iMordecai review
There’s a good movie in iMordecai. It’s just fighting for attention with two other films leading to a decent, but disjointed family drama.
iMordecai is a very personal effort from debuting director/co-screenwriter Marvin Samel. The film is a semi autobiographical look at the lives of his Holocaust survivor parents and his own efforts in dealing with his eccentric father, Mordecai.
Sean Astin (Stranger Things) plays Samel’s onscreen avatar, a hard working guy who loves his wife, Netta (Stephanie J. Block) and their newborn baby girls. Marvin’s relationship with his father? Well, that’s a bit more complicated.
Mordecai (Judd Hirsch, The Fabelmans) is set in his ways and completely fine with it. He’s still using the same phone, which is basically held together by duct tapes and prayer. Marvin is over having spotty calls with Mordecai, who’s enough of a wild card — he’s using his plumbing experience to build a walk-in shower on a whim — that he doesn’t see the need for a new phone, especially an iPhone.
Prodded by his wife, Fela (Carol Kane, The Dead Don’t Die) and Marvin, Mordecai reluctantly hits up the phone store. Initially overwhelmed, Mordecai quickly gets fascinated by a digital art class led by Nina (Azia Dinea Hale, F9: The Fast Saga).
Intrigued by the phone’s possibilities and appreciative of Nina’s laid back demeanor, Mordecai starts to take an interest in the phone.
He gets enamored learning the wonders of apps and Beats headphones while happily returning for a new private lesson from Nina. To the more cynical, iMordecai might come off like an Apple store infomercial, but Hirsch and Hale ensure their scenes come off genuine.
Samel and co-writers Rudy Gaines and Dahlia Heyman start a subplot with Nina having a passion for working with Jewish senior citizens for reasons that get explained later, but they seem to lose interest and don’t sufficiently conclude it satisfactorily. It’s just as well as it felt too movie coincidental anyway.
While that subplot dies on the vine, Nina does gain insight from Mordecai about his childhood and early life.
To break up the standard structure of the film, Samel incorporates animation to tell the flashback stories. This is a unique way to tell stories of the Russian and German invasion of Poland and it’s mostly effective.
At its best, the film is a treat watching Mordecai get increasingly funny to all these new outlets thanks to his phone. Hirsch just received an Oscar nod for his supporting work in The Fabelmans and he’s still in award recognition seeking mode with an even more layered and stronger performance.
Hale also makes a great impression as the young sponge eager to learn about the past while showing Mordecai ways to love life in the present.
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The biggest narrative issue is Samel devoting so much screen time to his career as a cigar maven as the key secondary plot. Astin is a likable performer, but the material doesn’t do him any favors as Marvin seems constantly annoyed with his father.
While it might be integral to Samel’s real life story, it’s not nearly as engaging to the film’s story. Whenever the film shifts to Marvin’s dedicated subplot, the momentum just stalls out. And it takes time to reestablish it when Mordecai is back in the spotlight.
Samel seems equally unsure how much time to devote to the Fela Alzheimer’s storyline. Fela is often written like an afterthought and occasional nuisance to the other characters. She’s a priority only when something potentially tragic happens to her, which occurs enough it almost feels like a running joke.
This is mostly a thankless role for Kane, but she does get two nice scenes showing the extremes or Fela’s Alzheimer’s.
The film features some stunning colorful locales. Cinematographer Will Turner provides enchanting lighting and color choices.
It’s evident the love Samel has for this labor of love. There’s some basic storytelling issues that hinder its full potential, but the cast make up for the film’s shortcomings.
Rating: 6 out of 10
Photo Credit: Greenwich Entertainment