- Critics have branded Peltz Beckham’s first movie “poverty porn”
- Fans also took to Twitter/X to comment their disdain for the movie
- Peltz Beckham is the daughter of billionaire Nelson Peltz, and wife of Brooklyn Beckham – whose family has a net worth of half a billion dollars
She’s the billionaire heiress who recently married into another famous family with a net worth of $523.2 million.
So critics have been left perplexed as to why Nicola Peltz Beckham has created what they are branding “poverty porn” for her directorial debut.
The actor, 29 – whose father billionaire Disney investor is Nelson Peltz – had just released her first movie as a director, Lola, in which she also stars.
In the film, Peltz – who married Brooklyn Beckham, the son of former footballer David and Spice Girl Victoria, in 2022 – plays the role of the titular character, who works in a drugstore and strip club in order to make enough money to protect her queer younger brother from their alcoholic brother.
Eventually, Lola falls victim to more traumatic events (including falling pregnant with a baby conceived in rape, and starting using drugs) – and critics are unimpressed.
Calling the movie a “vanity project”, they have called out Peltz’s use of poverty and sex work as a way of establishing herself as a director.
In a scathing review for the UK’s Guardian newspaper, Kady Ruth Ashcraft writes that the film is “filled to the brim with underbaked, oftentimes harmful tropes – the supportive Black best friend, a queer child meeting an unceremonious death, the virginal stripper saved by motherhood, a hypocritical Christian drunk”.
She adds, “Peltz Beckham did achieve something with Lola: it’s called ‘poverty porn’, and in film, that means the exploitation of the conditions of poverty for entertainment and artistic recognition.”
Ashcraft finishes, “What makes Lola such a flagrant example of poverty porn is just how careless the project feels in the context of Peltz Beckham’s exceptionally lavish life.”
Currently ranking at 3.8 stars out of 10 on IMDB, Peltz’s effort was also described by Andrew Burton for Spectrum Culture, “It’s not a law that directors making slice-of-life flicks must be personally familiar with the material they are depicting, but before even watching Lola, the disconnect between the dead-end world the film takes place in and Peltz Beckham’s background stands out as jarring.”
Movie buffs also took to Twitter/X to criticize the feature.
“I’m watching Lola, the Nicola Peltz Beckham poverty porn vanity project, and bloody hell it is awful beyond my wildest expectations,” wrote one user, while another added, “Nepo baby makes crap film about something she hasn’t a clue about!”
