Why a $200M Budget can’t save a movie from itself

Argylle’s failure to launch

I am what I would call adjacent to the romance novel world. So as someone who writes about media and cares about the things women love, I was excited to see how “Argylle” would tackle the camp, glamour and fun of this genre on screen.

Yet despite the rom-com-esque trailers and hype for the latest blockbuster, “Argylle” immediately splits its identity in two. Despite an opening sequence that is all camp, fun, and overdone romantic glamour, Ellie Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard), the author of the movie’s namesake book series, immediately hosts a book signing that lets us as viewers know this is really a series of spy novels.

The dissonance between these two scenes perfectly captures what will be the disjointed nature of the entire movie. Bryce Dallas Howard is lovely as our protagonist, a bubbly thirty-something who’s made a name for herself as the author of the Argylle book series. The colors, the fun, the formulaic dialogue in the opening scene, followed by an echoed set design at the book signing all paint a picture of a YA blockbuster or a romantic hit.

Instead, we’re told that Elly Conway (Howard) has put hundreds of hours of research into novels that *almost* predict the future of global events. These novels are not fluff, we need to…