Review of What Happened Was... (1994) by Brickwall_ — 01 May 2023

You could lop the first 10 or so minutes off of this entirely without changing anything. The opening really feels like front-loaded killing time to reach 90 minutes (and couldn't be more cliche with the character waking up in bed and turning off her alarm clock), but what follows is an excellent 80-minute drama and dual character study. Tom Noonan and Karen Silas are both fantastic, not to mention the impressive work Noonan does as the writer and director.

As a single-location piece, this is all about character and performance, and those aspects fully deliver. The two feel as natural as could be and capture this type of awkward energy exceptionally well to the point of becoming uncomfortable to watch at points. This is very much a filmed play, which I know rubs a lot of people the wrong way but that never really bothers me. Your mileage may vary. Noonan keeps things just a tiny bit more visually interesting than a real-time drama set entirely in an apartment could have been.

The titular storybook sequence where Noonan starts hearing things from the dolls and seeing movement in the dollhouse seems pretty out of place tonally and stylistically within the rest of the film. I enjoyed how strange it was, and, obviously, it's not literal, but it really doesn't mesh with the overall piece.

The biggest drawback to me is that the characters become their most interesting selves with their two big monologue reveals, but then the movie just ends immediately afterward. There was so much unexplored potential left on the table that went disappointingly unseized. Ditch those useless first 10 minutes and give me 10 extra minutes at the end that dive deeper into those final revelations and all of the inherent baggage and drama that comes with them.