Two satires about class and equality — it's Triangle Of Sadness vs. Corporate Animals.
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Every episode of Tasteless, I take a critically acclaimed film and compare it to one that shares the same themes but didn't get the attention it deserves — and explain why that second movie is my pick. This week: two satires about class and equality. It's Triangle of Sadness versus Corporate Animals. This pairing is a no-brainer, a slam dunk, so easy I almost didn't do it. Of course these movies are the same. I'm here to advocate for Corporate Animals, which is phenomenal.
Triangle Of Sadness
A fashion model celebrity couple join an eventful cruise for the super-rich.
This movie came out in 2022. It has a 72% on Rotten Tomatoes. It was nominated for three Oscars — Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Directing, all for Ruben Östlund. It definitely deserved the nominations. There is nothing else like it besides other Ruben Östlund films, which are always interesting commentary that make you laugh at things you feel you shouldn't be laughing at.
Triangle of Sadness is enjoyable and ostentatious and absurd. It's definitely not for everyone, but the people it's for, it's really for. We meet Harris Dickinson as Carl, a male model. The look at the male model world in the first bit sets such a high energy. This grumpy brand versus smiley brand conversation — how smiley brands are cheap — it's such a good scene. I do wish more of the movie was like this portion. These expensive brands look down on you and in our minds, that's what people want from luxury, while the cheap brands are happy and fun and welcome everyone in. We see how kind of untrue these things are as the film unfolds.
There is something about Harris Dickinson's portrayal that is one of the most honest male roles I've seen. He never seems to be trying too hard. A scene in a fancy restaurant where he squabbles with his girlfriend Yaya, played by Charlbi Dean, over paying the bill — when he says it's uncomfortable to talk about money and gender roles, I don't think I've ever seen this conversation had before on film.
Yaya is such an interesting character. She seems rude and standoffish at first, but then you get it. You understand her viewpoint. Charlbi Dean is very charming — someone who could easily be cast as the hot bitch in a million movies but infuses Yaya with genuine likeability. Yes, she thinks about life in a transactional way, but she acknowledges her own manipulations. She has to protect herself.
I got out of this movie in the theater, was walking past a Lego store, immediately on her IMDB looking for what else she'd been in — and was shocked to discover she had recently passed. It casts a strange pallor over the film because I think this role would have led to many more for her. There is a way her character takes in the world that's interesting. She's not above it all — she's part of what's happening.
The upstairs-downstairs vibes are very clear. All the top cruise workers wear white, getting amped up because they're about to make a bunch of money doing what the rich people want. The actual workers a level below them cleaning toilets — all people of color. All the white-clad steward types a floor up are blonde and white. Vicki Berlin's Paula, the head of the fancy crew, so good — intense with the right balance of level head and kowtowing to ridiculous guest demands.
This guy Dimitri, played by Zlatko Burić, is the worst. A millionaire with his wife and his mistress. He's made so much money off fertilizer. One of the most realistic portrayals of getting stuck talking to someone at an event — when Carl and Yaya are at his table, you feel trapped there with them. And I love this old couple because they look so sweet but they make grenades. That's where they've got their money. When pirates later attack and a grenade lands right next to them, she's like, is this one of ours?
Any regular listener knows I hate barf in movies. So much. The kind of famous scene from this film is just people barfing up and down the halls. They're seasick, the food's bad. If this happened to me, I would off myself. I really struggled not to fast-forward when rewatching. There is plot in between the barfs, but God. Having to rewatch. I had a hard time even watching what led up to it because it's really well shot to make the viewer feel like they're moving, with the loud metal music, and then poo water starts pouring down the halls.
I also think Woody Harrelson is not needed here. His whole Marxist versus the Russian thing was the least interesting thread. It leads directly to the pirates overhearing them, but it's just not interesting. Looking at every other part of this film, this Marxist-communist thread as Woody Harrelson reads his diary about MLK Jr. — I don't need this.
The breakout star is Dolly de Leon as Abigail, someone who was working downstairs and is the only one with real survival skills when they're stranded. She can catch fish, start fire. All these rich people don't know what to do — they'd be eating sand without her. She shared that the role was initially going to be a man. It is so much better, so much more interesting, so much harder to digest that it's a woman, because if she were a man, she'd be an unquestionable villain. She takes immediate advantage of her abilities on the island — who can blame her — but she also uses it to have Carl come spend the night with her.
