A24 Film’s take on a simple rom-com
Art by Sara Polster
In recent years, Zendaya has shined as a young and up and coming movie star, dazzling the screens with her effortless presence and sincerity. This year, Zendaya will be starring in numerous projects with a wide range of characters— Ruby “Rue” Bennet in “Euphoria”, Chani in “Dune: Part Three”, MJ in “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” and Athena in “The Odyssey”. Hollywood has seen many stars rise and fall; Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Sicily Tyson and Dorothy Dandridge have all made waves in the film industry. Zendaya has been marked as one of these actresses, one who will continue to inspire the film industry for years to come.
Zendaya was recently featured in “The Drama” (2026), where she plays Emma, a bookstore clerk and fiancée to Charlie (Robert Pattinson). The film starts out as a classic rom-com. Charlie sees Emma in a cafe, reading a fictional novel titled “The Damage”. Catching his eye, Charlie lies to Emma, telling her how much he loves the book, even though he hadn’t read it. Emma doesn’t hear him at first, which we learn later is because she’s half deaf and Charlie gets embarrassed. The two both decide to “start over,” setting up a central theme for the movie of rebeginnings and second chances.
The two immediately hit it off and a montage is featured of the time they’ve spent together, as a typical rom-com couple. Charlie and Emma are both drafting their wedding speeches, sharing the attributes they love about each other. Everything seems and feels normal, until it isn’t.
When Emma, Charlie and their married couple friends Rachel (Alana Haim) and Mike (Mamoudou Athie) drink too much at a wine tasting in preparation for their wedding, everything goes downhill. Rachel shares how her and Mike told each other the worst thing they have ever done before getting married, peer pressuring Emma and Charlie to engage in the game. Rachel shares how she locked her mentally challenged neighbor in a closet, not telling his parents where he was, even when they asked. Mike used his ex-girlfriend as a shield against a stray dog. Charlie cyberbullied a kid so hard when he was 14 that the kid had to move schools. When it was time for Emma to reveal her secret, the tone of the scene shifted from comical to suspenseful, with Emma hesitating to reveal her dark past.
Emma revealed that she planned a school shooting when she was 15, in response to the isolation and teasing she faced when she moved schools. However, she never went through with the shooting and became an activist against gun violence.
The story follows Charlie’s internal conflict with himself. Does he really know the person he’s marrying? Does what Emma did when she was 15 reflect herself as an adult? Can he marry a person who planned something so horrific?
The film was certainly unique and extremely entertaining, however it did have its flaws. When Emma reveals her secret, Rachel has an almost comedic, over the top reaction, irrationally blaming Emma for her own cousin being shot and paralyzed in a school shooting. Throughout the film, Rachel never shows any empathy towards Emma or tries to understand what she was going through. Arguably, what Rachel did was worse because she actually went through with the action of locking a mentally disabled child in a closet and presented it as a comedic topic, not expressing any remorse. On the other hand, Emma never went through with the school shooting and was a troubled teen just looking for a community.
The film isn’t able to keep a consistent tone throughout, awkwardly switching between humorous and dramatic, which in some cases work well, but in this case just cheapened the overarching theme of the movie. When seeing this film in theaters, many viewers were audibly laughing at scenes, including the scene where teenage Emma is filming a video of herself, explaining her reasons for planning the school shooting, but her computer screen keeps shutting down. While this scene was funny, it overall didn’t add anything significant to the story and just watered down the seriousness of the whole school shooting topic.
The overall message of “The Drama” has been in much debate, seeming to aim for a multitude of themes, yet not fully being able to execute them. The movie expresses an idea of second chances, foreshadowing the ending of the movie with Emma and Charlie’s meet-cute. Chaos ensues at their wedding when Charlie accidentally reveals that he cheated on Emma with his assistant Misha (Hailey Gates). This news sparks a physical altercation between Charlie and Misha’s boyfriend. After a far from perfect white wedding, Emma and Charlie meet again at a diner they mentioned earlier in the movie. They reintroduce themselves while still in their wedding attire, bringing back the rom-com aesthetics seen in the beginning.
“The Drama” is a cautionary tale on the warnings of judging people for their thoughts instead of their actual actions. It’s also able to mock extreme cancel culture, representing people's betrayal of friendships because of what they think is right, versus looking deeper into the truth. It displays the utter hypocrisy people apply to others while justifying their own actions.