'Poor Things' is too much. That's exactly why it's one of the few 5 star movies of the year

Everything about “Poor Things” is too much. The story, the acting, the costumes, the backgrounds and sets. Every time you think director Yorgos Lanthimos has gone too far, he goes farther.

And the movie is SO much better for it.

Funny, shocking, thoughtful, and progressive, it is, above all, massively entertaining. It’s not like having dessert before dinner. It’s like having dessert FOR dinner and afterward, too.

Emma Stone is a wonder as Bella Baxter, a young woman who, when we meet her, behaves like an infant, playing the piano with her feet and toddling around on uncertain legs. She is watched over by, and watched by, Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), a surgeon with a face that looks like cross-stitch gone wrong. (His increasingly horrifying tales of abuse as a child at the hands of his father are really something. All in the name of science.)

What is the plot of ‘Poor Things?’

They live in what looks like a Victorian steampunk version of London; the early scenes are in black and white. Bella calls Godwin 'God,' which in the context of her life is fairly accurate, in a Dr. Frankenstein kind of way. She is his latest experiment, though specifics of that are best discovered on your own. (Tony McNamara based the screenplay on Alasdair Gray’s novel.) Other experiments — various species surgically grafted onto each other — wander the house.

Enter Duncan Wedderburn, a sleazy lawyer hired to draw up a marriage contract for Max and Bella, played with transcendent scheming glee by Mark Ruffalo. He’s so good you feel bad for him toiling lo these many years in the fields of Marvel, wearing green makeup. Smash! Although the checks probably took some of the sting out of it.

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God hires Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), one of his medical students, to observe Bella and detail her progress, which is swift. He arrives just in time for her to discover how much she likes sexual pleasure. With that, as with all things, Bella takes no half measures. God’s house is soon too small to contain her growing curiosity and her desires.

Soon, Duncan has whisked Bella away on international travel. Her intellect continues to grow by leaps and bounds (Duncan’s is stalled in low gear), as does her fondness for “furious jumping,” just one of the phrases Bella has that are not euphemisms so much as no-nonsense descriptions.

Bella wants to experience everything and is not shy when she likes something or when she doesn’t. She has no filters. “Hello, interesting older lady!” she says, greeting a woman on a cruise ship. She’s brash, bordering on inappropriate, but she’s not wrong.

Played a certain way, this could be insufferable. In Stone’s hands, it is irresistible. An awkward dance scene is played for laughs, sure, and it’s funny. But it’s also more. Stone brings a wide-eyed wonder to Bella that is infectious, even when she is entertaining the darker fantasies of one of her clients as a sex worker.

Oh, that. Yes. She takes a job in a Paris brothel, in part for the money and in part just to see what the experience would be like. It satisfies both her physical and philosophical needs. (Hanna Schygulla is great as her weirdo madame.) It’s all part of her evolution. She tells the madame that clients shouldn’t choose which woman they will have sex with. The women should choose.

Emma Stone is great in ‘Poor Things’

Eventually, Bella winds her way back home to God’s house and Max, though one more adventure awaits. It more explicitly illustrates Bella’s true desire — freedom, and what she’ll do to attain it.

It’s metaphorical, no doubt, Bella standing in for women’s progress. But it’s also practically tactile in its depiction. The sets and costumes are so rich, so over the top. What a blast.

It may be too much for some. There is, for instance, graphic nudity and a copious amount of sex. One person’s gorgeous backdrop might be another person’s lurid distraction. The stylized dialogue and delivery might strike some as affected and not perfect for the context of the film.

I’m all in. It’s delightful to see filmmakers and actors take such big swings. It’s even more delightful when they connect, and in “Poor Things,” they do.

‘Poor Things’ 5 stars

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos.

Great ★★★★★ Good ★★★★

Fair ★★★ Bad ★★ Bomb ★

Cast: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe.

Rating: R for strong and pervasive sexual content, graphic nudity, disturbing material, gore and language.

How to watch: In theaters Friday, Dec. 15.

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. X, formerly known as Twitter: @goodyk.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: 'Poor Things' review: One of the best movies of the year goes too far