The critically-anointed Anora is the indie of the year, winning top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, the first for an English-speaking movie in over a dozen years, and poised to be a major awards player down the stretch, some might even say front-runner for top prizes. It starts like a deconstruction of Pretty Woman, with Mikey Madison (Scream 5) playing Anora, a stripper who recognizes the advantageous possibilities flirting with a young rich Russian scion, Vanya. He wants her to be his girlfriend, and over a sex-fueled week, he’s so smitten that he wants to make Anora his wife. This whirlwind relationship hits the wall, however, once Vanya’s family inserts themself into his life, determined to annul the hasty marriage at all costs.

The movie becomes infinitely better at the hour mark when the exasperated extended Russian family comes into the picture. You worry they might be menacing, as they don’t want this stranger with access to the family wealth, but they’re far more bumbling, and Anora transforms into an unexpected comedy. It certainly wasn’t an authentic romance. Clearly Vanya was a meal ticket more than a three-dimensional romantic interest. The kid is an immature, annoying dolt, so we know Anora isn’t legitimately falling in love with him. The scenes of them building a “relationship” could have been cut in half because we already understood the nature of the two of them using one another. The last hour makes for a greatly entertaining turn of events as the unlikely and bickering posse searches New York City for a runaway Vanya. The movie feels propulsive and chaotic and blissfully alive. Ultimately, I don’t know what it all adds up to. Anora isn’t really a sharply drawn character, but none of the characters are particularly well developed. The pseudo-romantic fantasy of its premise, becoming a “princess” of luxury, isn’t really deconstructed with precision. It’s an unexpectedly funny ensemble comedy at its best, but I’m left indifferent to what other value I can take away. It’s well-acted and surprising, but it’s a vacuous side excursion made into a full movie that somehow has bewitched movie critics into seeing more. Perhaps they too have become overly smitten with Anora’s surface-level charms.

Nate’s Grade: B-