Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Music’ on Amazon Prime, Sia’s Blundering Musical About a Young Woman With Autism and Her Addict Sister

Music, the nearly universally maligned directorial debut by pop star Sia that “won” Worst Director, Worst Actress, and Worst Supporting Actress at the 2021 Razzies, runs another gauntlet with its Amazon Prime debut. First, Sia was chastised for casting the neurotypical Maddie Ziegler as a teenager with non-verbal autism. Then, the movie was further criticized for featuring scenes depicting physical restraint on Ziegler’s character, a highly dangerous action; Sia responded with a series of apologies and a promise to include a warning in the film and to remove the scenes, neither of which appears to have happened for this version on Amazon. Additionally, Leslie Odom Jr.’s role has been criticized for being a stereotypical “magical negro.” And finally, the film was nominated for two Golden Globes, including for best musical or comedy, a ludicrous notion that only serves to illustrate the corrupt mudhole that the Globes have become, and an appropriately insane coda to the whole Music fiasco.

MUSIC: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Music — yes, the character’s name is Music, played by Ziegler — pulls on her white sweatpants. She always wears headphones. Fade to a closeup of Music, headphones replaced by big Princess Leia hair buns. She’s clad in a garish orange and yellow outfit, and makes her way through a surreal, all-orange set, which makes sense once we realize that a music video for a Sia song is what’s happening here. We squint at the screen as we wonder if Ziegler’s exaggerated mannerisms are affectations of the character or part of the video’s choreography. The scene transitions to Music in “reality,” waking up, getting out of bed, getting dressed, etc., and we realize the mannerisms are definitely affectations of the character. Her grandmother (Mary Kay Place) makes her eggs and braids her hair, and Music heads out for a walk, a gigantic wide-eyed smile on her face. She’s not alone though, because her friends and neighbors know to keep an eye on her: The kind fellow next door George (Hector Elizondo), another kind fellow next door in Ebo (Leslie Odom Jr.) and shy teen Felix (Beto Calvillo), among others. This is part of Music’s routine. It takes a village, and all that, I guess.

And then Grandma drops dead in the kitchen. George finds her. Music doesn’t seem to recognize or comprehend what happened. Elsewhere, Zu (Kate Hudson), which is short for Kazu, pronounced “kazoo,” wakes up after dozing off at an AA meeting. She gets the call and heads back to Grandma’s cluttered apartment. She’ll have to look after her half-sister Music, a development that seems more like an inconvenience than a responsibility wrought by tragedy. Zu hasn’t been around much. She’s in recovery for addiction and on probation, and all this will hamper her ability to peddle illicit painkillers for her dealer pal. Among her initial questions for George: Is there a will? Which is a way of asking if there’s any money, of course. Grandma left a letter, and right there at the top it says there’s no money. Zu sighs. She rather cavalierly calls a mental health institution and asks if they do “pickups.” The response? Dial tone.

Zu’s priority is to dig through the apartment looking for cash, but she’s soon reminded that Music’s routine shouldn’t be upset, lest she experience a traumatic episode. Thankfully, Ebo is right next door and seems to have a lot of time on his hands, so he swoops in to save Zu’s behind and show her the ropes. As Ziegler and her bevy of ill-advised affectations mostly merely exist in the background, Zu tries to figure her shit out in a new context, and is that a romantic spark between her and Ebo? Zu seems to have a lot of barriers to her personality, and she has to climb them just as much as Ebo does. Meanwhile, all of the preceding stuff is frequently interrupted by Sia music videos featuring the principal cast members, the interludes serving to either deepen or obfuscate the movie’s themes, I’m not quite sure.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Music finds an alarmingly strange middle ground between I Am Sam and Cats.

Performance Worth Watching: Odom is pretty much the only survivor of this deadly cinematic crash. Sure, his character is pretty much a stereotype, and history will surely selectively acknowledge him as a shining light in One Night in Miami. But he’s also a vital grounding force in a movie that’s otherwise unsalvageable.

Memorable Dialogue: “I’m getting you. There’s a dark girl vibe you got going on,” is Ebo ‘s reply to the following only-half-joking quip by Zu: “I was actually planning on sending (Music) to the people pound later, but I guess I’ll keep her around a little longer.”

Sex and Skin: Considering how awkward and misguided every component of human drama is in this movie, we should be thankful there are no sex scenes.

Our Take: Welcome to ?????: The Movie, where a series of confounding decisions render the final product a true disaster. Sia’s good intentions — her goal: to give people with autism some representation in movies — are fully eclipsed by reality: Ziegler’s performance is ill-informed, an empty collection of physical mannerisms hampered by a nearly non-existent character who quickly becomes a plot catalyst for Zu’s poorly defined, cliched arrangement of problems. This is a terrible way to treat the Music character. Terrible. She’s also set dressing for a haphazard love story between Zu and Ebo, and a tacked-on subplot about Felix and his abusive father. The dialogue is awkward and the editing is choppy and the central performance by Hudson is supposed to be a marriage of world-weariness and immaturity, but the characterization is frustratingly opaque.

Also also, there’s the manner of the music videos, which I believe are supposed to be Music’s fantastical retreats from the difficulties of the world around her. They’re overdressed and garish — not unlike most pop music clips, for sure — and the songs are lyrically banal, as if making them emotionally resonant might distract us from the outlandish costumes, makeup and choreography. The relevance of these sequences is lost on us. They disrupt the flow of the narrative, which could benefit from applying more thought to the characters and less to the overt abstraction and high-concept all-caps ART of the musical bits. What is Sia trying to say with this film? I haven’t the foggiest. Should we even try to figure it out? No way.

Our Call: SKIP IT. To say Music is a failure is an understatement. It’s a debacle. A blunder. A misguided mess.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Watch Music on Amazon Prime Video