Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Unicorn Store’ On Netflix, Where Brie Larson Wants A Unicorn, And Samuel L. Jackson Has One

Did you ever want a pet unicorn when you were a kid? We didn’t, but we’re pretty sure we knew kids who did (we also know a lot of little ones now who would love to have one). Usually those dreams fade when you grow up and realize that unicorns, you know, don’t exist. But what if a person grew up still believing, and actually getting a chance to get her wish? It’s the subject of Unicorn Store, which is produced and directed by its star, Oscar winner Brie Larson. Read on for more on this whimsical film…

UNICORN STORE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Kit (Brie Larson) is a young woman who has always believed in the power of mystical things like unicorns. Even into her adulthood, she still likes to talk to her Care Bears and watch Rainbow Brite reruns. But she ends up flunking out of art school because she continues to paint murals with rainbows and wizards and unicorns instead of what her teachers consider “real” art. Even now, she wishes she had her very own pet unicorn, even though she knows they don’t exist.

Back home with her parents, Gene (Bradley Whitford) and Gladys (Joan Cusack), she finally decides to buckle down and get a temp job. She gets one at a PR agency, whose vice president, Gary (Hamish Linklater), takes a creepy shine to her. He wants to see what she can do with a deadly boring vacuum cleaner campaign. While she works on that, she keeps getting colorful invitations to visit a place called “The Store,” which promises exactly what she wants.

When she gets to The Store, she meets a pink-clad salesman (Samuel L. Jackson) with tinsel in his hair. He says he can sell her a unicorn, and shows her around to rooms where the unicorns are cleaned (it looks like a girl’s bedroom), fed (looks like a restaurant) and more. Kit so wants that unicorn that she’ll follow the salesman’s rules.

She meets a hardware store employee named Virgil (Mamoudou Athie), who agrees to build a stable for her, knowing nothing about how to build stuff. But the salesman also requires a good home environment, which becomes difficult to achieve when she tells her parents the truth during a “truth circle” on one of their camping trips with at-risk teens. Will she even believe in unicorns by the time one is ready for her?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Imagine Big, but the person who hasn’t grown up emotionally is actually a real grown-up, not a kid who wishes he were grown-up.

Performance Worth Watching: Joan Cusack, as usual, does the most with a thankless role. As Kit’s mom Gladys, she takes the brunt of her daughter’s immaturity, having to watch her 27-year-old daughter not just express herself artistically like an 11-year-old, but pout and argue like one, too. In a scene after Kit’s campfire freak-out, Gladys reassures Kit that “the most grown-up thing you can do is fail at things you really care about.” Cusack has two Oscar nominations for playing roles like this, and for good reason; she completely holds her own with Larson, who won an Oscar for Room three years ago.

Memorable Dialogue: The salesman: “Here we have our fine dining establishment, or ‘haysturant’, we like to call it.”

Single Best Shot: After the talk with her mom, Kit decides to be herself including caking the vacuum cleaner she’s writing the campaign for in paint and glitter. She also comes to the presentation in a spectacular, fringe-filled outfit.

Sex and Skin: Nah, not in this film.

Our Take: Unicorn Store is Brie Larson’s first directorial effort; the movie is written by Samantha McIntyre. If you see reviews that say that the film is a reunion of Larson and Jackson after they starred together in Captain Marvel, then they have it backwards; this movie was first shown at TIFF in 2017, with Netflix buying the distribution rights and finally releasing it now. Which makes us wonder: A newly-minted Oscar winner is starring, directing and producing this film that also has Sam Jackson in it. Why hold it for a year-and-a-half?

Probably Captain Marvel‘s release had something to do with it, to get some juice from that. But it’s likely because Unicorn Store is a deeply strange movie that has some inspired moments, some thuddingly dull moments, and some other moments that are just headscratchers.

How could we not love Jackson as the salesman, who is supposed to be this lighthearted and friendly guy, but also says things like the unicorns are covered in “leaves and berries and shit” when they arrive? We’ve already talked about Cusack, and Whitford is solid as usual. We’re even impressed with Athie as Virgil, who goes along with Kit’s whims even though he’s much more grounded than she is.

The problem, and we hate to say this, is with Larson, both in front of and behind the camera. We know how good of an actress she can be, and in some scenes — like the one with Cusack we mention above — we see that come out. But it’s one thing to play Kit as an adult who refuses to grow up (most of us who are much older than she is are in her boat), but it’s another thing to play her as someone who has the emotional capacity of a preteen. Instead of making Kit look whimsical and unique, she makes Kit look petulant and in need of some serious therapy. Having Kit talk about her “famous temper tantrums” while seeing the face of a person who is almost 30 is just disconcerting.

And there are some editing issues, at least when it comes to the movie’s storytelling, which speaks to Larson’s inexperience as a director. When she presents her vacuum cleaner idea, she’s accompanied by Sabrina (Martha MacIsaac) and mailroom guy Brock (Ryan Hansen), who are enthusiastic about the presentation, and we’re not sure why. It feels like there was more to the office story that hit the digital cutting-room floor, because not only does this go unexplained, but the stories with creepy Gary and a potential rivalry with his assistant, Crystal (Annaleigh Ashford), go absolutely nowhere. We can see cutting that part of it for time, but it just made us wonder if we fell asleep (which we didn’t) and missed something.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Despite the whimsical theme and typically-great performances by folks like Jackson and Cusack, Unicorn Store still moves too slowly, despite its 92-minute running time and light-as-a-feather story.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream Unicorn Store on Netflix