'Magazine Dreams' has major issues

Jonathan Majors’ comeback attempt is hard to watch

Jonathan Majors plays an amateur bodybuilder who is not okay in “Magazine Dreams.” (Briarcliff Entertainment)

I’ve tried a couple of times now to write a straight review of “Magazine Dreams” without getting into Jonathan Majors’ legal troubles. Separating the art from the artist and all that.

It’s impossible.

Just as it’s impossible to watch Elijah Bynum’s film and not think about Majors’ fall from grace, and how the once rising star of “The Last Black Man in San Francisco” has quickly become a pariah after being convicted in December 2023 of abuse and harassment against his ex-girlfriend.

Majors is in nearly every frame of “Magazine Dreams,” playing Killian Maddox, an amateur bodybuilder who self-destructs over his rage and insecurity. It’s the kind of intense, physically transformative role that could have made him an Oscar contender.

But now, over two years after its premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, having been dropped by one distributor and picked up by another, “Magazine Dreams” limps quietly into theaters dragging a lot of baggage behind it.

Knowing the backstory around Majors already makes “Magazine Dreams” a little hard to watch, as the rage-outs seen onscreen have an uncomfortable if inadvertent resonance to the real world. But even without that, writer-director Elijah Bynum’s film is a punishing piece of cinema, trapping the viewer inside the life of an unstable, violent man for over two hours. Any empathy we have for Majors’ character quickly drains away as Killian Maddox (a name that has both “Kill” and “Mad” in it, unsubtly) embarks on a destructive, seemingly endless downward spiral.

Killian’s physique may make him look like an Adonis, and Bynum bathes Majors’ musculature in a beatific golden light when he’s onstage competing or preening in front of his bedroom mirror. But inside, Killian is anything but godlike. He’s lonely and insecure; instead of forging relationships out in the world, he obsesses fanatically over his body, wolfing down 6,000 calories a day and taking steroids to push himself past his limits.

When he talks to other people, such as a kindly cashier (Haley Bennett) at the supermarket where he works, he babbles about his big dreams to an unnerving degree. Aside from caring for his ailing grandfather, Killian’s deepest relationship seems to be his “King of Comedy”-like obsession with a famous bodybuilder (former Mr. Universe Mike O’Hearn), to whom he sends increasingly threatening letters and voicemails.

Obviously, this isn’t going to end well, especially when Killian just misses the cut at a local bodybuilding tournament and refuses to face reality. When he smashes up a store, when he buys a gun, these seem like the inevitable steps downward of his descent. “Magazine Dreams” does have somewhat of a hopeful ending, but it feels tacked-on and unconvincing.

One of the missed opportunities of “Magazine Dreams” is the chance to immerse the viewer inside the world of competitive bodybuilding, to understand what the people in that community are really like. Instead, like Killian, we’re left on the outside looking in.

Majors has certainly committed every bit of himself, physically and emotionally, to the role, and it is impressive as sort of an endurance test. But it’s an endurance test forced on much of the audience as well.

“Magazine Dreams” opens Friday in theaters. In Madison, it will play at Marcus Point and Marcus Palace.