I watched Emilia Pérez and I hated it. 1/5
I don’t know what I expected from Emilia Pérez, but I can tell you what I didn’t expect: a two-hour onslaught of some of the worst musical numbers I’ve ever heard, bizarre storytelling choices, and an overall experience that made me wonder if this was all some elaborate joke. Sadly, it wasn’t.
Directed by Jacques Audiard, Emilia Pérez is a film that seems to have baffled its way into critical acclaim, despite being an absolute mess. The premise is interesting—a Mexican cartel leader fakes his death and transitions into a woman—but the execution is so completely off-the-rails that it ends up feeling like a parody of a prestige film rather than an actual one. This is one of those movies that thinks it’s groundbreaking and important, but instead, it’s just pretentious and exhausting.
The Music is an Abomination
Let’s start with the biggest issue: the music.
I’m not exaggerating when I say the songs in Emilia Pérez are among the worst I’ve ever heard in a musical. They aren’t songs so much as they are lists of things, spoken over a forgettable, generic score. At no point do any of them feel like fully developed compositions—just rambling, disjointed monologues set to music. You know how sometimes people joke that certain musicals feel like they were written by AI? Well, this is what that would actually sound like.
It’s as if the filmmakers decided that actual lyrics and melodies were unnecessary, so instead, we just get characters singing things like “I want to be free / The cartel is bad / I have regrets / Here is a random memory” over and over again. There’s no poetry, no structure, no build-up—just clunky exposition set to dull music.
One of the worst offenders is “Papá,” a song in which a child sings about how her father smells like Diet Coke, mezcal, and guacamole. I wish I were making this up. This is supposed to be an emotional moment, but instead, it’s laughably bad. And when a musical can’t even pull off sad kid singing about their parent, you know you’re in trouble.
A Story That Can’t Decide What It Wants to Be
Beyond the terrible music, the film suffers from an identity crisis. It’s part crime thriller, part social drama, part musical, and part bizarre fantasy, and none of it fits together in a way that works. The pacing is completely off—sometimes it feels like a slow-burn character study, and other times it jumps into full-blown melodrama with no warning.
The main character, Emilia, is supposedly a feared cartel leader-turned-redeemed woman, but we never get a real sense of who she actually is. The film wants us to sympathize with her, but it also never lets us forget that she was a violent criminal. The movie never decides whether it’s about redemption or just deception, and that makes it incredibly hard to care about what’s happening.
To make matters worse, the dialogue feels unnatural, and the Spanish-language script was reportedly written in French first and then translated—without the help of native Spanish speakers. And it shows. The dialogue is stilted, awkward, and at times just downright weird. It’s as if someone ran it through Google Translate and called it a day.
A Wasted Cast and Questionable Performances
The cast of Emilia Pérez features some talented actors, but they’re given so little to work with that most of them are completely wasted. Zoe Saldaña plays Rita, a lawyer who helps Emilia disappear, but her character is so flat and lifeless that you forget she’s even in the movie half the time.
Selena Gomez is… there. She plays Emilia’s wife, Jessi, but her Spanish is so stilted and awkward that it takes you out of the movie completely. She delivers her lines like she’s reading them off cue cards, which makes the supposedly dramatic scenes unintentionally funny.
And then there’s Karla Sofía Gascón as Emilia herself. While she does bring some presence to the role, the movie never fully develops her character beyond broad strokes. We’re supposed to believe she’s this fascinating, complex figure, but we never really see it. Instead, we just get a bunch of montages, bad musical numbers, and surface-level dialogue that doesn’t dig deep into her transformation.
Pretentious, Overlong, and Completely Misguided
For a movie that clearly wants to be deep and meaningful, Emilia Pérez does an incredible job of feeling completely empty. It throws in every possible theme—crime, identity, redemption, love, justice—but never actually explores any of them in a meaningful way. Instead, it relies on over-the-top symbolism and way too much self-importance.
And worst of all? It’s boring. For a film about cartel crime and identity transformation, there is shockingly little tension, drama, or emotion. It just drags on, scene after scene, with no real momentum.
By the time the ending rolls around (which is as unsatisfying as the rest of the movie), I wasn’t even mad—I was just relieved it was finally over.
Final Thoughts: Who Thought This Was a Good Idea?
I genuinely do not understand how Emilia Pérez has been so well-received in some circles. Is it because it’s a “serious” musical? Because it’s about important topics? Because people are too afraid to admit that the music is awful and the story is a mess?
Whatever the reason, I can confidently say that this is one of the worst musicals I’ve ever sat through. It’s pretentious, joyless, and filled with some of the most bizarre, lazy songwriting choices I’ve ever encountered.
If you want to see a movie about identity, crime, and redemption, there are about a hundred better options. And if you want to see a good musical? Well, anything would be better than this.