Fish and Cherries Productions

Summary: Kitt’s (Brie Larson) life has hit the skids: she’s been failed out of art school, she’s stuck living at home with her uber-hippie parents (Joan Cusack and Bradley Whitford), and she feels overall unfulfilled. But one day, after taking a corporate job, she comes across a strange invitation to a strange place where a strange man (Samuel L. Jackson) gives her the opportunity of a lifetime: owning her own unicorn. To prepare for it, she has several tasks to complete, including building a stable from scratch and other bizarre tasks that force her to draw from her repressed creative side. She even strikes up a friendship with a hardware store employee named Virgil (Mamoudou Athie), who is more than tolerant of her quirky nature. However, the world at large does not generally support flights of fancy, making Kitt’s sparkly life a very uphill battle.

Review: Unicorn Store is a bizarre yet charming flick about rediscovering your inner child and never letting your passion die… even if the entire world dumps on you for it. Kitt starts out the movie with a very artsy college student mentality and even when she’s toned it down, the world does not warm to her whimsy. Case in point, when she pitches an idea for a vacuum cleaner with glitter and paint splash designs (I want to say that the buyers could decorate it themselves, but maybe that’s just what I’d want), it’s passed over for a bland vacuum that has an attractive model standing next to it. That basically sums up the film as a whole, full of color and mad creativity, but that might turn off some of the more stuff-shirted viewers.

This movie is Brie Larson’s directing debut and I will say this, she certainly has a flair for quirkiness. Everything in this movie has an offbeat yet sincere feel to it, which speaks to an artist’s soul somewhere in her. Her acting, though, was a little too subdued for my taste. I’ve seen her in roles where she can really cut loose and I don’t think this played to her strengths. I will say that I got a kick out of Samuel L. Jackson as the Willy Wonka-esque unicorn salesman. Just a huge delight playing against his normal type.

I don’t know if this will be everyone’s cup of tea and I’m not sure I can explain why. It celebrates creativity and femininity and much that should be lauded, but some might say that it disappears into its own quirkiness. Still, I stand by a belief that the world is better for having Unicorn Store in it; after all, its message is ultimately good and doesn’t contradict itself, even if it does temper it with a bit of realism. At the very least, it’s getting Brie Larson more exposure and I can’t see how that’s a bad thing.

Fun Tidbit: Brie Larson has a sweet story of meeting Samuel L. Jackson on the set of this movie. As a token of friendship, he gave her the lightsaber he got from Lucasfilm during the Star Wars prequels. Yeah, the one with “bad motherf***er” engraved on it.