There are many words that you can use to describe The Laundromat. You could call it a disaster, a misguided attempt at intelligent satire or just a trainwreck in general. You could write extensive essays on how this film tries so hard with nothing less than diminishing returns. However, the best way to describe this film is with the informal but perfectly apt expression of “yikes”. I can’t recall the last time I saw something so deliriously absurd as this film, and considering the pedigree of the people behind it, I’m not inclined to offer it much kindness or try and defend some parts of it that are just beyond reproach. In all honesty, The Laundromat is a film that had a very good concept, as well as an interesting story that could’ve been made into something excellent. It had a director who has made some truly fascinating films over the course of his career, and a cast that absolutely any filmmaker would be fortunate to have anywhere near his or her production. The fact that The Laundromat goes so far while wasting every bit of potential it had, trying to be bold and profound but with minimal effort, is actually something to behold. This film is so poorly-constructed, it somewhere becomes impossible to ignore – entertaining, but for all the wrong reasons, there’s just no excuse for this absurdly inane attempt at satire that never lands much further than just being a low-point in the careers of nearly everyone involved.

An issue with The Laundromat is that it does absolutely everything so poorly, which includes being a bad film – it would’ve been so much better had this film actually been awful. However, it can’t even get that right. Steven Soderbergh has had his fair share of failures, but even those tend to be worthwhile. A director who has made some very good films in his career, you’d think he’d be above the laziness exhibited here. The problem with his work in this film is that it just never amounts to anything – he’s shown himself capable of remarkable audacity in the past and has very often managed to turn even the dullest of concepts into worthwhile films. The fact that he managed to take something with as much potential as a dark comedy about the Panama Papers, and turn it into one of the year’s most misguided attempts at humour is unfortunate. We can’t even defend this by saying that this was the director trying something new – he’s previously excelled with these kinds of darkly comical crime films (just consider The Informant! or Logan Lucky, which were resounding successes), and if anything, The Laundromat was familiar territory for the director. The film doesn’t work for a number of reasons, but its biggest mistake was that not only was it a bad film, but it was dreadfully boring as well. Had the director tries to assert a bit of personality into this story, and constructed it in a way that showed some ambition, we’d have likely have gotten a much better film – the quality of the story may not have existed, and some of the problems that I had with this film are embedded in the very fabric, but there’s no doubt that this film’s most inexcusable failure is its refusal to put in even an iota of effort.

Don’t let yourself be fooled by this film – The Laundromat is constructed as a film that is effortlessly easy to market. There are so many elements of the film that make it appealing, and the promotional pedigree of the film is almost more worthwhile than the final product. It is a flashy biographical about a real-world scandal that nearly all of us recall hearing about, as it only happened a few years ago. Even those of us who weren’t familiar with all the intricate details had heard about the Panama Papers, which should be sufficient in stirring up enough curiosity for this film to be relatively successful. It helps that it was made from the perspective of a comedy, and by someone who has found success with these kinds of subversive crime films, especially ones that broke down complex issues like Oceans 11 and its sequels, which made every viewer believe they too were an expert on conducting a heist by the end of it. The Laundromat, to its credit, is a film that does endeavour to make the viewer feel smarter, and as if they have an intimate understanding of complex issues (this was the same reason why The Big Short, which was clearly an inspiration on this film, was so successful ) through breaking down massive concepts that normally are restricted to people in those fields. The Laundromat is a dangerous film because it lures the viewer in through its promise of being an extravagant, hilarious satire, with flamboyance to spare. It’ll be foolish to think that most viewers will be drawn to this film through its bold appearance, which makes it even more troubling, because its all for show – below the surface, there’s nothing of note.

Another area in which The Laundromat tries to sell itself is on the cast. Who could resist seeing the likes of Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman, Antonio Banderas and many others in a swanky comedy that gives them the chance to play larger-than-life characters? Soderbergh has extracted some career highlights for many actors in his time, so its only natural that we’d be curious to see what he could do with these brilliant performers here. Unfortunately, as is a tendency with this film as a whole, he fails to bring out anything particularly good in his performers, or at least anything worth their talents. They range from serviceable to outright atrocious, and anyone who has seen even a moment of this film will know where everyone falls on this spectrum. I’ll be direct – I’m starting to grow weary of defending Gary Oldman. I tend to be a lot kinder to his tendency for excess than most people, based entirely on a fondness for some of his more subdued performances, which are slowly become rarer as he opts for these brash and showy characters that are gradually losing the nuance he brought to them earlier in his career. Boldness is replaced by vulgarity, which is most evident here. In his role of Jürgen Mossack, one half of the antagonist duo at the core of the film, Oldman is atrocious – its a performance that requires him to make use of every quality of his that has given him the reputation as someone who lacks subtletly, and he turns what could’ve been a compelling villain into nothing more than a cartoonish parody of the group of people it satirizes. Antonio Banderas shares most of his scenes with Oldman, and while he was far better (mainly because he seems to actually understand how real human beings act), its still not a particularly great, and is just one of many examples of how Soderbergh fails to make good use of his actors.

