Review: Emily the Criminal

Aubrey Plaza gets in touch with her inner badass.

Aubrey Plaza, the queen of weaponized deadpan, plays it all-the-way straight in Emily the Criminal, a tough little first feature by writer-director John Patton Ford. The movie has a topical spin—it's set in the world of crushing student loan debt—but it's really about the shapeshifting nature of hopes and dreams, and the ways in which the riptides of life can carry us away in unexpected and sometimes alarming directions.

Plaza's character, Emily, is a young woman who made the mistake of following her own dreams into art school, which has left her $70,000 in debt and with little hope of getting a decent job in the real world. (She also has a minor rap sheet that's blocking her future like a boulder in the road.) So she now humps orders for a food delivery service, her life going nowhere.

Then, tipped by a colleague, Emily falls in with an improbably charming Lebanese immigrant named Youcef (Theo Rossi, of Sons of Anarchy), who's part of a criminal enterprise devoted to credit card fraud—stamping stolen names and numbers onto plastic blanks for a squad of "dummy shoppers" to use in scamming retailers out of pricey merchandise. Youcef offers Emily a chance to make a quick $200 doing one of these runs. "You won't be in danger," he tells her, "but you will be breaking the law." Emily is in—and she turns out to be good at this stuff. Then she's offered a follow-up assignment—a riskier one, but for a lot more money.

Emily has mixed feelings about this new career path, but they're easily overcome after a dispiriting interview for a legitimate gig at a slick advertising agency. This would have been a perfect berth for an art-school grad, but her hopes were instantly deflated when the agency's owner (Gina Gershon) explained that the job was intern-level and the pay, zero. (Great resumé-builder, though.) Emily—whose endless loan payments seem to be entirely consumed by ever-mushrooming interest charges—is deeply steamed. "People just keep taking from you," she fumes, "until you make the goddamn rules yourself." She decides to start taking this crime career she's wandered into a little more seriously.

Plaza is not an assertively expressive actor (it's part of her effectiveness as a comic presence), but she turns Emily into a completely realized character—a woman who's found no way to exert control over her life until she gets in touch with her inner badass. "We're serious people!" she shouts at one cowed civilian. "You should be scared of us!"

Comments

[JonFrum]

Sounds like Revenge of the Upper Middle Class. Take out tens of thousands of dollars in loans before you’ve worked a day in your life, and then get pissed when someone expects you to pay it back.

[workstar24]

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[Ragnarredbeard]

I like Aubrey Plaza, but fuck anyone who takes out $70K in loans to get a fucking art degree.

[tracerv]

Yeah. Hard to have empathy for a character that dumb.

[Kungpowderfinger]

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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GYS1UFY05as

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[Stuck in California]

True. Except, it fits the character arc.

Think about it, someone who can get sucked into a nefarious scheme looking for a quick buck is the type of person with poor decision making skills.

Same with the rap sheet that was described that loses her jobs.

Someone who is diligent and forward thinking as a young person, who understands delayed gratification and the value or cost of debt, is not someone who can be duped into illegal hijinks with high risk.

[mad.casual]

This story sounds awful fucking manipulative from a writer’s perspective. That is, it sounds like the protagonist’s only attachments are to herself. It’s not like she’s got a family to support. And, in that context, getting “extorted into” white collar crime is a bit… absurd. Not to say it should be encouraged, but the old adage about stealing a loaf of bread or beat the shit out of someone who owes the mob money to feed your family is much less compelling when it’s steal a credit card number to pay off your own debt. And it feels like they chose a woman as the protagonist to make the whole choice between ‘get rich stealing credit cards’ or ‘get famous making art’ seem much more dramatic and suspenseful rather than decadent and bourgeoise.

[Brandybuck]

> who made the mistake of following her own dreams into art school, which has left her $70,000 in debt and with little hope of getting a decent job in the real world.

The problem isn’t the debt. It’s high, but considering our current inflation, not horrendous. Consider the debt one gets into via medical school.

No, the problem is the dearth of decent jobs for art majors. There’s just not a demand for them. The term “starving artist” was not invented by the Eebil Trump administration, it’s been with us long long before we even had Federal Government backed student loan crisis. Starving artists have been around for a thousand years.

That whole intern thing sucks, and it’s somewhat new. Didn’t exist when I got my degree (also in the arts) except for certain professions. Now it’s universal. And essentially a by-product of literally everyone being expected to get a four year degree for jobs that used to only require a junior high diploma.

So stop fucking blaming me for your student debt. I didn’t do it. It can all be traced back to government, both the debt itself and the cultural shift to send every child down the academic track.

[Roberta]

This is true. Used to be you could break in as an artist with a John Nagy Learn to Draw kit, now you need a bachelor’s?

[Ragnarredbeard]

The really great part is that nearly all of the great artists in history and the ones living today had no art degree.

[workstar24]

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[Mockamodo]

You mean Hunter Biden didn’t learn to blow paint through a straw at university?

[kcuch]

That whole intern thing sucks, and it’s somewhat new.

Like being an apprentice in the 1600’s… Someone teaches you something valuable for free. I’d turn that down too.

[Ragnarredbeard]

Apprenticeship and interning are nowhere near the same relationship. An apprentice is taught under a master, who is responsible for their lodging, food, etc. An intern learns something while being unpaid.

[DuckFarmer]

Bear in mind a good number of apprentices were barely above slave labor, sold into the apprenticeship by their parents, and required to work for their master for a set period (regardless of whether or not their skills were enough to allow them to work as journeymen). They could potentially appeal their master’s refusal to release them from the apprenticeship…but the guilds were of course controlled by the very same masters incentivized to keep the apprentices working for free as long as possible.

Compared to that, an at-will internship sounds just fine.

[Don Mynack]

Apparently, she was unable to lob a quick phone call to Sallie Mae or whatever and get a loan forbearance, and instead chooses a life of crime. Also, I worked another job (for money) while interning in filmmaking (for free), so my sympathy level here for these student loan scofflaws is very, very low.

[Ride 'Em]

I think the solution is that the school signs up for 50% of the student loan debt if it is defaulted. Would get rid of the surplus art majors.

[Reverendcaptain]

Guys I get it that the whole student loan system is fucked up and people who go deep in debt for such a degree are idiots but the review sounds like this is just motivation for the character to justify a life of crime. I have no idea how it all plays out but hopefully she’ll learn her lesson in prison and never take out another foolish loan for the rest of her life.

Sheesh.