Brie Larson already had a number of credits to her name when she landed her first lead role in the feature film Short Term 12 in 2013. Starring as a supervisor for troubled teens in a group home, Larson received dozens of award nominations from critics associations and cemented herself as an actress to watch. She proved that attention wasn’t unwarranted with the heart-wrenching 2015 drama Room in which she played a woman held captive in a single room for several years before escaping with her young son. Room was released to widespread public and critical acclaim, winning over half of the 131 awards it was nominated for. Larson was highly praised for her powerful and nuanced performance, and she earned her very first Oscar win for Best Actress at just 26 years old.
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In the several years since Larson received the most sought-after recognition in the industry, she has gone on to prove just how versatile she is as an actress. In opposition to her previous appearances in emotional small scale projects, she was then cast in the coveted role of Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers in the MCU’s massive 2019 superhero blockbusters Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame. Though Larson received a torrent of internet backlash from trolls leading her to question how long she will remain as Captain Marvel, the movie earned praise from critics and was a smash hit at the box office, becoming the first female-led superhero flick to rake in a billion dollars. Despite the hate she has received, Larson will be returning to the franchise in the 2023 film The Marvels, and is suspected to appear in Avengers: Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars in 2025. She is also set to star in Fast X, the upcoming Fast & Furious installment.
Outside of her prolific career as an actress, Brie Larson has also tried her hand behind the camera. In an interview with IndieWire, Larson described her childhood writing and filming movies in her garage. She said, “I’ve just made movies my whole life … I guess this has been a part of my way of expressing myself for a very long time.” While waiting for the right feature to come along, Larson took her hand at directing two short films —The Arm in 2012 and Weighting in 2013 — both of which were well-received. It wasn’t until 2017 that she released her feature directorial debut with the whimsical fantasy comedy Unicorn Store, in which she also starred.
The Story of Unicorn Store
Netflix
In an interesting twist of fate, Brie Larson auditioned to star in the film Unicorn Store several years before its eventual release, but didn’t land the part. At one time, Rebel Wilson was attached to the project with Miguel Arteta directing, though it never came to fruition. Larson then jumped at the chance when she was approached to direct. “It really excited me because the script resonated with me,” she told Variety, going on to detail the work she put into the project while filming the MonsterVerse flick Kong: Skull Island. “I’d be sitting in the jungle on a log with a pen in my hand, mapping things out,” she shared.
Unicorn Store is a truly one-of-a-kind film. It follows a disillusioned young woman who has been kicked out of art school, moved back in with her parents, and has found herself in need of a “real job.” Kit has a vibrant personality tinged with naivety; a woman who tracks glitter wherever she goes; she would prefer to remain in her bubble of childlike wonder rather than live the “adult” life her parents — adorably quirky camp counselors played by Joan Cusack and Bradley Whitford — want for her.
Soon after landing a temp job at a PR firm, Kit receives an invitation to The Store, where she comes across The Salesman, otherwise known as Samuel L. Jackson in a hot pink suit with tinsel in his hair. He offers Kit the opportunity to have what she’s always wanted: a real live unicorn. However, before Kit can be rewarded with her very own unicorn to love her forever, she must become “the right sort of girl” and is given a series of tasks to complete to prove herself worthy. During the process, she becomes friendly with a hardware store employee turned carpenter Virgil, played by up-and-coming actor Mamoudou Athie. Athie has repeatedly praised Brie Larson’s directing and acting and compared the feeling of Unicorn Store to Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. With the most grounded perspective of all the characters in the film, Virgil helps Kit believe in her real-world abilities and validates her ethereal outlook on life.
Themes
Brie Larson told The Los Angeles Times regarding Unicorn Store: “I feel like this film is like an abstract self-portrait of myself.” It’s not surprising then, that many of the themes the film tackles are common to young women in general, and especially those pursuing creative career paths. She added, “It’s totally a metaphorical journey of not only my experience of being an actor and learning how to be true to myself in the face of people telling me no or that I was wrong or telling me to change, but it was also directly my experience directing this film.”
There were several instances in Unicorn Store where the feeling of being told how to present oneself to be accepted or successful was tackled, particularly through the character of Kit’s pervy boss Gary, played by Hamish Linklater. At one point in the film he says to her, “There’s a superstar deep, deep, deep inside you there, somewhere. We just need to take all these layers off and let her out of there.” And isn’t that exactly what every woman in entertainment has been told? Eventually Kit comes to realize that she doesn’t have to live by the words of men like Gary and her highly-respected hack of an art professor. Upon this realization, she tells Virgil: “It’s these dudes that I just tiptoe around because I think that they know so many things. They don’t. I know things.”
