Mommy’s Box, 2016.
Directed by Johnny Greenlaw.
Starring Johnny Greenlaw , Bill Sorvino, Carly Brooke, Joe D’Onofrio, David Harris, Gina Scarda, Kelly Karavites, Jen Dorcic, John Dorcic, Tom Rizzuto, Aimee Berlin, Will Mercado, Dylan Gutheil, RJ Meyer, Christine Copley, Sean King, and Alex Leonn.
SYNOPSIS:
Nick, a music producer in New York City, is dealing with his own demons and chemical dependency as he gets the news of his mentally unstable mothers death. He returns home to Long Island for the wake, where family secrets are revealed, forcing him to confront the lingering influence of his mother even after her death. Back home, Nick finds a new love and a sense of spirituality he never believed in. By retracing his Mothers steps to learn more about her, he starts to find himself. This leads him on a journey he never expected and ultimately onto the path to redemption.
If you think you’ve got issues with your parents, look no further than Mommy’s Box for a swift dose of reassurance. The two brothers at the heart of this film – confident but aloof music producer Nick (Johnny Greenlaw) and the affably shambolic Joey (Bill Sorvino) – both share some deep-seated problems with their mother; I may only be an armchair psychologist, but it seems like it’d take a hell of a lot more than a ninety-minute weepy to deal with them.
The film begins in the Manhattan studio where Nick has long hidden himself from Joey and their estranged mother back on Long Island. In flashbacks we see that some mysterious event in their shared past led to both the deterioration of her mental health and her entrusting Nick with the key to a mysterious (and titular!) safety deposit box, to be disposed of upon the event of her passing. Back in the present Nick receives a call from Joey telling him that just that has happened, forcing him to reluctantly return home and make the necessary arrangements.
What follows is an odd mix of family drama, romantic psychodrama and unintentional comedy. Nick’s struggle to reconcile himself with his past and reconnect with the home he left is juxtaposed with his discovery of an attractive Amy Winehouse-sounding bar singer and Joey’s attempts to start his own gym while (apparently) being bullied by the goons who run the one he currently attends. The tone veers from bawdy, wildly inappropriate comedy – one character makes a joke about the ghost of Nick’s mother haunting him mere days after her passing, which he entirely ignores, while his new flame at first takes him for a masturbating stalker – to dour, soul-searching drama, and even contains thriller elements that feel lifted from another film entirely.
All this is meant to coalesce into something approaching a family saga, but the script and supporting cast throw Mommy’s Box into disarray. The cinematography and score are effective at maintaining a light self-seriousness throughout, and are impressive enough for an independent production, though the dim, faded colour grading mean a sense of quiet misery pervades even the most joyous of scenes. Greenlaw and Sorvino are convincing as brothers with different strengths and plenty of the same baggage, but most other roles exist merely to deliver reflections on their strange relationship with their mother.
Said relationship could have been a compelling focal point for the film if the script didn’t keep getting distracted with subplots. Completely out of the blue and unaddressed, a dream sequence in which Nick hooks up with an old flame sees her morphing into “Mommy”, as the boys queasily call her, with the Oedipal mess snapping awake just after she unzips his jeans. Instead of reckoning with these unspoken feelings, Nick embarks on a mission to keep even more secrets to himself as the story quickly grows heavy with tedium before a long-awaited but entirely unearned wrap-up of an ending. You know, just like life!
Though laden with mystery, suspense and uncomfortable jokes, Mommy’s Box is a present not worth the trouble opening.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Mark Allen
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https://youtu.be/b7Ozs5mj5ao?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng
Originally published September 28, 2016. Updated April 16, 2018.