If she were one of the rich characters and Carl was poor, she'd be an absolute villain even as a woman. But she's one of the downtrodden, she's a woman with a lot of disadvantages in the power structure. So yes, she's doing bad things, but you can't blame her in some ways. There's something less icky about it — it's more palatable because she's punching up and not down. That doesn't make what she does to Carl okay, but it's interesting to watch and realize the biases I have myself — that I'm not as disgusted because she was previously in a position of less power.
It's on Hulu. Don't fast-forward through the barfs if you can help it because it is really well shot, but I'm thinking about them now and I'm upset.
Corporate Animals
CEO Lucy takes her staff on corporate team building in some underground desert caves in New Mexico. They get stuck there.
This came out in 2019. It has a 25% on Rotten Tomatoes. Movie critics have zero taste. This is absurd.
I have been dying to talk about this movie. I've had this comparison written down for a long time — I just haven't wanted to watch all the barfing of Triangle of Sadness again. This is the quintessential Tasteless where I'm telling you: if you like something, there's something else out there you've never heard of or that you passed over. And that something is Corporate Animals, which is phenomenal.
I wound up revisiting it because I was reading about Demi Moore's upcoming film The Substance, a body horror film about a fading celebrity. Demi is so good. She's so talented. Her book was fantastic — I always appreciate a celebrity memoir where their personality, their humanity shines through. Her book Inside Out really feels as though a friend is telling you stories. I am obsessed with her carpeted bathroom. I love what a family person she is, how close she is with her daughters, still there for her ex-husband Bruce Willis. She's an animal lover. She just seems great.
And what I really love is seeing someone who seems great playing a stone-cold bitch, which she does in this movie to absolute perfection. She is CEO of a company called Incredible Edible Cutlery, for which she has invented edible cutlery. The opening is this amazing in-world commercial — one of my favorite things, when there are in-world ads and videos — she's this sort of Bethenny Frankel, Gwyneth Paltrow, awful-politician, face-of-the-company type CEO talking about the incredible environmental benefits while reaping all the monetary rewards.
Demi plays this fully clueless woman so deadpan imperfectly. We do not give her enough credit for how funny she is. In this film she's making her employees do a company retreat, trust exercises, caving. Their tour guide, played by Ed Helms — who also produced the film — is like, okay, when we go in these caves, there are cave paintings, you can't touch them. And Demi is like, I'm actually one-sixty-fourth Acoma. And if you want to touch them, just check with me. I'll be assuming the role of tribal elder. And later: that's what leaders do. It's the white man's burden. Talking about herself. She listens to her own voice on audiobook.
They go spelunking. They get stuck. The rocks cave in, crushing Ed Helms. So they're all just in there. She's skulking around in the back of the cave with a face mask on. She has several really good physical comedy moments — another is when she's been found out to have been eating Ed Helms's arm because they do have to resort to cannibalism. She makes the funniest oops, I'm caught face when they find out she's been eating him. Cannibalism — what a blast.
She is mentoring Jessica Williams — I loved her in Booksmart as the teacher, she's a Daily Show correspondent, she's in Shrinking. She's a really perfect person for Demi to play off of. Demi tells her she can be the Beyoncé of business, among other very out-of-touch things to say to a young Black woman. The relationship between these two is the most fun to watch, because Jessica rides a fine line of wanting to keep her job but not wanting to put up with the out-of-pocket crazy things her boss says. They have this very tense dynamic where they're circling each other trying to figure out the opening to strike.
Demi's character is also sexually assaulting her other second-in-command, a young man played brilliantly by Karan Soni. He yells at one point, she's been Weinsteining me! This is tough — it's played for laughs but is taken seriously by his coworkers and by him. We first see his character kind of dealing with it, like, no, get away from me, I wish you hadn't done this, but then he has to stand up for himself. I think it's played with real maturity. It's a different kind of manliness.
He and Jessica have been basically pitted against each other by Demi — she's told them both they're up for a big VP position so they keep putting up with her behavior and go after each other instead of focusing on her. They're very fun as enemies but even better when they're working together.
Great pacing. It's an 86-minute movie, which is perfect. It makes really good use of this ensemble cast. Everyone is used effectively. Nasim Pedrad plays a more timid employee who starts having a panic attack in the cave, and Demi just tells her, your panic attack is not authorized. She's like, okay.
Jennifer Kim plays a more no-nonsense employee who strikes up an underground stuck-in-a-cave romance with Nasim that leads to a lot of bickering over the man's body they're eating. There's something oddly equal in this portrayal — this would be the heterosexual couple that hooked up in a scary movie at an inopportune time. I appreciate that it's these two women who aren't even necessarily gay, but they're in a weird situation, and it's not played for laughs that they're both women. That's not the joke.