Speaking of knowing things, Unicorn Store also tackled the idea that being too girly or feminine shouldn’t be seen as a negative trait, which it so often is. Just because a woman likes to wear sparkles or enjoys drawing cartoons doesn’t mean she’s any less intelligent, talented, or capable than a man in a suit. Kit proves this just by her mere existence as a woman overwhelmingly giddy about building a stable fit for a unicorn in her backyard who can also pull off a stellar marketing proposal for a vacuum cleaner — complete with confetti.
Larson continued her conversation with the LA Times, stating, “There’s this kid in me that doesn’t have a voice, there’s this innocence inside of me, and this dreamer and this hope and this optimism that resided inside of me that was dying. Kind of everything I was doing was about digging into the darkness and revealing the darker parts of our world. Which we need to see. But I also think, at least for myself, that I need to remember the other side of it too, and that they work together. And to not feel repulsed by innocence or happiness.”
Unfortunately, many critics didn’t share her point of view, and it became quite clear that girlish innocence and fantastical joy expressed by a grown woman didn’t appeal as a serious film subject to most.
Negative Reviews
Though there were some positive reviews about Unicorn Store and Larson’s capability as a filmmaker, the response to the film can only be considered mixed at best. The Independent called it a “joyous celebration of femininity,” Entertainment Weekly dubbed it a “candy-coated, willfully quirky wisp of a film,” and NPR said the project is “weird and funny, sweet and fearless, and it’s another opportunity to see a fine young actress at work.” However, most of the negative reviews for Unicorn Store pointed to the film’s whimsy and “immaturity”— perpetuating the exact stereotype that Larson addresses within the narrative: willful innocence and cheerfulness, whether in theme or person, is typically less respected than the mere appearance of seriousness. Unicorn Store’s “belligerent whimsy,” as The Ringer called it, is understandably not to everyone’s viewing tastes. Though it’s a shame that the film has been repeatedly chastised for the elements that were used intentionally to prove a point.
However, it seems that Larson was well-aware of how her debut feature might be interpreted by others. She told IndieWire, “I know that the film isn’t for every person, but I hope for the people that I did make it for, it resonates with them as a way of saying, ‘We need these voices that are unique and different’ … We should all be allowed to have our dreams, even if they make us look a little crazy.”
There is a scene in Unicorn Store in which Kit has a heart-to-heart with her mom after coming to terms with the feeling that she has continuously let her family down by not being successful enough. Cusack’s Gladys turns to her and says, “The most grown-up thing you can do is fail at the things you really care about.” That feels like not only a poignant message within the narrative, but also a metaphor for making the film in the first place. There are certainly a multitude of themes tackled within this movie, as several reviews pointed out as a pitfall, but each one seems deserving of attention. To be fair, the choice between creative pursuits and getting a “real” job, the negative connotation of being too feminine, failing to live up to familial expectations, and misogyny in the workplace, is a full plate for a 90-minute movie about a unicorn to carry. But, as this film was somewhat of a self-portrait for Larson, it makes sense that those themes are all present. As all young, creative, professional women can attest, they are all inextricably present in our lives. Somehow Larson created a story about a fantastical magical creature that offers at least some of its viewers an earnest, and very real, feeling of camaraderie. Despite its glitter-covered presentation, the message remains poignant. If only Unicorn Store’s underlying message were more easily recognized beneath its more obvious metaphors, the film might receive greater appreciation.
Larson summed up her experience directing Unicorn Store, saying, “There’s a real vulnerability that comes with directing a film, that comes with saying, ‘This is my point of view, this is how I view the world, and it’s meaningful to me and I hope it’s meaningful to other people.’” She continued, “My hope was, whether the movie is good or not, it’s another piece on the board. People can look at it and either go, ‘This movie is amazing, I want to do that,’ or you can go, ‘This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen, if she can do this, then I can definitely make a movie.’”
If nothing else, the mere creation of this film champions the idea of embracing who you are in the face of haters telling you that you suck, and putting your voice out there anyway. Kit succeeded in that. So did Brie. And maybe many more young women will come to believe that after watching Unicorn Store.
