Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Mainstream’ on VOD, Gia Coppola’s Annoying Satire of Social Media Superstars

Now on VOD, Mainstream is the second directorial effort from Gia Coppola after 2013’s well-received Palo Alto, which showed that behind-the-camera talent, be it inherited by nature or nurture (note: I’m joking, it’s totally nurture), runs in the family. Of course, considering Sofia and Francis Ford’s output, not every movie they made is a winner — he said, nodding in the general direction of The Godfather: Part III — which may be a relevant point when addressing this new movie, a wannabe-withering social media satire.

MAINSTREAM: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Frankie (Maya Hawke, Stranger Things star and daughter of Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke) exists in Hollywood, and I’d normally say “lives�� but she doesn’t really seem to be “living” much. She tends bar at a cheesy nightclub called Magic Alley where she’s nitpicked by her condescending manager and occasionally forced to wear a baby costume for an awful, awful stage skit. Her mom leaves a voicemail saying since she isn’t taking classes and is just “making weird videos” and posting them on the internet, she should just move home. (Thanks for the exposition, Frankie’s mom!) Frankie doesn’t call her back. Can’t say I blame her.

One fateful day, Frankie uses her smartphone to film a man in a mouse costume handing out cheese samples. He is *checks IMDb* Link? His name is Link? Are you sure? I don’t remember his name being “Link.” (I don’t remember hearing his name at all, to be honest.) Anyway. He’s Link (Andrew Garfield), and he wonders why she’s filming him. She says she’s not filming him, she’s filming how there’s a terrific painting on the wall above him and passersby just pass right on by it. So he drops his plushie mouse head and starts very loudly pointing out the painting to people and generally being an annoying street lunatic, and he draws a crowd and her video gets like, so many likes and views, plink plink plonk blonk go the little animated hearts on screen. As they say, this could be the beginning of a bee-yoo-tiful friendship.

So who is this “Link” guy? Well, he’s a bleach-blond beach-bum type with a farmer’s tan who looks like he rarely showers and sleeps on a cruddy lounge chair by a motel pool every night. He’s an enigma who appears to own approximately half a shirt, and I picture him living on Pop Tarts and Kool-Aid powder. He’s very anti-cell phone and when Frankie asks why, he shoots back, “Why don’t you smoke crack?” Wise, or just a wise guy? When he loses his mouse-suit job he just gets a job wearing a cockroach suit for an exterminator company, but he soon doesn’t need that job either, because he soon finds another avenue for his performative obnoxiousness: the internet. The IRONY is so rich, isn’t it, Mr. Link (note: internet term! I get it now!), The Man Who Hates Cell Phones!

Frankie films him wearing nothing but a very large prosthetic penis and harassing people on the street until he gets arrested, and “Link” becomes a viral star. He justifies such shenaniganry by saying he’s actually satirizing the influencers who use social media to make big money by propagating junk culture and pranking people, which is like super smart and not at all some serious galaxy-brain justification horse manure. Soon enough, Frankie has recruited fellow bartender Jake (Nat Wolff) as a writer and branded Link as “No One Special” under the guise of a manager (Jason Schwartzman) who says crap like, “You won’t be sponsored by Subway, Subway will be sponsored by you.” They launch an online game show that No One Special hosts, and it’s loud and ugly and stupid satire of loud and ugly and stupid internet things and hey, guess what, it’s a smash hit, so are these people becoming exactly what they hate? Oh, right — Frankie and No One Special are shtoinking, and Jake is jealous. That’s also happening.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: A Face in the Crowd will always be the gold standard for stories about nobodies who lose themselves when they become somebodies. By comparison, Mainstream is the made-in-China toxic plastic standard for such things. (And as far as Social Media Movies For Our Time go, The Social Network still remains, sadly, all too relevant.)

Performance Worth Watching: I’m torn between admiring Garfield for his writhing, full-bodied, mega-gusto’ed shamelessness and being utterly icked out by his ultimately vacuous characterization of Link, who has so much OTT charisma he becomes anti-charismatic, a conglomeration of grotesque mugging, idiotic costumes and grating, screeching, ululating loudness. Go away please and thank you!

Memorable Dialogue: Frankie to Link: “So you’re a cockroach now.”

Sex and Skin: None, thank god.

Our Take: I can’t say this enough: Who cares. Mainstream is full of characters who are empty vessels at the service of a borderline-incoherent message. Who is Frankie? Why did she go to Hollywood? What are her non-vague dreams and desires? Where is she from? Does she have any friends? How’d she get here? Take classes? What classes? I could ask the same of Link and Jake, except Link surely seems to be hiding something and Jake is the type who would never hide something and therefore feels justified in exposing the one who’s hiding something. I repeat emphatically: Who cares.

So to answer the question posed above, yes, of course they become exactly what they hate, except it’s actually what they really wanted, because they didn’t realize that what they really wanted was exactly what they hate. Cue a scene in which Frankie realizes all of the above and runs to the bathroom and vomits animated emojis into the sink in a moment of all-caps SYMBOLISM. The irony just eats itself alive until the movie becomes SYMBOLISMISM, a grossly self-aware hyperventilation on the evils of the internet age and social media — circa about six years ago, considering those very things have since given rise to a disturbing strain of violent anti-democracy. So the movie isn’t just shrill and grating, it’s also irrelevant. Womp womp.

Our Call: SKIP IT. This is me sad-tromboning this movie right outta town.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Where to stream Mainstream