Stream It Or Skip It: ‘House of Gucci’ on Paramount+, in Which Lady Gaga’s Gusto Can’t Carry a Bloated Dud of a Biopic

Now available to stream on Paramount+, House of Gucci marks a few notable quasi-milestones: A second PRESTIGE role for Lady Gaga, following her best actress Oscar win for A Star is Born. The jillionth directorial effort from Ridley Scott, whose surprisingly good The Last Duel is still cooling on the slab, and who remains prolific well into his 80s. And perhaps the most ludicrous display of flamboyant accents in recent movie history, as Gaga, Adam Driver, Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons and especially Jared Leto do their damnedest to sound like Mario and/or Luigi if they were stinking rich fashion designers instead of humble plumbers. So this is a long-in-development (about 20 years) BOATS (Based On A True Story, of course) movie spanning a couple decades of real-life history rife with Calgon drama and (gasp) murder, and occupying 158 minutes of your life (which may feel like a couple decades), and if it all comes together as something watchable, it sure would seem to be a minor miracle.

HOUSE OF GUCCI: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: A century ago, when I started watching this movie, it was 1978 in Milan, Italy. Patrizia Reggiani (Gaga) teasingly trods her heels past catcalling men spraying their hoses at large trucks, and that’s imagery from the movie, not innuendo from me. We learn she’s pretty good at forging her father’s signature on paychecks – please file this plot point away for future reference – for those men, who work for her father’s trucking company. Elsewhere, in the heart of the city, a gangly gent clips his cuffs to his ankles, because it would be unsightly if the heir to the Gucci brand fortune got his pants caught in his bike chain. He is Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), destined to meet Patrizia in a disco, where she mistakes him for a bartender and he calls her Elizabeth Taylor, and you will lean towards the screen not so much drawn in by their static-cling attraction, but to understand what they’re saying in their ludicrous it’s-a-me! ItaliAH-na accents while grossly dated music blares in the background.

Question: Does she know who he is? I think so. She doesn’t let on, and seems smart in that way. She lightly stalks him to further engage his interest, pushing past his timidity and slight dorkus-malorkusness, insisting that he ask her out. Which doesn’t imply that she’s a golddigger – their affair is passionate, driven by hormones, less so by scads of moolah, although that doesn’t hurt. It’s through the dynamic of their love that we learn more about the Gucci family. Maurizio takes Patrizia to dinner with his father, Rodolfo Gucci (Jeremy Irons), who snorts at her inability to discern a Picasso from a Klimt, and snorts twice at her father’s VILE middle-class “ground transportation” business. So Maurizio follows his heart, quits the Guccis and starts washing trucks, allowing Patrizia to yank down his work onesie so they can have a mid-day grunty, jackhammer shtoinkathon atop the desk in the office as the guys outside cheer him on. Italy!

They’re re-ingratiated into Guccihaus by Maurizio’s sweetheart of an uncle, Aldo Gucci (Al Pacino), founder of the fashion line who shares the business 50-50 with Rodolfo. The brothers are at odds; Aldo wants to expand the brand to be more inclusive, while Rodolfo prefers the Gucci name to be one of luxury and prestige. What more do they need, anyway, Rodolfo insists? I mean, did you see the stinking rotten KLIMT hanging on his wall? Aldo wants Maurizio back in the business because Gucci Amalgamated Incorporated Corp. needs a true heir. I mean, look at Aldo’s son, Paolo. He’s played by Jared Leto, whose characterization makes a clown look like a field mouse. Paolo is not suited for this business, and I apologize for that pun, it wasn’t intentional, but I also didn’t backspace over it. Paolo’s stupidity, incompetence and nincompoopedness is obvious. He pairs pastels with brown in his clothing designs, and you just don’t f—ing DO that.

Maurizio and Patrizia get married, and Aldo wants them to oversee Gucci bidness in America. So he sets them up in a shwank New York City penthouse, which seems to further ignite Patrizia’s ambition. She’s game for the high-roller lifestyle, but Maurizio’s been there his whole life. She consults with a large-haired psychic (Salma Hayek) who foresees great things for Patrizia. Meanwhile, Rodolfo has a Movie Cough, and you know what that means in movies. Patrizia pushes Maurizio to help Aldo subtly take over the business; they have a daughter, who’s barely a presence in the movie; the Gucci name starts to fade in the fashion world, and something’s gotta be done about that; and what’s with all the accounting fudgery in the Gucci tax paperwork here? Oh, and Paolo drops in to be honked off that he’s not involved in the empire, and to show off his designs, which could be innovative or laughably awful, but who can tell? This is the fashion world after all, not the real world.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: House of Gucci is an inner-lives-of-the-rich-and-famous bio along the lines of Scott’s All the Money in the World or Scorsese’s far livelier The Wolf of Wall Street.

Performance Worth Watching: Gaga will probably score an Oscar nomination for this, and that’s fine – great performances often turn up in crummy movies, and you can’t help but feel for her here, asked to bear the bulk of Gucci with a strong characterization. It’s not to be, but she holds up her corner of it pretty well.

Memorable Dialogue: Three stoopide lines Leto squeezes through his absurd accent:

“I could finally soar. Like a pigeon.”

“Never confuse shit with chocolato. They may look the same, but they taste very different. Trust me, I know.”

“My bladder may be full, but my dreams are ever fuller. I’m like a rush of water.”

Sex and Skin: Not one, but two Gaga bubble baths – and one Gaga mud bath, therefore tripling the Gaga-bath content from A Star is Born. Also, Gaga and Driver bang in this, but it’s not particularly hot.

Our Take: House of Gucci is far more entertaining in description than execution. Pacino and Leto ripping off chunks of scenery, running it around in oil and seasonings and devouring it? Gaga and Driver fighting and f—ing and fighting some more? Period-specific hair? Those OTT accents, which are 50 percent why-bother and 50 percent funny? Should be a high-order camp-and-vamp, right? When Gaga says, “Father, son, House of Gucci” in papal tones, fireworks will burst!

But they don’t. The line lands with a depressing thwump. In reality, the film is weirdly dull, with a meandering narrative that never revs up dramatically, characters with frustratingly opaque motives and a tonal identity crisis. Scott struggles to integrate the comedy and tragedy into a cohesive whole. Maybe he was afraid if the film was too funny, it’d disrespect the memory of the real Maurizio, who was cruelly murdered – murdered for reasons that remain as smudgily obfuscated as Aldo Gucci’s accounting. For all the talent involved, the movie is stale, empty and airless, a collection of scenes of exorbitant riche-ness, obvious needle drops and all those annoying accents. It’s part preening biopic, part caricaturefest. And it’s overstuffed – long movies are fine if they allow for quality character work, but House of Gucci is big and wide and blah, performative in a thoroughly boring way.

Our Call: It’s not the length, it’s the girth. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.