I love musicals, but do not like period pieces, and THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE is a movie that I will ‘shaker’ off as one of the weirdest and most frustrating experiences I had watching in 2025.
If I had a bingo card for what the follow-up movie to the team behind THE BRUTALIST would be, I would’ve never guessed it would be a Shakers musical. It’s a ‘testament’ to Amanda Seyfried that she’s so good in anything she’s in, that she, at rare times, almost makes ANN LEE watchable.
Top three reasons I dislike ANN LEE so much:
- Narrative Structure: This is a Terrance Malick-light meandering plot where the mood is greater than the story structure. That works if the mood is good enough to carry audiences through two hours, which this is not.
- The Music: Songs in musicals are meant to build to an emotional crescendo, where the characters sing to advance the plot or reveal an emotional moment. In THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE, they slow things down to a crawl. Even worse, none of the songs are catchy. Think DANCER IN THE DARK without Björk’s magnetizing voice.
- The Dancing: It’s choreographed shaking that looks like rejected sequences from the Netflix series, THE OA. The dancing is compelling at first, but after the same beats are played on #NowPressRepeat, it gets repetitive.
Final Thought: THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE is an emotionally distant, failed experiment. There’s no doubt the creators behind it are talented, yet this is not the film they will be remembered for.
It’s available in limited theatrical release.