"Poor Things" and the prude boy

Frequently frisky in an alternate Victorian universe.

 When everyone and their respective dogs seem to love a movie, it’s a little embarrassing to admit you hate it. But I do hate “Poor Things,” the movie for which Emma Stone won her best-actress Oscar. Not since “The English Patient” have I felt so out of touch. 

We watched it the other night, part of a vague impulse to catch most of the movies nominated for an Academy Award this year. It was free on Hulu. For that I am grateful. Now all I regret is the wasted time, as opposed to the wasted money. Also, it’s probably the only thing I’ve ever watched on Hulu where I actually welcomed the ads. 

Have you seen it? I won’t offer a review, except to say that it plays like a Terry Gilliam movie (think “Brazil”) co-written by Russ Meyer (think “Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens”). It’s billed as a dark comedy, but it’s really kind of a raunchy sex romp tarted up with avant-garde pretensions — something about female empowerment through degradation. There’s a lot of sex in this movie, much of it gratuitous and most of it pushing that envelope we used to know as an R rating.

Here I would say that I’m no prude. Except that’s a little like saying “I’m no racist.” If you have to say it ...

Yeah, maybe I am a prude, at least when it comes to watching an A-list star in what is really an exploitive, grindhouse role. Emma Stone is a gifted performer who’s done a lot of memorable movies. But I’m kind of sorry she won the Oscar for this one.