Callum Worthy is a fresh-faced intern who gets a wound that's definitely infected. He is losing his mind, and because of this we get a cameo from Britney Spears. Like actual Britney Spears. The real Britney does audio. Callum thinks he's hearing Britney talk to him in the cave. And then his open gaping wound sings the song "Toxic." The main cast didn't even know she was involved until the film premiered at Sundance.
It is insane. It is incredible. Corporate Animals — that Rotten Tomatoes score is offensive. I don't know how you watch an 86-minute movie and be that much of a hater about it.
Director Patrick Brice also directed The Overnight, plus Creep and Creep 2. The writer Sam Bain wrote Four Lions and co-created Peep Show. That's a really interesting pedigree — very specific comedic sensibilities that work very well here. It's on Peacock, Shudder, Roku, Vudu — everywhere. Check it out.
Shared Themes
Triangle of Sadness and Corporate Animals are both satirical looks at class and gender that each take a wild turn. They exaggerate as any good satire does, but in a way that feels particularly modern — a cutting look at the spheres of social interaction we all deal with as we try to make a living.
Triangle of Sadness looks at the absurdities of not just the wealthy but of modern life, of the transactional nature of our existence. The conversation between Carl and Yaya that demonstrates how she views herself as a commodity, and the turn of events that makes Carl the commodity to Abigail on the island — they really perfectly bookend this film. Class and power are so linked. We want higher class because it comes with more power, and yet if you get the power without the class, you'll still be looked down on.
We see this in Yaya's final line. They're on the island. Spoiler. Yaya realizes there's an escape, a resort. She's basically like, I want to help you. Maybe you can come work for me. You can be my assistant. After all they've been through, she thinks Abigail will be happy to return to her previous station in life. Yaya believes they're returning to a world where she has the power and Abigail's reign can just be forgotten. It's absurd.
It's interesting when they land on the island and Paula is still trying to keep division — like, we have to make sure all the rich guests are happy. Yeah, actually you don't. You're stranded. There are no more rules. But isn't life easier when we feel like we have a path, a role, a script to follow?
In a 2022 interview with Vanity Fair, Östlund said: he wanted to portray them all as nice. He didn't want to make them ignorant or mean because the conventional way when we look at class is that the bottom is genuine and generous and the rich are egoistic and superficial. He didn't believe that's true. Until I read that, I hadn't clued in on that important fact. Almost all of these characters think they are being nice. No one is being nasty just to be nasty. No one is cruel. The movie itself is nasty, which makes it fun to watch, but it shows people who want to do the right thing, think they're doing the right thing, but just don't care enough to do it in a way that matters.
The best highlight is Vera, who sees all the helper people and says, I want you all to go for a swim. She's doing this to feel good — she feels she's doing a good deed — but for the workers, their whole day is thrown off. She's not trying to be mean. She's not trying to make anyone's day worse. But she's also not doing what this person wants. She's not respecting bodily autonomy. She's doing what she thinks they should want.
On the opposite end, Abigail is a working-class person with abilities beyond the rich chumps, who in another movie would be noble and kind-hearted. Instead she uses her power position to get the hottest guy on the island. There's something about it that's empowering, because there's something almost condescending in believing that someone working-class or poor is therefore more kind and self-sacrificing. It's almost infantilizing.
Corporate Animals uses its clueless CEO for laughs in a way that truly tickled me, but also felt brutally honest. When Demi Moore tells Jessica Williams she can be the Beyoncé of business, we know she's out of touch. But when she really takes a turn — tells all of them they were only hired because of affirmative action while saying she's doing this for them, brought them on as a gift from her heart — it's brilliant. She thinks she's doing them a favor as the beneficent white woman. I lifted you up so that just a little bit of the light that shines on me could fall on you. Just a little bit, not the whole thing. Aren't I wonderful?
Her employees know she's trash and put up with it together. They want the VP role to keep their jobs. They don't call her on it until they've all been trapped in a cave eating human meat for days.
The film's discussion of gender is where it really sings. When Karan Soni's character calls out Demi Moore's CEO for Weinsteining him, she is incensed at the accusation, eventually exclaiming: if women can't be as horrible as men, then what's f***ing feminism for?
She practices this faux feminism that's so common, and I love how the film digs into it because there are points where I kind of agree with her. And then she says something absolutely horrible and I'm like, wait, no. But there is this thing that feels kind of specific to — and is well skewered here — white women. Where we talk out of both sides of our mouths. When you look at all the white women voting for Republicans, you sort of see this. The CEO wants feminism because she wants to be on top, but she doesn't want equality. She wants power. She still wants to be better than some people while also bringing out the good she's doing for minorities and taking the praise and the corporate benefits that come with it.
