SHIFTER’s Chris Harrison says that while not groundbreaking, Jonathan Schey’s latest is “wild and fun” in his Everybody Wants to Fuck Me review.
“While the film [Everybody Wants to Fuck Me may not necessarily be groundbreaking, it’s a fun takedown of a quietly nefarious type of toxic male.” – Chris Harrison
Everybody Wants to Fuck Me turns heads immediately with its, let’s say, colorful title, and the movie itself is no less wild and fun.
The premise begins simply enough. Adam (Taron Egerton) is the king of the performative males–a man in the art world who’s engineered every aspect of his life, from consistently being seen in public reading feminist literature to his carefully crafted conversations on dating apps, to be maximally attracted to women. Adam is peacocking for women with his meticulously selected accessories (he even named his dog after a member of HAIM), all while starving for approval from an even sleazier artist who’s sleeping around behind his girlfriend’s back.
He’s the dreaded “nice guy” who presents himself as an alternative to cavemen and frat bros. He sees them as prey to be pursued and discarded just the same, bouncing from hookup to hookup, forever claiming he’s looking for love but blaming his “bejangled headspace” for running away after he gets what he wants; all polite denials and emotional avoidance and no honesty.
His life changes when, after approaching yet another woman (Jessica Henwick) at the bar with his disarming faux-self-conscious shtick, his attempt at a hookup (a humiliation ritual, really) goes awry and he wakes up alone in an unfamiliar space with his world upside-down. He’s no longer the hunter. He’s now the hunted.
Everywhere he goes, well…you know the name of the movie. Adam is gifted easy access to what he’s always wanted, but it quickly finds himself living every woman’s nightmare — eyes follow him up and down the street. He’s objectified at every turn, and nobody will take no for an answer, and I mean nobody, save for his friend Emma (Charly Clive), who is growing weary of his self-obsession and general unseriousness.
It’s a darkly funny good time, a great fit for a late-night TIFF crowd that was eager to watch his life slowly unravel as he became more and more unmoored from reality. The women in his orbit became more and more ravenous in their pursuit of him and the danger to him, from strangers and coworkers alike, grew. Egerton is fantastic in the lead role, capably sliding from the fake-shy but calculating Adam of the beginning of the movie to the panicked and paranoid version that arrives at the film’s final act.
There’s a bit of mythology at play here, as his vices are compared to the perpetually horned-up satyrs of Greek myth (not unlike how Ballad of a Small Player at last year’s TIFF blew its main character’s greed to epic proportions), and even a bit of sci-fi, when the mechanics of the “curse” are explained.
While the film may not necessarily be groundbreaking, it’s a fun takedown of a quietly nefarious type of toxic male, and one that doesn’t get skewered quite enough in mainstream pop culture; one that isn’t afraid to go way over the top to entertain. It’s not clear in the end if Adam’s really learned anything from the whole ordeal, but it makes his comeuppance no less satisfying to watch.
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