Dumplin’ is a 2018 comedy/drama about a plus-size teenage daughter of a former beauty queen who signs up for her mom’s Miss Teen Bluebonnet pageant as a protest.
Some movies make no attempt to slip their message in under the guise of something else. Subtlety be damned. That must surely have been the mantra on the set of director Anne Fletcher‘s sometimes stirring, sometimes funny, often touching Dumplin’, a new comedy/drama on Netflix. It’s a well-made and earnest outing with a whole heapin’ helpin’ of inspiration and equally good feelings all tied together in a most predictable and well-used package ’cause sometimes, well, the obvious can still feel rewarding.
We meet Willowdean (Danielle Macdonald), an overweight teen who, at the start of the film is just a kid in the backseat of her overweight Aunt Lucy’s (Hilliary Begley) car, a woman who taught the girl her most important lesson: there ain’t no one better than Dolly Parton. Of course, Lucy passes away, leaving Willowdean to her small town celebrity mother Rosie (Jennifer Aniston), a former beauty queen who devotes herself to pageants and her work as a nurse at a nursing home to be the guiding light. With that in mind, a little off center about her mother’s ambitions and tired of the hubbub over beauty contests, Willowdean enters the latest, at first in protest, but it soon attracts other less conventional types to join, including the larger Millie (Maddie Baillio) and in-your-face feminist Hannah (Bex Taylor-Klaus). Can their efforts change the system?
Dumplin’ isn’t exactly swimming against the current, much of the story stuffed with the norms, from obnoxious bullies and nasties who at every turn put their energies into putting down Willowdean, or at least trying, to a host of skinny contestants who run around town in skimpy pink shorts. Willowdean’s made of Teflon though and with Lucy’s lasting influence and her best friend Ellen (Odeya Rush), who shares an equal passion for Dolly Parton and distaste for all thing superficial, fights the good fight. Again, this is not new stuff and the team behind this know it, instead working to make it a quality experience with some genuine heart rather than just another check the boxes ‘feel good about yourself’ movie.
What works best is the relationship between Willowdean and her mother, the pair not following a traditional track that sees mom judging her daughter before seeing the flower within. Rosie loves her daughter and surely does come to see her in a different light, but the movie wisely keeps this feeling genuine, avoiding the cartoony temptations it feels set up for (okay, except for that moment in all these movies where the parent accidently embarrasses their child in front of school by shouting out some voice of affection from the car that everyone then picks on … that has moss growing on it). Sure, some of it plays into the tropes of misunderstanding mothers and troubled teens, but it’s treated with a general sense of authenticity. Aniston has always had a flare for giving her comedy a touch dramatic zing and she delivers again here. Macdonald does an equally good job completing the circle.
There are some surprises as Willowdean advances on her quest, realizing that things are not as they seem and she might not be a resolved as she thought. There are some people who are also not what she thought as well. It’s got hope behind its message and while it surely will feel familiar, it delivers on its opening promise, treating its audience respectfully, even if it plays to the middle ground with a confident safeness about it. Recommended.