As played by DeWanda Wise, Margo is the lone sympathetic figure in Stella Meghie’s “The Weekend,” the only character capable of conveying emotion without a flat affect cloaked in grating irony. Alas, she’s just the foil for the film’s designated protagonist, Zadie, played by comedian and “Saturday Night Live” alum Sasheer Zamata, who hasn’t yet figured out how to make her endearing stage persona be adequately realized on film. The titular weekend is bookended by Zadie’s generic stand-up routine about her break-up, a la “Seinfeld,” which Zamata delivers with a deadpan hollowness that extends through her entire performance. Jerry Seinfeld was not a particularly great actor himself, and he was wise enough to gather a peerless ensemble that enabled him to fulfill the roles of straight man and frequent second-fiddle. Zadie refers to herself as the supporting actress in a romantic comedy, yet she’s clearly the lead in every sense, while everyone else is planted around her to affirm that she’s a riot, as alleged by Meghie’s misguided script.
The very notion of these characters willingly occupying the same space for an extended period of time, let alone breaking off into new pairs, is as improbable as the plot of Meghie’s 2017 teen drama, “Everything, Everything,” another contrived love story that threatens to devolve into horror fodder. When a good-looking stranger, Aubrey (Y’lan Noel), conveniently materializes at the B&B after leaving his longtime partner, Zadie leaps at the opportunity to walk through the woods with him at night, much to the understandable unease of Bradford (Tone Bell). Of course, Bradford is harboring more than mere concern for his ex, and when he reveals his true feelings late in the game, Zadie gives him a well-deserved dressing-down comprised of overwritten psychoanalyses that may have resonated had they been wittier (“You showed your true colors and they are an ugly palette”). Robi Botos’ jazzy original music, which I’d gladly listen to on its own, suggests an underscore for snappy Woody Allen banter, but the script’s attempts at clever, airy wordplay are leaden at best.
If Zadie had actually envisioned Bradford as nothing more than a friend, then she would’ve given Margo a break. Instead, she berates her with constant sour remarks at dinner, prompting Margo to momentarily leave the room. When she returns, the film sloppily jump cuts to everyone laughing, thus robbing the viewer of any indication as to how this foursome could possibly stand each other. Aubrey’s maddeningly chipper disposition signals that he’s either in denial about Zadie’s hurtful nature or he’s just an underdeveloped idealized love interest. Or both. In one of the film’s few amusing moments, Zadie’s penchant for unvarnished honesty causes her to tell Aubrey that his love life—more “damaged and pathetic” than her own—is a turn-on. This leads them to make a valiant attempt at having sex in the back of his cramped car, before finding that it’s ultimately impossible, a nice subversion of the usual cinematic lovemaking performed with seeming effortlessness on subway trains.
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