Apple TV and A24’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles begins with a bang, due to a whimsical, pinball-themed opening sequence that careens via a hand-crafted world of books, overdue payments, and child provides.

Our information via all of it is a inexperienced alien lady rolling atop a small silver ball. She takes the punches of the pinball machine as they arrive, bouncing off platforms and falling down holes earlier than rising, triumphant, from her bedazzled spaceship. It is a candy, richly textured sequence, and with the accompanying use of Robyn’s “Blow My Thoughts,” it guarantees the present to comply with will blow our minds, too.

If solely the remainder of Margo’s Received Cash Troubles might reside as much as that promise.

The sequence itself, created by David E. Kelley (Ally McBeal) and led by Elle Fanning, is a heartwarming story of an unconventional household unit coming collectively regardless of the chances. But it largely lacks the creativeness of each its title sequence and its central character, turning into a paint-by-numbers dramedy elevated by a fantastic solid.

What’s Margo’s Received Cash Troubles about?

Based mostly on the novel of the identical title by Rufi Thorpe, Margo’s Received Cash Troubles introduces its titular character (Fanning) at a crossroads in her life. She’s a school freshman with a promising writing expertise. She’s additionally pregnant, the results of an affair along with her scummy, married literature professor, Mark (Michael Angarano). In opposition to the desires of each Mark and her mom Shyanne (Michelle Pfeiffer), she chooses to maintain the newborn, dropping out of faculty to lift him.

Elevating child Bodhi will take cash that Margo doesn’t have, and Margo’s Received Cash Troubles instantly sinks viewers into her stress spiral. To earn cash for Bodhi, she wants a job. To work a full-time job, she must pay for childcare. To pay for childcare, she must earn cash, and on and on it goes. It is a nightmarish cycle that the sequence renders in claustrophobic element. When Margo reveals as much as a job interview with Bodhi in tow, you possibly can really feel the interviewer’s cloying judgment shutting down any path ahead. When Margo rings up her groceries, every beep of the scanner is a mini coronary heart assault. And when two of Margo’s roommates transfer out as a result of they cannot cope with dwelling with a new child, the added lease seems like a demise sentence.

Together with her funds crumbling and no job alternatives in sight, Margo decides to make content material on OnlyFans. What initially begins as a method to an finish quickly turns into a inventive outlet, permitting her to flex her writing expertise and earn sufficient cash to handle Bodhi.

Mashable Prime Tales

Margo’s Received Cash Troubles‘ alien OnlyFans is bonkers enjoyable, and I want we had extra of it.

For her preliminary OnlyFans gimmick, Margo provides to inform her followers which Pokémon their penis resembles, and what their assaults can be. This leads to a number of delightfully foolish traces lifted straight from Thorpe’s novel (“Your penis is a Tentacruel!”), delivered with gusto by Fanning. Later, as Margo tries to increase her empire, she attracts on her father Jinx’s (Nick Offerman) background as a professional wrestler and her roommate Susie’s (Thaddea Graham) ardour for cosplay. With their assist, she builds an alien persona who recurrently collaborates with fellow OnlyFans performers KC (Rico Nasty) and Rose (Lindsey Normington). The trio shoot elaborate wrestling matches, dance sequences, and even a mesmerizing brief movie involving alien Margo — resplendent in inexperienced physique paint and a metallic silver gown — looming over a small mannequin movie show.

Similar to the opening credit, these sequences are pure, imaginative enjoyable, made all of the extra endearing by the characters’ intense dedication. They’re additionally proof of one thing Margo’s Received Cash Troubles advised us from the beginning: that Margo, as an solely baby, wanted to “develop a fancy inside world.” With every Pokémon penis comparability or alien brief movie, Margo’s Received Cash Troubles externalizes that inside world and provides her a transparent perspective. I might have beloved to see extra of it — extra of the place her concepts come from, extra of her inventive course of, extra of why this alien storyline is what she desires to current to the world.

As a substitute, Margo’s Received Cash Troubles spends the majority of its time on a plot that feels cobbled collectively from issues we have seen earlier than: teacher-student affairs, estranged mother and father reconnecting with their kids, custody battles. When Margo tells her mother and father she’s been doing intercourse work, you are all too conscious of the judgment that can comply with, simply as you are all too conscious that heat reconciliation will come subsequent. It is nice to observe, nevertheless it not often dives again into Margo’s head in the way in which that her content material creation scenes do.

Thorpe’s novel alternates between first and third individual, so perhaps these various levels of distance are intentional. But Thorpe’s novel additionally has a wry, observational fashion all through that is as slicing and humorous as it’s heartwarming. Typically, it seems like Margo’s Received Cash Troubles sacrifices the previous for the latter.

Elle Fanning leads a fantastic solid in Margo’s Received Cash Troubles.

Even when Margo’s Received Cash Troubles skews in direction of the formulaic, its solid retains you locked in on its messy, difficult household. Fanning shines as Margo. From embodying Margo’s alien persona to combating tooth and nail for Bodhi’s future, Fanning is tender, fierce, and humorous, persevering with her banner run of tasks together with 2025’s Sentimental Worth and Predator: Badlands.

Inside mere seconds of display time collectively, Fanning and Pfeiffer set up a uncooked, lived-in mother-daughter dynamic filled with unstated judgment and unconditional assist. In Pfeiffer’s arms, Shyanne’s nickname of “Noodle” for Margo can both make you snicker or break you at a second’s discover. Elsewhere, Offerman brings heat, protecting Papa Bear power to Jinx as he tries to attach with Margo and stay in restoration after a stint in rehab. His former wrestling persona provides an additional layer of enjoyable to the present, whether or not we’re watching him dance round within the ring or lay Bodhi down whereas stage-whispering, “Slo-mo bodyslam!”

There is no denying that Margo’s Received Cash Troubles and this stellar solid will soften your coronary heart. But general, I simply want that the sequence might have been simply as fearless and imaginative as Margo herself.

Margo’s Got Money Troubles had its world premiere at SXSW. It premieres April 15 on Apple TV.

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