‘Magazine Dreams’ Review: Pain Without Gain

Killian Maddox (Jonathan Majors) has one objective in life: to be the best bodybuilder on Earth. His focus is so single-minded that he has little else to speak about. A couple of third of the way in which into “Magazine Dreams,” the shy Killian, having lastly labored up the braveness to ask, takes Jessie (Haley Bennett), his colleague at a grocery store, on a date.

It doesn’t go properly. On the restaurant, Killian startles Jessie along with his informal disclosure of his mom’s violent loss of life. (“Someone killed her. My dad did. He shot her and then he shot himself. That’s why they’re both dead.”) He orders sufficient protein to feed a platoon. Then he regales her with particulars of his routine and his worry that others don’t respect him. “I’m going to place and get my pro card,” he tells Jessie. “Then I bet they won’t just walk by me.”

The too-briefly-seen Bennett has the Cybill Shepherd function on this strained effort to make “Taxi Driver” for bodybuilders. On the proof, the writer-director, Elijah Bynum, has additionally studied Scorsese’s different work, notably “The King of Comedy” (Killian writes obsessive letters to an idol who has made the duvet of Males’s Well being) and the Steadicam march to the boxing ring in “Raging Bull.”

Bynum provides his personal model of that shot halfway via, when Killian, having simply been savagely overwhelmed by a bunch of males whose retailer he has wrecked, arrives at a bodybuilding competitors nonetheless bloody. In a single, fluid digital camera motion, Killian enters the constructing and takes the stage, flexing his muscle mass and visibly struggling to smile via his ache. It’s a powerful present of bravado from each the actor and the director, albeit in a manner that makes it tough to inform who’s swaggering extra — the character or the filmmaker.

“Magazine Dreams” bludgeons viewers to point out off its sensitivity. Bynum piles on the distress in more and more bogus methods. As huge as Killian is, he has skinny pores and skin from the time a decide instructed him his deltoids have been too small. He’s too naïve to comprehend that posting a video of his coaching on-line will invite nasty feedback. After he crashes his automotive, a physician informs him that he wants surgical procedure. “I can’t have a scar,” Killian replies. “I’m a bodybuilder. Bodybuilders can’t have scars.” Maybe at a loss as to how one can resolve the drama in a much less hackneyed method, Bynum provides weapons.

This macho posturing was obvious when “Magazine Dreams” performed in January 2023 on the Sundance Movie Competition, the place Oscar prognosticators name-checked Majors as an awards contender. Actorly transformations into laconic, bulked-up, emotionally concussed giants are powerful to withstand. However the film grew to become broken items two months later when Majors was arrested and charged with assaulting and harassing his girlfriend on the time, Grace Jabbari. Majors, who denied the accusations, was discovered responsible on two of 4 counts that December and sentenced to probation and a yr of home violence counseling.

Now “Magazine Dreams” arrives in theaters a lot later than initially deliberate, with a brand new distributor and a few unlucky real-life echoes. The primary vital dialogue is spoken by a counselor (Harriet Sansom Harris), who tells Killian, “The state has mandated these sessions because they’re worried about your aggression.” (In a film pumped with testosterone, Harris and Bennett are very important presences; Taylour Paige has the one different vital feminine function, as a prostitute.) Liable to outbursts, Killian has a go-to risk: “I’m going to split your skull open and drink your brains like soup.”

The road is supposed to sound overwrought, however solely a screenwriter might be amused.

Journal Desires
Rated R for violence and abuse of anabolic steroids. Operating time: 2 hours 4 minutes. In theaters.