Mumford is not a great film, but it is a film full of great moments and delicious characters. I worked on the trailer for this film, and saw it all the way through at least five times, and saw the trailer editor's select-reel over twenty times. I saw many scenes hundreds of times, because the studio made us cut over 40 versions of the trailer, and then we made about a half-dozen TV spots. Unlike most movies that start to get very tired after a few viewings, Mumford just kept giving up more secrets and revealing more little gem-like moments every time I watched it.
It's about a young psycho-therapist named Mumford who moves into a small Pacific Northwest town called Mumford. He begins to help a lot of people with their problems, and disrupts the nice, comfortable business of the town's two existing therapists. But Mumford has a secret, and the potential revelation of his secret drives the rather thin, low-key plot.
The movie isn't really about the plot. The plot follows an unusual trajectory, timed very differently than other movies with a similar secret at their heart, and ultimately has trouble finding a satisfying ending. It isn't so much about Dr. Mumford himself, either, who is scripted very low-key and given a rather weak performance by Loren Dean (which is the film's other main problem). This combination of weaknesses makes Mumford different from a lot of formula films, and at the end, you feel a little unresolved.
But on the other hand, it's hugely enjoyable all the way through. Why? Because it's really about the people Mumford meets and the transformations he inspires in them. Among the stand-outs are Zoe Deschanel, who steals the movie with her adorable debut performance as a disaffected teen forced to attend therapy after a drug bust; Jason Lee as an insecure skateboarding software billionaire; Hope Davis as a psychosomatically fatigued daughter of an overbearing mother; Ted Danson in a hilarious one-scene role as a rich schmuck; Mary MacDonnell in a kind of trance-state as his mail-order shopping-obsessed wife; the wonderful David Paymer as the town's leading psycho-therapist who affects red cowboy boots; Jane Adams as his rather mousy colleague and lover; and Pruitt Taylor Vince is delightful as a man with an exceptionally rich fantasy life.
This movie confused the Disney marketing department, who desperately wanted to make it into a teen comedy. (It isn't.) It was ultimately dumped onto the market with only one TV spot which did not run much, because the studio had no faith in it. Nobody saw it, which is a real pity.
In the trailer business, where you see and become intimately familiar with dozens of movies every year, I tended to divide movies into three categories: 1) Movies worth paying to see, 2) movies worth seeing for free, and 3) movies not worth watching under any circumstances because they're just an unrewarding theft of your time. Mumford falls into Category 1 for me.
It's about a young psycho-therapist named Mumford who moves into a small Pacific Northwest town called Mumford. He begins to help a lot of people with their problems, and disrupts the nice, comfortable business of the town's two existing therapists. But Mumford has a secret, and the potential revelation of his secret drives the rather thin, low-key plot.
The movie isn't really about the plot. The plot follows an unusual trajectory, timed very differently than other movies with a similar secret at their heart, and ultimately has trouble finding a satisfying ending. It isn't so much about Dr. Mumford himself, either, who is scripted very low-key and given a rather weak performance by Loren Dean (which is the film's other main problem). This combination of weaknesses makes Mumford different from a lot of formula films, and at the end, you feel a little unresolved.
But on the other hand, it's hugely enjoyable all the way through. Why? Because it's really about the people Mumford meets and the transformations he inspires in them. Among the stand-outs are Zoe Deschanel, who steals the movie with her adorable debut performance as a disaffected teen forced to attend therapy after a drug bust; Jason Lee as an insecure skateboarding software billionaire; Hope Davis as a psychosomatically fatigued daughter of an overbearing mother; Ted Danson in a hilarious one-scene role as a rich schmuck; Mary MacDonnell in a kind of trance-state as his mail-order shopping-obsessed wife; the wonderful David Paymer as the town's leading psycho-therapist who affects red cowboy boots; Jane Adams as his rather mousy colleague and lover; and Pruitt Taylor Vince is delightful as a man with an exceptionally rich fantasy life.
This movie confused the Disney marketing department, who desperately wanted to make it into a teen comedy. (It isn't.) It was ultimately dumped onto the market with only one TV spot which did not run much, because the studio had no faith in it. Nobody saw it, which is a real pity.
In the trailer business, where you see and become intimately familiar with dozens of movies every year, I tended to divide movies into three categories: 1) Movies worth paying to see, 2) movies worth seeing for free, and 3) movies not worth watching under any circumstances because they're just an unrewarding theft of your time. Mumford falls into Category 1 for me.
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