Last night HE’s own Bob Strauss described Promising Young Woman as “soooo good! The kind of thing that wriggles out in all kinds of unexpected directions, upending both genre expectations and the woke doctrine so many on this site are afraid of, yet never betraying its fundamental righteousness in the process. Complex, crazy, often funny as hell and as startling as it gets.”

I’m an admirer also, but “funny”?

Posted this morning: “Promising Young Woman has a striking edgy quality and is loaded with a certain kind of acrid, on-target attitude, but Mr. Strauss has unfortunately joined the p.c. throng that insists on calling it ‘funny.’

“Different folks & strokes, but as God is my witness and may He, She or It strike me dead with Vito Corleone’s bolt of lightning, there is NOTHING that even flirts with ‘funny’ in this film. Funny can be laugh-inducing or titter-worthy or it can be an internal reaction (i.e., LQTM), but Promising Young Woman radiates an absolute and unequivocal absence of the mental, spiritual and emotional ingredients that constitute ‘funny’ or ‘dryly amusing’ or ‘guffaw-worthy’ or however you want to define it.

“Because PYW is, at heart, driven or informed by a brusque, occasionally quite chilly, unmistakably damning, hanging-judge quality.

“’Funny’ can be a line or a mood or an attitude that feels like the first hour of a mescaline trip. It delivers a certain something-or-other potion that flips a certain switch and makes you go ‘hah-hah’ or ‘tee-hee.’ If you’ve ever known any professional comedy writers you know they rarely laugh, but at the same time they’ll sometimes say ‘that’s funny’ or ‘that’s smart, clever stuff but it isn’t funny.’ PYW, trust me, is no comedy writer’s idea of “funny.” Because it has no interest in the afore-mentioned switch, much less in flipping it.”