ZOLA: A TWITTER TALE FOR THE TWITTER AGE

Zola is a 2020 American Dark Comedy Crime Film directed by Janicza Bravo and co-written by Bravo and Jeremy O. Harris. It is based on a viral Twitter thread from 2015 by Aziah "Zola" King and the Rolling Stone article that came as a result, "Zola Tells All: The Real Story Behind the Greatest Stripper Saga Ever Tweeted", written by David Kushner. The film stars Taylour Paige, Riley Keough, Nicholas Braun, and Colman Domingo, and follows a part-time stripper who is convinced by her new friend to go on a roadtrip to Tampa, Florida, in order to earn money, but gets in way over her head.

Zola premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2020, where it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize. It was later released theatrically in the United States on June 30, 2021, following a year delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The film received positive reviews from critics and earned a leading seven nominations at the 37th Independent Spirit Awards, including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Screenplay with two wins for Best Female Lead for Paige and Best Editing for Joi McMillon.

The film has grossed $5.2 million domestically off of a $5 million budget, and currently has an 88% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with an Audience Score of 68%, and it has a Metascore of 76, with a User Score of 6.2, and 6.5/10 on IMDB (with over 15,000 ratings).

What can I say about this film? It was entertaining. The premise was absolutely wild, but then again, so is the alleged story itself. And speaking of the story, it was one that almost beggars belief, which I think, was part of its allure. This movie felt like a big budget modern Blaxploitation film, and I don’t necessarily mean that to be an insult. The production design fit this film perfectly, bringing a grittiness to the look of the film.

The screenwriters employed a unique storytelling style in the telling of this tale, and while I don’t think it would have worked with your typical film, I do think it worked pretty well with this one. The dialogue was what I like to call, “delightfully ghetto”, and I think it fit the characters extremely well. Taylour Paige was absolutely outstanding, and though I know you don’t win top tier awards for films like this, she was THAT good in this movie. Riley Keough was good as well, but we’ve seen her play characters just like this one before (see American Honey), so we already know she can channel “trailer park chic”.

The one “big ticket issue” I had with this film was the way it ended. I felt like the movie could have been a few minutes longer and the writers could have put a nice little bow around this thing. Instead the film ends quite abruptly, almost to the point where you don’t realize you’re watching the last scene until credits begin to appear. And with the film only being 90 minutes long, there was time for a few more scenes to truly bring everything full circle.

Saying this film is bananas is an understatement. It reminds me of “Spring Breakers” in that regard, except Spring Breakers seemed to take itself way too seriously, whereas Zola seems to understand exactly what it is from the very beginning, and the writing and the acting in Zola is far superior. It’s a movie full of laugh out loud moments and it truly feels like a comedy for the social media age. The movie even holds up upon a second watch, which I think is the true test of films like this.

Zola is available on Tubi, Redbox, PLEX, Pluto TV and Vudu for free. It is available on fubo TV with a subscription and is available on YouTube, Apple TV, Google Play Movies and Amazon Prime Video for $3.99.