Film Review: The Magnificent Meyersons

ARTS&LIFE

FILM REVIEW

Matriarch Kate Mulgrew (right) and her mother, played by Barbara Barrie

Too many wrong turns with aimless plot twists.

ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY CONTRIBUTING WRITER

The Meyersons are an average Jewish family living in New York City. They face the typical (and sometimes petty) ups and downs of everyday life, from issues as minor as picking out a bakery item from a food truck to tackling existential crises and whether God really exists.

In The Magnificent Meyersons, an 88-minute drama film that’s entirely dialogue-based, we follow the family through a seemingly ordinary day in the city. They’re complicated, but relatable. They bicker, they laugh, they cry, and they fall in and out of love. However, they’re all coping with the same problem: the fact that their father Morty (Richard Kind) abandoned the family years earlier.

Now, the Meyerson family is led by matriarch and oncologist Terri (Kate Mulgrew). She was left alone to raise four children: Roland (Ian Kahn), an overachiever and hypochondriac; Daphne (Jackie Burns), a new mom struggling with her marriage and the idea of more children; Daniel (Daniel Eric Gold), a young man studying to become a rabbi; and Susie (Shoshannah Stern), an ambitious real estate agent who is deaf and in a lesbian relationship with Tammy (Lauren Ridloff).

On this presumably normal day, the Meyerson siblings and their mother go about their everyday affairs. In the first 30 minutes of the film, it’s easy to fall in love with the Meyersons. After all, they’re not unlike you and me and tackle each situation with a sense of humor. But their lives are suddenly upturned with breaking news: aliens might actually exist.

ENTER THE ALIENS

Their phones beep with a breaking news update about a signal coming from outer space that can’t be natural. Like others, the siblings panic: Is this good or bad news for humanity? What do the aliens want?

Daphne, already struggling with an existential crisis, suddenly decides that time is precious, and she can quit her job. Daniel, meanwhile, ponders God’s existence with a Catholic priest wondering the same thing.

It was at this point that the film, written and directed by Evan Oppenheimer, turned from charming to unpleasantly comical. The plot twist just didn’t fit, despite researchers recently discovering similar signals in outer space. The first half hour of the film felt like watching the beginning of a great coming-of-age movie with tons of potential, while the remaining 50-some minutes was the equivalent of a bad play with an indiscernible plot that just didn’t make sense.

The Magnificent Meyersons would have done extraordinarily well had it stuck to the stories of the siblings and their mother and how they navigated life’s ordinary events. It was a missed opportunity that pivoted where and when it didn’t need to pivot. Plus, a second plot twist soon surfaced that revealed the unexpected return of the Meyerson patriarch, Morty.

DAD REAPPEARS

Though the exact years that Morty was absent from the family structure aren’t revealed, one can estimate Morty was gone some 20-25 years. Yet, here he is, showing up as a surprise guest at a family dinner but in much worse condition than previously seen. Throughout the film, Morty is shown in flashbacks that slowly reveal why the father left: to tackle and treat his debilitating depression in Oslo, Norway, never to return until now.

Naturally, some siblings are angry, particularly Roland. Others, like Daphne and Daniel, seem to welcome Morty with a second chance. Having left the children at a young age, the youngest siblings never understood their father’s reason for leaving. But as he stands before them, hands uncontrollably shaking and much grayer and frailer than they remember, feelings melt away.

When Terri asks Morty what happened to him — had he experienced a stroke? — he reveals that two years ago, he was struck by lightning. It was another twist to the story that just wasn’t believable.

And that’s where the film stops: just moments after Morty’s return, big reveal and awkward reunion with his family. The ending felt cringeworthy after such a strong opening and left me wondering why the director chose this route, when there was so much potential leaving the story where it started.

Without the aliens and lightning strike, The Magnificent Meyersons could have been a wonderful film but it sadly took too many wrong turns.

The Magnificent Meyersons had a limited theatrical release in New York City and Los Angeles. The film can be viewed virtually through the websites of the theaters showing the film, which can be found at argotpictures.com.