Meryl Streep is perhaps the only exception, but it would be difficult to find a performance where Streep actually falls victim to the material rather than rising above it. Even if you don’t subscribe to her status as the greatest actress of her generation, you can’t resist the idea of her being in a comedy (I’ve long believed she’s at her best when she’s having fun with a role), and The Laundromat offers her the chance to play an interesting character – in fact, from the outset, Streep was the reason why I thought this film may actually turn out to be better than expected. For the first part of the film, it seems to be true – Streep is relying on nothing more than her natural charms, playing just an ordinary woman who finds herself in an unfortunate situation. It’s simple, funny and very effective work from an actress who clearly doesn’t need to do too much to give a compelling performance. However, this all disappears with the arrival of Elena – suddenly, Streep occupies a second role as a Panamanian woman who finds herself equally as embroiled in the scandal. There is so much that can be said about this part of the film, and a lot of the discourse around The Laundromat has consisted of dissections of this character. Obviously, the most significant controversy is that Streep is playing a Latina woman, which may amount to brownface, depending on how one views the film. Yet, this isn’t even the only problem with the character – racial insensitivity is never excusable, and neither is the laziness that comes with it. Relying on cultural stereotypes for the sake of propelling your story isn’t only morally wrong, it’s artistically corrupt, and just ruins every bit of goodwill this film had. The character of Elena is a perfect representation of the film as a whole: misguided, borderline offensive and ultimately just deplorably boring.

The laziness of The Laundromat is exactly what prevents it from being anything that can be defended. There are some moments in it that suggest that something better could’ve been made with this material – it’s not like there hasn’t been a century of successful satirical cinema from which the film could’ve taken inspiration. The film’s biggest mistake is that it conceals its indolence behind a veneer of boldness, which momentarily distracts from how fraught this film is with issues. The humour in this film is rarely ever that successful, and it fails to understand that over-the-top characters and a dull story masquerading as resonant satire is not enough to make something as lifeless as this work. There are about a dozen ideas embedded within the film, and Soderbergh is hopelessly inadept at effectively exploring any of them – the constant shift between stories falsely creates the illusion that we’re getting a globe-trotting crime comedy that reaches all corners of the world, when in actuality we’re getting a bundle of vignettes that believe themselves to be an effective tapestry of the scandal, reduced to terms that the audience can understand, but turn out to just be shoehorned into an already convoluted mess of a film. This isn’t to say the Panama Papers scandal couldn’t make a great film – approaching it as a comedy was one of the few good choices the film made. Rather, it falters when we realize that what it is actually saying just isn’t all that compelling in the first place, which just prevents the film from amounting to anything at all.

There was so much potential in The Laundromat – it had Steven Soderbergh behind the camera, as well as an extensive cast that would make any film lover excited. The approach, which imperfect, was something that should have worked much better, not only for the sake of those involved but for the real-life story that actually demanded something that didn’t squander everything that makes it such a pivotal moment in the history of modern economics and global culture as a whole. The film is never able to capitalize on any of its promise, and in a move that can’t be defended, opts to underplay absolutely everything that would’ve made this a far superior piece of modern satire. It may not be traditionally awful, mainly because it has too much pedigree to be seen as a bad film. Rather, it’s just dull to the point where those who aren’t outright offended will likely just be completely bored with how this film approaches its subject matter. Oscillating between offensive and preachy (the ending is probably the worst part of the film, both in theory and execution), but mostly just hopelessly disappointing, The Laundromat is a dismal failure for a number of reasons. The core of the film is a story of how certain companies are created as “shells”, empty entities without any substance or relevance, other than to benefit the creator. Isn’t it strange how this can describe the film itself as well?