‘Forbidden Fruits’ review: A shallow satire of exhausting redundancy
If there’s anything original in the Texas-based dark comedy, it’s repeated so many times that it ceases to become compelling.
Forbidden Fruits is an attempt at high-minded societal commentary that is buried by the weight of its own idiosyncrasies, and doesn’t offer enough evidence to indicate that it’s in on the joke. While at first the nostalgic tribute to America’s mall culture, which has begun to rapidly deteriorate, is somewhat endearing, the film rarely capitalises on the opportunities of its premise, and often chooses to iterate itself to a laborious point. A film doesn’t need to proclaim itself to belong to a specific genre, but Forbidden Fruits is too obnoxious to be a straight comedy, too plot-heavy to be effective satire, too blunt to be avant-garde, and too light on thrills or scares to work as a genre endeavour; it’s just a mess.
Forbidden Fruits is set in a shopping mall in Dallas, Texas, where the elegant, snappy employees of the Free Eden clothing shop essentially run the building’s hierarchy. The ‘Queen Bee’ of the group is Apple (Lili Reinhart), whose co-workers Fig (Alexandra Shipp) and Cherry (Victoria Pedretti) treat her every word as if it were gospel. Apple claims to be a highly independent free thinker who demands that her crew is glamorous, yet completely feminist, aspiring to the type of ‘girlboss’ internet persona that fell out of fashion a decade prior. Although Apple is opposed to interacting with anyone else in the mall, as she views them all to be ‘lesser’ in one regard or another, the food court worker Pumpkin (Lola Tung) impresses her enough to get a job at Free Eden.
The twist that comes into play is the reveal that ‘the Fruits’, as they are referred to, are part of a mysterious cult of sorts, and are responsible for placing curses on prospective boyfriends and anyone else who could do them wrong. Although the film is littered with references to internet slang and early 21st-century cultural terminology, there’s no consistency as to which era is being homaged: the girls also worship the spirit of Marilyn Monroe, and Fig has an obsession with Psycho. The timeline being ambiguous isn’t as distracting as the lack of momentum within the story; the petty feuds that emerge between Apple and Pumpkin are so consistent that it’s hard to determine what is in jest and what is narrative progression.
The notion of being sucked into a cult-like friendship circle is nothing new when it comes to female-fronted comedies, as Forbidden Fruits draws extensively from Mean Girls and The Craft, both of which are directly mentioned. The issue is that there’s not enough context for what the Fruits do to make them seem particularly threatening, other than an opening montage that shows the other mall workers following their every whim.
The lack of interactions with anyone outside of this closed circle means that the open plasticity of their conversations takes centre stage, and it moves past any sort of ironic implications to be downright grating. After the third or fourth mention of a “hot girl jog,” a “Hillary Duff” collab, or arbitrary rules about having sex on Wednesdays, it’s hard to imagine why Pumpkin would ever be so intent on joining the group.
It’s hard to fault the actors for their performances, given that there’s nothing substantial going on with any of the characters for them to have anything to work with. The decision to reveal such open tension between Apple and Pumpkin early on makes the eventual divisions that emerge in the group completely expected, and a few third-act twists take the already absurd premise into cartoonish territory.
The only way for Apple’s shallowness to seem influential is to render her as dull-minded as possible, which leads to unfortunate characterisations of Fig and Cherry. Pedretti’s character is depicted as being unintelligent to a drastic degree, to which Tara Reid in Josie and the Pussycats is the only real comparison. As for Shipp, the brief glimpses of personality that shine through make it all the more disappointing when Fig is directed to make stupid choices for the sake of the plot.
The phrase ‘cult classic’ has been misused, as it takes a niche audience time to develop their affection for a film that may have been underrated upon release. The issue with a film like Forbidden Fruits is that it marches to the beat of its own drum, so there’s no mistaking its intentions. The desire to be immediately claimed as a cult hit reeks of artificiality, as the film is engineered to be seen as cool and offbeat. Forbidden Fruits is a slog to get through, and it talks down to an audience who might have appreciated a similarly styled film that had something more thoughtful on its mind.