What she says is outrageous and makes you gasp, but also if the news came out and said someone said this, you'd go: yeah, it's pretty crazy, but I'm not surprised. And that's the funniest thing — when it's so real. When you're laughing because you're just kind of uncomfortable.
She truly does not think she's wrong. She has genuinely created opportunities for minorities. She has a workplace team made up of women, older men, people of color. The two people up for VP are a young Indian man and a young Black woman. She touts it. She's proud of it. But as soon as she's cornered, she's screaming about affirmative action. And what a gift she gave these people though — it's a blessing to work for her. She is the ultimate white savior. And to see it from a woman is more complicated, because she's done things that are on their surface good. She has been held back in life because she's a woman. She has overcome that.
And now, can we blame her for wanting to act like all the men that were in this position before her? I'm not getting my student loans forgiven because some people were so mad at the idea that I would get $10,000 while they paid their own loans. They don't want other people to have it easier. There's something about that that's horrible. I think it's in all of us, at least a little bit. Some of us can overcome it and some can't. It's a very insidious piece of womanhood in the corporate world — the idea that there's not enough to go around.
Why You Should Watch Corporate Animals
Both films are fun, dark, biting — you never know what's going to happen. But there is a connection I feel in Corporate Animals that I don't feel in Triangle of Sadness, because Corporate Animals feels more grounded, even though it's a much more traditional goofy comedy. It feels more authentic.
Triangle of Sadness should be called Triangle of Madness. So much is going on, so much chaos with moments of tranquility — expensive restaurants, the middle of the ocean. I can relate to events happening, but it's all so heightened that it's hard to see these characters as real people. It goes to great lengths to connect with the audience, to get really down and dirty, but it feels disconnected from my own world.
I'm much more impressed by how Corporate Animals creates this ridiculous situation that also feels so possible. I've never worked in an edible spoon company, but I deal with some of the same dynamics. It takes the corporate world and completely skewers it, dumps these people in a crazy situation I'll never be in, but I can picture myself there. I can put myself in that cave.
Movies don't need to be realistic, but I love that I've had conversations not too far off from what is said about spelunking, cannibalism, and a Britney Spears hallucination. It's really well balanced to keep it in the realm of possibility.
Triangle of Sadness — man, that movie could have been cut down. It feels like several different movies. One really solid movie and two others. As this one big chunky movie, it loses the punch of its more powerful scenes. There are real stops and starts. There were things that weren't followed through the way I wanted. I loved the restaurant scene with Carl and Yaya. I loved seeing the discomfort of Carl having to take pictures of Yaya on the yacht, with Yaya admitting she doesn't even eat the pasta she photographs. I loved Abigail realizing the power she held with the chunks of octopus. But there's so much fat that those incisive moments get lost in the sauce. It's bloated.
Corporate Animals is pretty straightforward comparatively, but does some very interesting highlighting of gender equality, feminism, affirmative action. Its story is concise. It takes place in one spot, this claustrophobic cave, with a clear through line. We don't give enough credit to a film that gets in and out effectively. That is hard to do — to take the story you want to tell and cut the fat, make it the most lean, mean version. Which I really think Corporate Animals is.
And it works on multiple levels because you could analyze zero of what I've talked about and still laugh. It works completely on its surface as an Ed Helms office-type dark comedy. Demi Moore makes an incredible dick joke. People throw up, which is apparently moviegoers' number one source of laughter. It is not as confronting as Triangle of Sadness because it's a movie for the people, but then it happens to have this sly little message embedded in it if you want to look further. That's really my sweet spot for satire — to sort of Trojan horse it.
Big spoiler: Demi Moore is gruesomely killed by her downtrodden employees, in a move that — me, the viewer — I'm cheering for. They are not saints just because they work under a menace. They all work together to explode this woman's head with a rock. That is uncool. That is not good behavior. Amazing to watch. Bad, bad. But they turn on each other. They threaten to eat each other. They are just as messy as the villain. They make dumb decisions. They whine. None of them get out without blood on their hands.
Give Corporate Animals a try. That Rotten Tomatoes score is offensive. Demi Moore and the whole cast are so talented — it's a really great showcase of actors you should know and love. It's 86 minutes. It's on Peacock, Shudder, and everywhere else.
Hit me up at @tastelesspod on social media so we can talk about Demi Moore, edible cutlery, and why an infected wound singing Britney Spears is peak cinema.
