'Vox Lux' review — A hollow pop musical drama

Vox Lux has an interesting story and visuals, but its lack of focus and uneven characters leave it little more than a hollow pop musical drama.

Where to watch Vox Lux: Streaming on Hulu. Available to buy or rent on Prime Video.

Vox Lux has too many ideas it's trying to grapple with that it ends up not having any ideas. In a year where musical dramas A Star is Born and Bohemian Rhapsody topped the box office and awards conversation, Vox Lux had to do a lot to stand out. And it definitely does from those two other movies—for the wrong reasons

Actor turned director Brady Corbet—Vox Lux is his second feature after The Childhood of a Leader—begins the movie tackling the very real issue of mass shooting in the United States. Celeste Montgomery (played as a teen by Raffey Cassidy) is sitting in her music class when a fellow student brandishing a gun barges in and shoots their teacher.

Celeste tries to reason with him to no avail. And he shoots everyone in the classroom. She's injured, but alive. Slowly recovers from a spinal injury and sings at the memorial for the victims. From there, as told by a voiceover by Willem Dafoe, Celeste is thrown into a whirlwind and we watch her grow into a full-blown pop star—with the help of her manager (Jude Law) and publicist (Jennifer Ehle).

This first “act” has some pacing issues and Cassidy can't seem to commit to a character choice—she alternates from shy and reserved to motivated and mature. It feels like a lot of the inconsistency comes from the movie's attempt to lead us to act two Celeste, played by Natalie Portman—trying to continue her winning streak following Jackie and Annihilation.

Some fifteen years later, Celeste is a pop star making her comeback. After years of partying and getting into trouble, it seems that she is both done with her public life and conceding to it. The movie tries to comment on the nature of being a celebrity, but its focus on politics, the social environment, and other issues of the day—there are interludes into 9/11 and social media and press—it never quite gets there.

Vox Lux's main issue is that it feels like it starts every scene with “in this day and age,” and at some points characters even say that. It does so much to be “woke” and cultured that at some points it feels like it's doing it to be relevant.

It's unfortunate considering there is a place among the Bohemian Rhapsody's and A Star is Born's of the world. It doesn't have the magic or romance of either of those movies. Vox Lux is about the cold realities of life—it's almost nihilistic. It would have been interesting to explore stardom from that angle. But the movie has other preoccupations.

Those preoccupations are also why Portman's portrayal of Celeste feels so disconnected from Cassidy's. Portman's version is tired of the world and wants to make sure the world knows it. It would have worked if the first act built to that, but it doesn't.

Vox Lux has an interesting enough story with a unique perspective, but Corbet's screenplay really lets the movie down. He's an interesting director, but without someone to rein his ideas in the movie becomes a bit of a mess.

There are moments of clarity. Specifically in Celeste's relationship with her older sister Ellie (Stacy Martin) and her daughter (also played by Cassidy), but because of the other ideas, those plotlines are underbaked. Just give A Star is Born another go instead.

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Hey! I'm Karl. You can find me on Twitter here. I'm also a Tomatometer-approved critic.

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Karl Delossantos

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Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.