Black Swan was a completely pointless movie.

“Pointless” is not to be confused with “plotless”; it certainly had a plot, just not one worth giving a shit about. Natalie Portman weeps and weeps as she portrays a ballerina who has invested her life in pursuing her dream that’s more likely her domineering mother’s—a former ballerina who had to throw that life away to give birth to little Natalie. But when all seems to be going smoothly, a wrench is thrown in the works by way of Mila Kunis, a sexy, dangerous ballerina who smokes cigarettes, rolls E, and smooches strange men.

So Natalie, a spineless, virginal doormat of a girl must overcome her frigid innocence to dominate the role of the black swan—she plays both, white and black, though, never having seen the ballet, I don’t know if that’s standard. The black swan role requires Mila-style sexiness and Natalie is threatened by her presence.

Now in case you’re an idiot and you’ve already forgotten what’s going on, Aronofsky jabs you with this duality theme through abundant symbolism. Get your pens out, freshmen film students, here’s the final paper to your intro course. Black and white, black and white, black and white. Natalie’s pretty much always wearing white, Mila black, Mila hands Natalie a black negligee to wear when she’s trying to coax her into ‘badness’, the director’s whole fucking apartment is black and white, and on and on. When Natalie jerks it, behind her is a plush little black swan, in the bathtub are little carvings of white swans. Further, to really drive home the idea of fragmented identity: mirrors. Here are some mirrors, here are some more. Oh look, everybody’s bodies are divided or scattered or multiplied because mirrors are fuckin’ crazy like that. Ya get it yet? Hmmm? Yeah?

Behind all the wacky bullshit is… really, nothing. Take away the smokescreen of substanceless Kafkaesque nonsense and you have a plot that you’ve probably seen several dozen times before. Frigid protagonist learns to loosen up with the help of some wacky friend (The Hangover comes to mind), subservient hero learns to stand up for themself against overbearing relative (…The Hangover comes to mind again (and also Carrie)), prodigious champion (I’m clearly struggling for synonyms here) struggles to fulfill expectations (actually, the Wrestler… in fact, the ending’s practically the same). The film is just a collection of stale, canned plots, driven by characters who aren’t engaging doing things that aren’t engaging, served out a punch bowl spiked with peyote. It doesn’t suck, it just has no reason to exist.

I was, however, pleasantly surprised by how NOT irritating Mila Kunis’ voice was.