THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.

I’ve made my festival debut! Tonight, Morgan and I went to our first festival screening ever at the Lone Star Film Festival, and while we didn’t partake in all the festivities, the whole vibe was really cool. While this wasn’t the film that brought us to the festival (that would be Unwinding by Reza Ghassemi), we were pumped to get to see this advanced screening of The Debut. When this movie was announced last year, I doubled over with excitement. A musical, from Jesse Eisenberg? I was intrigued, hopeful, and after tonight, absolutely delighted.

The Debut was firing on all cylinders from the jump, and I loved those colorful opening credits! The trailers had me expecting an uncomfortable and funny power struggle between two Oscar-worthy actors, and while the movie provided that to an extent, there was way more to love. The back-and-forth between Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti was delicious, just as hilarious as it was insane and rude, and both are more than worthy of nominations. Julianne Moore in particular was outstanding—I didn’t know she had any musical chops!—and her ability to play two characters at once and have both occupy her mind and behavior simultaneously was impressive. She’s not just the frontrunner for Best Actress this year because the category’s a little light; in a more competitive year, she could still clean up. The supporting cast was sparsely used but to good effect, and there were a few actors in the periphery who I really enjoyed. Jesse Eisenberg, like Bradley Cooper, directed himself very well, and Havana Rose Liu and Halle Bailey were needed rays of sunshine.

The Debut’s best quality was its unhinged, yet natural humor. Mona’s descent into theatrical madness led to countless hilarious exchanges and monologues, and it would be hard to pick a favorite. The situational comedy may have been just as good as the dialogue, though; the method acting and break-ins and the hotel sequences and Mona smoking unlit cigarettes all contributed to one of the funniest films of the year. I was also impressed by the musical itself, which I think was written exclusively by Eisenberg! The songs ranged in quality but felt pretty authentic to the musical theater world, and at least one of them (probably “This City May Have Chewed Me Up (But It Hasn’t Spit Me Out)”) will get an Oscar nomination.

Even amongst the excellent humor, performances, and music, the emotional core of The Debut was shockingly deep and intact. It was sometimes difficult to distinguish the serious from the silly—we also had an audience that laughed at a lot, which was really fun but confusing—but when the film slowed its characters down, the results were sobering. One of the best scenes of the film, funny or otherwise, was the conversation between Mona and Jerry in Jerry’s apartment. As a musician and performer for a good chunk of my life, hearing Jerry admit that the spark was still alive but there was nowhere to let it out (“I wish that was me”, he told Mona) was heartbreaking. I’m glad that, since I’m an elementary school music teacher, I’m pretty locked into musical performance opportunities for the rest of my life.

Over the last month or so, I’ve begun to wonder if I have become too generous in my movie ratings, especially for new releases. I have to keep reminding myself, though, that these movies and their reviews should each exist in a vacuum. Just because Digger and Wildwood and You Can See Everything and Wild Horse Nine were all amazing doesn’t mean that The Debut can’t be amazing, too. The Debut was just that—wildly funny, musically engaging, dramatic, and emotionally affecting—and yet another movie released this fall that should compete for a ton of Oscars in March. Jesse Eisenberg is undefeated with me so far, both as a director and actor, and I can’t wait to see what he does next. A western? Maybe a western.