“The Man on Her Mind” (2014)
Nellie (Amy McAllister) briefly met Leonard (Samuel Jones) at her friend’s party. Leonard has been trying, with the help of Nellie’s sister, Janet (Georgia MacKenzie), to meet up with Nellie, without much success. Little does Leonard know but Nellie has a boyfriend, someone who looks almost exactly like Leonard. Her boyfriend shows up with an uncanny ability to know precisely when she needs him the most. He knows all the right buttons to push and is perfectly matched for Nellie; one problem, he’s a figment of Nellie’s imagination. Nellie doesn’t hide the fact that she is having a relationship with someone who isn’t real. In fact, both her sister and her husband, Frank (Shane Attwooll) know about her imaginary boyfriend. They both try to encourage Nellie to give up the pretend boyfriend and hook up with someone real, someone like Leonard.
Leonard lives in a large house near Janet and Frank having moved into the neighborhood five months ago. Leonard works as a ghost-writer, writing books about the lives of famous people as if they wrote the books themselves. While he pursues Nellie, Leonard has a secret too. He also imagines people, usually to help him write the books, but now, Nellie is the source of the day dreams. Like Nellie, he talks to his imaginary friend. Unlike Nellie, who is happy in her relationship with the make believe boyfriend, Leonard has lengthy discussions with his imaginary friend in an attempt to figure out a strategy for getting Nellie to go on a date with him.
The film is based on a play performed in the West End of London by the same cast that appears in the film. Unfortunately, the screenplay, written by writer / co-director Alan Hruska, looks and sounds like it is still being performed on stage. It’s an interesting idea for a romantic comedy, but it never delivers on its promise. The dialogue is choppy and forced with characters quickly bantering back and forth, like a Woody Allen film without the laughs. Frankly, I zoned out a few times when Nellie and Leonard, in either conversation with their imaginary friends or their real counterparts, would get into deep philosophical conversations. The film never produces the laughs that are desperately needed, with its constant attempt to bring in loftier notions.
Photo courtesy of Paladin Pictures
McAllister and Jones work off each other with an ease that you get working a material over and over on a stage. But the familiarity works against them when they play scenes where their characters barely know each other. That familiarity makes the early scenes between the two seem unnatural and unrealistic. Both actors have a presence on the screen that probably plays out better on stage, as it seems they are always positioning themselves for an audience in a theatrical setting and not watching on a movie screen.
The direction, by Alan Hruska and Bruce Guthrie, never leaves its stage production roots. Too often the camera is a static shot of both characters from one side of the room and then from the other side of the room. Rarely does the camera move, adding to the feeling that we are just watching a stage play that happens to be caught on film.
The cast, while earnest and likable, can’t overcome the play like dialogue or the equally clunky direction. It’s a film that just doesn’t live up to its promising premise, an interesting idea that gets old very quickly. My Rating: Cable
My movie rating system from Best to Worst: 1). I Would Pay to See it Again 2). Full Price 3). Bargain Matinee 4). Cable 5). You Would Have to Pay Me to See it Again
“The Man on Her Mind” is playing exclusively at Landmark Midtown Art Cinema
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