If you’ve been paying attention at all to the YA book world, you’ve heard of Julie Murphy’s book Dumplin’ and the fact that Netflix adapted it into an original movie. Featuring a protagonist who unashamedly introduces herself as a fat girl—and who doesn’t lose weight in the story in order for her life to begin—it’s a breath of fresh air after some of Netflix’s less…tasteful releases (you know who you are).
Specifically, Dumplin’ is about Willowdean Dickson—nicknamed Dumplin’ by her beauty pageant queen mother—as she navigates her junior year of high school. Her world is turned upside down when she discovers that the Bo, a boy she works with whom she’s had a crush on for ages, likes her back. Instead of filling her with newfound confidence, she suddenly realizes she’s not as secure in her body as she thought. In a moment of rebellion, she signs up for the Miss Teen Blue Bonnet beauty pageant, which her mother won decades ago and currently still oversees. This sets off a flurry of events, including fights with her best friend Ellen, her mother (naturally), and unexpected relationships with a lovable band of misfits.
While the book is about Willowdean’s struggle to love her body, it’s also about friendship, grief, family relationships, and accepting yourself and others despite their flaws and differences. The movie mostly stays true to this, although it minimizes these other themes in favor of the plotline following Willowdean’s body image. I was sad to see so much of the subplots go, but overall the movie does a good job of knowing the right parts to trim and still stay true to the heart of the book.
What it got right
I love, love, love basically every actor in this. Danielle Macdonald crushed it as Willowdean, and the always wonderful Jennifer Anniston was perfect as her mom. Odeya Rush embodied the “impossibly goofy yet sexy paradox” of Willowdean’s best friend, Ellen. But honestly? My absolute favorite characters were Millie Michalchuk (Maddie Baillio) and Hannah Perez (Bex Taylor-Klaus), the two other oddballs who join Willowdean in competing in the pageant despite not being your “typical” pageant contestant. I missed Amanda, a character in the book who is cut from the movie, and will confess that I don’t totally understand why they decided to drop her character, but I’ll save my rant. Because Millie and Hannah were positively perfect. Baillio captured how Millie has actually always wanted to compete in the pageant, and takes to it like a fish to water. In the book, Hannah is Dominican, and while I wish they would have stuck to that in the movie, Taylor-Klaus is absolutely hysterical as a punk rock rebel not afraid to give everyone a kick in the pants when they need it.
The movie also captured Willowdean’s more quiet struggle as she deals with the loss of her aunt Lucy, who lived with Willowdean and her mom. Lucy was also fat, and was in many ways more of a mother to Will than her biological mom. If you asked Willowdean, possibly the most important thing she gained from Lucy is her love for Dolly Parton, a motif throughout the book and movie. Hilliary Begley portrays Lucy in flashbacks, and even though her screentime is short, the movie clearly establishes the loving and formative relationship between the two. It’s been six months since her death when the book opens, and throughout the book and the movie, Willowdean longs to ask her aunt’s advice on the situations she encounters, from fighting with Ellen to her maybe-relationship with Bo. When her mom decides it’s time to clean out Lucy’s room, it becomes a repeated point of conflict between the two of them, which the movie used well to flesh out their relationship.
The final part that the movie totally nailed was Willowdean, Millie, and Hannah’s unexpected visit to the Dolly Parton drag show and the subsequent pageant coaching they receive from some of the drag queens. I was dying laughing, but beyond that, the touching scene between Lee (Harold Perrineau) and Will as they remember Lucy’s life was perfect.
What it got wrong
This is probably always a problem in book-to-movie adaptations, but it felt very rushed to me. This particularly stood out in Will’s reaction to Bo, and in her fight with Ellen. In the book, both last much longer and have a deeper impact on Willowdean. In the book, it was sort of refreshing to have a romance that didn’t culminate in her getting the guy at the very end, but instead starts with a reciprocated crush and focuses on all the crazy emotions that can come from that. The movie leans more toward the first type of romance.
Both of these point to the movie’s decision to focus primarily on Willowdean’s choice to join the pageant. This is the driving plot point that causes the rest of the action to happen, while in the book she doesn’t make the choice until halfway through. The first half focuses more on her feelings about Bo liking her, and her choosing not to tell Ellen about their furtive make-out sessions, deepening the divide between the two friends. It also reveals more about Will’s complicated relationship with her mom, and her struggle to move on from Lucy’s death. All of these intricate plotlines take a backseat in the movie to Willowdean competing in the pageant and her desire to prove that her big body is just as deserving of being on the stage as anybody else. Of course this is a key component in the book’s plot line, and I understand why the movie had to focus on just one thing. Still, I appreciated the book being about more than just a fat girl’s acceptance of her body (though that in and of itself is such an unusual plotline that it does deserve to be celebrated) but also about the struggles of navigating high school that everybody goes through no matter what you look like.
What’s just different
The last portion of the movie in which we actually see the beauty pageant competition is where it deviates from the book in ways that aren’t particularly significant, but are noticeable. I loved the change to the swimsuit competition. In the book, the scene is a mirror to her embarrassment, specifically about her thighs, at the swimming pool earlier in the book; at the pageant, she struts across the stage, and the world doesn’t end. This lovely symmetry is harder to convey in a movie, and so instead Will and Ellen go onstage together with swimsuits that spell out the message “Every body is a swimsuit body,” paraphrasing a wonderful quote from the book.
For the talent portion, Will still does magic, but also lip-synchs to Dolly Parton a little bit? But not a full-on show like in the book? I didn’t understand this change, as it still resulted in the same pageant results, and I wish the movie could have had the beautiful moment of Will singing “Jolene,” but it didn’t totally ruin the movie. Another similar moment was the solution to Mrs. Dickson’s dress not fitting. Willowdean’s mom has worn the dress she won the pageant in the ‘90s in every year to host the pageant, but this year, at the last minute, it doesn’t zip. In the book, Will uses alligator clamps to hold the dress up, resulting in a beautiful image of her mother looking perfect to the audience, but held together with backstage tools in the back, which, Will says, is the “truest representation of my mom I have ever seen. I guess sometimes the perfection we perceive in others is made up of a whole bunch of tiny imperfections, because some days the damn dress just won’t zip.” *dies over that line* In the movie, Will ends up borrowing an over-the-top dress from one of her drag queen coaches who has come to watch, which is funny and doesn’t significantly change the movie, except that I freaking love that line.
Final decision: Category Three
Overall, the movie Dumplin’ kept the heart of the book, and it’s worth watching. It’s a cute, high school story, and I’m a sucker for those, if I’m being honest. The book is just more complex, in depth, and rings truer, and any movie that isn’t four hours long isn’t going to be able to do it justice. Unsurprisingly, you really should read it (preferably before watching the movie, but you do you). Regardless, I love that in both books and movies, we’re getting representation of different body types that don’t require people to change who they are in order to be or feel worthy of love and acceptance.
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Have you read or watched Dumplin’ yet? What did you think? Let me know in the comments!
