Review: Maddie’s Secret is out and it’s brilliant

I wish I’d seen John Early’s Maddie’s Secret  (Rating: ✭✭✭✭) with a large, noisy, receptive audience instead of on my computer at home.

There are some scenes in the comic’s brilliant directorial debut, which he also wrote, that are so tonally complex that I need to see how they play with a crowd. I’m not just talking about cringe comedy, or knowing, in-on-the-joke self-awareness.

What Early does is take serious subjects — including eating disorders and body dysmorphia — and deal with them in a stylized way that is simultaneously irreverent, gut-bustingly funny and adorably earnest.

The Search Party star plays the sweet-tempered title character, who works as a dishwasher with her friend Deena (Kate Berlant) at GourMaybe, an LA test kitchen for a food content influencer site.

After a vegetarian dish she’s dreamed up at home goes viral, her obnoxious boss Zach (Conner O’Malley) hires her to start making videos herself, pitting her against the company’s star creator, Emily (Claudia O’Doherty).

All is fine until two smug producers from the hit TV show The Boar — three guesses about what award-winning show is being parodied— come looking for a new chef to inspire its upcoming season. Anxious about her audition, Maggie falls back on her eating disorder, which she’s kept hidden from everyone, including her supportive husband Jake (Eric Rahill). When Jake discovers her on her knees in front of a toilet, she tells him she’s pregnant.

Early has lots of fun spoofing food trends and the banalities of influencer culture; how many times have we seen a character in a film or TV show hold up a phone, showing someone their viral numbers? Once Maddie checks into an eating disorder clinic at a hospital, he also gets to send up cheesy rehab films like Girl, Interrupted, complete with a bunch of bullying female inmates, stern hospital staff and a sweet, naive roommate (Vanessa Bayer, terrific).

And then there’s the likely root of Maddie’s problem: namely, her narcissistic mother (Kristen Johnston), whom she refuses to invite to her therapy.

Like David Wain’s Wet Hot American Summer properties (Early starred in some of the TV shows), Maddie’s Secret looks back affectionately at certain genre tropes. But it’s easier to make fun of horny teens (played by much-older actors) than it is serious issues like bulimia nervosa. And that’s where Maddie’s Secret proves fascinating.

The fact that the title character is played by a man gives the material a certain detachment. Early, outfitted in a gently-tousled blonde wig and prosthetic breasts, takes the character seriously — or about as seriously as you can in a Lifetime movie. (In a way, the film critiques how deadly serious issues can be packaged for middle-class mass audiences.)

And while there are some outlandish sequences, including an escape from the hospital that winks at similar scenes from thrillers, there’s also real insight into the idea of responsible adult role models.

The way Early moves from infantalized roommate Julie’s storyline to Maggie eventually dealing with her toxic mother makes clear dramatic sense.

Also, let’s face it: these days, drugs like Ozempic and fads like high-protein diets are ubiquitous. Despite advances, society still has contradictory ideas about appearance, food and self-worth.

The film’s one misstep comes from Berlant’s lesbian side-kick, Deena, who’s obviously in love with Maddie and will do anything to be near her — including check herself into the eating disorder clinic. Early and Berlant have collaborated for decades, but this narrative thread, even though it allows for a nicely choreographed, time-wasting dance sequence, belongs in another film.

Maddie’s Secret opens Friday (June 19) at the TIFF Lightbox in Toronto and other theatres in North America. Details here