It should be the season of Harry Styles at the movies. The boy band member turned global solo pop superstar is making a go at film stardom with not one but two lead roles in Oscar-baity movies out this fall. But, sorry stans. Harry may stun when grooving out on the stage of Madison Square Garden, but his work as an actor leaves something to be desired.
Styles' natural charisma as a performer—of which he has plenty—has not yet translated to his work on screen in either Olivia Wilde's Twilight Zone-y thriller Don't Worry Darling or the period romance My Policeman. It may be that he's just simply not really right for either of the roles in which he's been cast. Or he just doesn't have the chops to hold his own against performers like Oscar-nominated Florence Pugh and Emmy-nominated Emma Corrin.
Styles seems oddly uncomfortable on screen, ill at ease with the task of a different person, but also let down by the movies around him, which can't seem to figure out what to do with his presence. They are both too captivated by the idea of Harry Styles as Dream Man, even when the plots want him to embody human failures.
Styles has long felt like a throwback to a different era of musician, with the Beatles-aping antics of One Direction and dad-rock vibes of his solo career. In Don't Worry Darling he plays Jack Chambers, who, at least at first, seems like a perfect imitation of a midcentury husband: Looks great in a suit and loves his wife, but we know deep down he probably/definitely is a secret misogynist. While Wilde's film takes place in what is clearly a fake, vague version of the 1950s, My Policeman is a faithful interpretation of the era.
Based on Bethan Roberts' novel, the drama, directed by theater veteran Michael Grandage, finds Styles playing Tom Burgess, a closeted gay man working as a copper in 1950s Brighton. Jumping back and forth in time, the film tells the story from the dual perspective of Tom's wife, Marion, a schoolteacher played in youth by Emma Corrin, and his lover, Patrick, a museum curator portrayed by David Dawson. From Marion's viewpoint, the audience witnesses a tentative courtship between this heterosexual couple where Patrick, midway through, is introduced as an acquaintance who becomes a close friend to both. Patrick's diaries, meanwhile, reveal that they had begun an affair long before Tom brought them all together.
For those who are wondering: Yes, there are sex scenes between Styles and Dawson, which are intense, passionate, amd feature brief nudity, but are not nearly as groundbreaking as Styles misguidedly thought in his Rolling Stone cover story. (Someone get Styles in a queer cinema course stat.) Like the rest of the movie, they are hampered by the fact that it's hard to get a grasp on just who Tom is outside of being, well, Harry Styles. Both Marion and Patrick imply that this man with whom they are infatuated is handsome, but coarse; not unintelligent, but a person of simple interests who truly believes that he can do right as a police officer. Patrick even calls him "ordinary."
Harry Styles’ Acting Flops Again in ‘My Policeman’ at TIFF
The problem is: There's nothing that seems ordinary about Harry Styles. He never disappears into the character being described and loses the alluring impish spirit that makes him so good at his day job. (It's why he actually makes sense in his brief Marvel cameo as a space adventurer named Starfox.)
As Tom, Styles gets the charming part right, but can't capture the emotional turmoil of a man whose profession conflicts with his innermost desires. It's never clear why Tom feels so strongly about being a policeman or how he grapples his belief in the law with the fact that homosexuality is illegal in London.