If this business is good at anything, it’s jumping on a bandwagon when something winds up being an unexpected hit, and few movies had as big an impact last year as The Substance. Personally, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the movie and felt there were places where it fell considerably short, so I welcome the knock-offs and copycats to see what other creatives can do with the basic idea, and we have two such examples here today. Do either of these recent attempts to one-up The Substance prove to have the right stuff, or do they wither away to nothing in its shadow? Let’s find out!!
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Him
Him is owned by Universal Pictures
Directed by Justin Tipping
Cameron Cade (Tyriq Withers) is an up-and-coming quarterback who just got drafted to his favorite team; the one led by the GOAT himself, Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans). Cameron has the potential to be just as good, if not better, than his hero Isaiah, but to find out for sure, he’s sent to train with Isaiah on his private compound so he can learn just what it takes to be the best of the best. Of course, with Isaiah’s own career on the line now that there’s a new guy in town, is he truly willing to start passing the torch or will this training camp prove far more dangerous than Cameron is ready for?
I suppose the first question many people had coming out of The Substance was what a guy-coded version of it would look like, even though much of what made The Substance work was the perspective it was coming from; not just the style it used to tell that story. Still, given how badly an idea like that could have gone, I’d say that this movie is worth celebrating despite falling short in a few key areas. It certainly picked the right angle of approach, as the history of sports is littered with preventable injuries, cover-ups of horrific behavior, and the exploitation of players, with the movie draws explicit parallels between sports stars and older figures of strength and power such as knights, gladiators, and conquerors. A linebacker may not be slaughtering his opponents in the arena, but we lionize sports stars for what they do on our TV screens, while off the field they struggle with all the pain and sacrifices it takes to get there. It paints a viscerally compelling portrait of obsession that spirals out from a simplistic, if gruesome, view of sports training to the true gut punch realities of superstardom and immortality being shouldered by mortal men. It shares much of the same headspace that The Substance occupied, but where that film relied on its allegories and metaphors, as well as Demi Moore’s performance, to carry us through to the end, this tells a straightforward story and lets the more abstract and esoteric ideas fill out the margins of the script and the unique compositions of the cinematography. It also helps that this is a much more robust cast, with two primary forces pushing and pulling against each other with a smattering of supporting characters to prod our protagonist in conflicting directions. Marlon Wayans is the definite standout as an aging lion that is threatened by the young new cub in the pride, and while you’re never able to trust him, his performance has enough charm to it that you hope there’s more to all this than just an attempt to destroy his younger counterpart. Said counterpart, played by Tyriq Withers, is another strong point in the film’s favor, as he’s more subdued of a presence but is still a fully fleshed out character with his own hopes, dreams, flaws, and responsibilities that connect you with his plight and gives you a reason to care about this specific person as more than just a vessel for the movie’s themes. I did ultimately like this more than The Substance because of the more grounded storytelling, but there’s no denying that the film still feels a little half-baked; especially when compared to that movie’s tight structure and sharp satire. It’s not quite as clever as it hopes to be and indulges in silly moments that don’t heighten the tension but undercut the seriousness of the situation. The idea of fans being equivalent to religious zealots is not without merit, but here it comes off as comical rather than insightful, and while the cinematography is top-notch with fun details and unsettling architecture, it’s also a little too blunt and obvious for its own good. The movie cleverly provides an in-universe justification for the bizarre imagery that pops throughout the story, and it’s without question that a lot of thought went into using abstraction and symbolism to get its point across, but it never quite goes for broke the same way The Substance did, so while the ideas are interesting, the execution feels slightly muted and simplistic; never reaching the heights of heady excess that you want for a movie like this. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention how some of the imagery, especially towards the end, hews a bit too closely to conspiratorial thinking and makes allusions to some very negative stereotypes even if it doesn’t explicitly name them. I understand what they’re going for, and what they are discussing is a legitimate problem in the sports world, but there’s also a way of expressing that frustration that can easily be hijacked by bigots and this is just a bit too loose with that kind of imagery to completely dissuade such interpretations. It is indeed a flawed movie in ways that undeniably make it a lesser film than The Substance, but it does have more of a heart to it which counts for quite a lot in my book, though maybe leave a bit of that anger at the door; especially if you’re still working out the finer points of what it is you’re trying to say.
The Reviewers Unite 