When Mona (Julianne Moore) tells a friend she’s auditioned for a production of a show called Nosy Neighbors at their local theater, he admits he’s never liked musicals. They just don’t feel authentic, he explains, the way the characters are always bursting into song. Who does that?
Well, no one, not even in the musical-loving The Debut. But among the first of the film’s sly tricks is that it builds a world in which it feels like people could, where in fact it feels more unnatural that they don’t. Blessed with swing-for-the-fences brio and, in Moore and Paul Giamatti, a leading duo capable of navigating every one of those wild turns, the latest feature by Jesse Eisenberg makes for a frequently hilarious journey into the mind of an overly committed actor — even if, in the end, it seems unsure quite what it wants to say about the self-destructive pursuit of artistic perfection.
The Debut
The Bottom Line
A very good time, if not necessarily a profound one.
