizing this, she tells Virgil, “It’s these guys that I just tiptoe around because I think they know so many things. They do not. I know things.”
Speaking of knowing things, Unicorn Shop also addressed the idea that being too girlish or feminine shouldn’t be seen as a negative trait, which it so often is. Just because a woman likes to wear glitter or draw cartoons doesn’t mean she’s any less intelligent, talented, or capable than a man in a suit. Kit proves this just by her existence as a woman overwhelmingly giddy about building a stable fit for a unicorn in her backyard that can also make a great vacuum cleaner marketing proposition — complete with confetti.
Larson continued her conversation with the LA Times, saying, “There’s a child in me that has no voice, there’s this innocence in me, and this dreamer and this hope and this optimism that lived in me that was dying. All I did was about digging into the darkness and revealing the darker parts of our world that we need to see, but I also think, at least for myself, that I need to remember the other side too, and they work together. so as not to be repelled by innocence or happiness.”
Unfortunately, many critics did not share her point of view, and it became quite clear that girlish innocence and fantastical joy expressed by a grown woman did not appeal to most people as a serious movie subject.
Negative reviews
Although there were some positive reviews about Unicorn Shop and Larson’s prowess as a filmmaker, the reaction to the film can be considered mixed at best. The Independent called it a “joyful celebration of femininity”, Weekly entertainment called it a “candy-covered, intentionally quirky wisp of a movie”, and NPR said the project is “weird and funny, sweet and fearless, and it’s another chance to see a fine young actress at work.” However, most negative reviews for Unicorn Shop pointed out the quirkiness and “immaturity” of the film—perpetuating the exact stereotype Larson invokes in the story: intentional innocence and cheerfulness, both in theme and in person, are typically less respected than mere appearances of seriousness. Unicorn Shop‘s “belligerent waywardness”, as the bell is understandably not to everyone’s taste. It’s a shame, though, that the film has been repeatedly penalized for the elements deliberately used to prove a point.
However, it seems that Larson knew well how her feature film debut might be interpreted by others. She told IndieWire: “I know the movie isn’t for everyone, but I hope for the people I made it for, it resonates with them as a way of saying, ‘We need these voices that are unique and different. “…We should all be allowed to have our dreams, even if they make us look a little crazy.”
There’s a scene in Unicorn Shop in which Kit has a heart-to-heart with her mother after coming to terms with the feeling that she has constantly let her family down by not being successful enough. Gladys from Cusack turns to her and says, “The most mature thing you can do is fail at the things you really care about.” Not only does that feel like a poignant message in the story, but it also feels like a metaphor for making the movie in the first place. There are certainly a multitude of themes tackled in this film, as several reviews pointed out as a pitfall, but each seems to be worthy of attention. To be fair, the choice between creative pursuits and getting a “real” job, the negative connotations of being too feminine, not meeting family expectations and misogyny in the workplace, is a full plate for a 90-minute movie about a unicorn to wear. But since this film was a bit of a self-portrait for Larson, it makes sense that those themes are all there. As all young, creative, professional women can attest, they are all an integral part of our lives. Somehow Larson created a story about a fantastic magical creature that offers at least some of his viewers a serious and very real sense of camaraderie. Despite the glitter-covered presentation, the message remains gripping. If only Unicorn Shop‘s underlying message was easier to recognize among the more obvious metaphors, the film could gain more appreciation.
Larson summed up her directing experience Unicorn Shopsaying, “There’s a real vulnerability that comes with directing a movie, which involves saying, ‘This is my point of view, this is how I view the world, and it’s meaningful to me and I hope it’s meaningful is for other people.'” She continued, “My hope was that whether the movie is good or not, it’s another piece on the board. People can look at it and either say, ‘This movie is great, that’s I do,” or you can go, “This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen, if she can. this onethen I can definitely make a movie.’”
If nothing else, the creation of this film defends the idea of embracing who you are in the face of haters who tell you you’re bad, and get your voice out anyway. Kit succeeded in that. So did Brie. And maybe a lot more young women will believe that after watching Unicorn Shop.