‘Not Okay’ Review: How a Callow Influencer Learns to Love the Bomb
variety.comAmy Nicholson Aspiring journalist Danni Sanders (Zoey Deutch), the insecure villain at the center of writer-director Quinn Shephard’s scattershot comedy “Not Okay,” dresses the part of a contemporary Gloria Steinem, poaching the activist’s oversized glasses and face-framing blond streaks while adding her own modern accessories: rainbow-colored nails and jewelry, with a decked-out smartphone glued to her hand.
The look screams for attention. The problem is, even if Danni could manage to get noticed at her hyper-cool and competitive magazine, she’s got nothing valuable to say.When Steinem was at this age in her career, she hustled to write an exposé of the inner workings of the Playboy Club.
Danni believes, somewhat accurately, that today’s readers are more interested in writers who expose their own traumas. Alas, she doesn’t have any.
The upper-middle-class Manhattanite whines to her editor (Negin Farsad) that she even had the lousy luck to miss 9/11. (Her parents, played by Brennan Brown and Embeth Davidtz, had shortsightedly taken the family on a cruise.) To impress her office crush Colin (Dylan O’Brien), a callow pothead-turned-globe-trotting influencer with a grotty Pete Davidson-esque charisma, Danni concocts a phony invitation to a writers retreat in Paris.
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