Join The Club
This isn’t an article complaining about Disclosure Day. The goal here is not to talk about how attempt forty-two of the script is a nonsensical mess or how it’s needlessly long or how it asks a bunch of questions it doesn’t really attempt to answer. That’s a different article. This one is about how, despite Disclosure Day being a complete mess, Emily Blunt is absolutely fantastic in a way that needs to be recognized come Oscar season.
The thing is it’s easy to be good when everyone and everything around you is good. It’s easy to rise to the level of the material when you’re delivering thoughtful dialogue that’s part of a well-crafted story. Most actors who are nominated for Oscars every year are honored for doing exactly that. They’re given good material to work with, and they make the material as good as it’s supposed to be.
That’s not what Emily Blunt does here. Instead, she takes consistently mediocre dialogue and makes it sound authentic. She takes moments that should feel emotionally hollow because they’re unearned and instead turns them into a payoff the audience cares about. She is, by a very noticeable margin, the best thing about every single scene she’s in, and that should mean something.
How It Normally Works
The thing is, when it comes to the Oscars, it’s usually not just about the performance itself. Fans and also members of the Academy want to advocate for and ultimately vote for movies they actually like. Earlier this year at the Academy Awards, Best Picture nominees Sinners, One Battle After Another, Frankenstein, Marty Supreme, Sentimental Value and Hamnet all got eight or more nominations. More specifically for the purposes of this conversation, fourteen of the twenty total acting nominations came from those six films.
That’s not to say all of those actors didn’t deserve it. They were huge parts of why those movies connected so well with critics and audiences, but now and again, we also have to leave space for someone delivering a dynamite performance in a movie that’s not worthy of Best Picture. Now and again, we have to recognize someone doing great work in spite of the material they’re given. In this case, that’s Emily Blunt, who is fantastic in the largely disappointing Disclosure Day.
What People Think Of Disclosure Day
Now, you’re probably saying to yourself, but wait, doesn’t Disclosure Day have good reviews? Isn’t it the type of movie people would want to advocate for? Ehhhh, not really. It’s sitting at an 80 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, which sounds high, but most of those reviews are lukewarm. They recommend the movie for its grandiose ambition, one epic train sequence that is admittedly fantastic and, of course, Emily Blunt’s performance, but they almost all stop short of endorsing it without qualifiers.
The fan scores are a lot worse. They’re not bad, but being at a 6.8 on IMDB with almost 50,000 reviews and counting is not ideal. Project Hail Mary, this year’s other broad sci-fi movie that crushed at the box office, is at an 8.3, as a contrast. Six months from now, everyone is going to remember how that movie made them feel and want to advocate for it. It’s going to end up in Best Picture (deservedly) and will probably bring Ryan Gosling along with it in Best Actor too.
To Sum Up
I hate Disclosure Day. Some people agree with me. Most people seem to think I’m being a little harsh and it’s more of a mixed bag or a decent movie with some issues. Ordinarily, that’s not enough to get an actor into the Academy Awards race, but in this case, I think it should be.
In a co-leading performance, Emily Blunt rises well above every single other actor and even the material itself to deliver a performance you can’t look away from. Whether she’s building a believable rapport with her partner, humoursly played by Wyatt Russell, or delivering career best work to save that dumb face-switching scene about empathy, she’s locked in every second of the runtime here. I hope she gets nominated.
