Unicorn Store Is an Ode to Embracing Your Inner Child

Every kid had that moment in their life when they believed unicorns were real, and for Kit, that dream never went away. Brie Larson shines in Unicorn Store and reminds us of the importance of never fully growing up. Maybe it won’t hit for everyone the same way, and maybe people will laugh the movie off, but for me, there’s something beautiful in embracing that childish aspect of your life and never letting go.

Kit (Brie Larson), who is kicked out of art school when her professor doesn’t understand her work, moves back home and can’t cope with the reality of being an adult. She doesn’t have art, she doesn’t have a goal, and she just wants to be successful (as the television tells her she can be). So, she applies to be a temp to give herself purpose while also trying to prove to her parents that she’s not the failure she thinks she is.

But just when Kit begins to do the things she’s proud of, succeeding in a job that she didn’t have any dreams of obtaining, she gets a letter from the Salesman. Played by Samuel L. Jackson, the Salesman tells Kit that she can have a unicorn, a childhood dream of hers staring her right in the face.

She goes through all the motions, preparing for the unicorn, and in doing so, meets Virgil (Mamoudou Athie) who is building her a stable but, in the meantime, falling in love with her and wants to take her out on a date. The problem is that Kit is so set on her mission to getting her unicorn that she doesn’t care about the relationships in her life.

Personally, I took this as a wonderful message that our childish fantasies, the little things we wanted as a kid that seem mundane and too childish to want as an adult, shouldn’t just vanish. Sure, we can’t have a unicorn, but that dream to have the things we can’t see—to think about our lives as unending wonderful fantasies rather than the day in, day out that destroys our joy—should be how we live.

“The most grownup thing you can do is fail at things you really care about,” Kit is told, and it drives home the notion that we do these things every day not because we have to to survive, but because there is still a part of each of us that has that childlike wonder over something.

It may not be a unicorn. Hell, it might not even be anything we’d consider strange, but that wonder is what we should try to feed. Creating, living in our own truths, and finding small joys are so important, and Unicorn Store fed the little kid inside of me, reminding me that growing up doesn’t mean forgetting who I was and continue to be.

Failure is part of life; you rise and fall, and you get stronger because of it. That doesn’t mean you ever give up those dreams.

Thank you, Brie Larson. This is a beautiful reminder and a wonderful film.

(image: Netflix)

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