Marjorie Prime (2017)

Film: Marjorie Prime (2017)
Stars: Lois Smith, Jon Hamm, Tim Robbins, Geena Davis
Director: Michael Almereyda
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

One of my favorite moments in all of cinema, perhaps my favorite moment in any Steven Spielberg film, features Lois Smith.  In Minority Report there's a terrific scene where she and Tom Cruise are in a greenhouse, surrounded by animated plants, and Smith is giving Cruise a lesson in the pre-cog system.  In the hands of a less capable actor, this would come across as lazy writing, using an unlikely meeting to unload a host of world-building expositional dialogue onto the audience, but Smith doesn't play it that way.  She creates a fascinating, brilliant but creepy scientist who infuses the action-adventure, already smart and well-structured to this point, with a sense of danger and a bit of malice.  You leave wanting more for her, assured she knows even more than what she's telling Cruise's befuddled John Anderton. Smith's ability here is a trademark skill of a longtime character actor, and I was fascinated by someone wanting to put her in the center of a film, rather than on its periphery.  Sadly Smith's acting ability is not able to help this long, draggy sci-fi film encumbered with ideas and "how smart are we's" but never actually connecting with the audience.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers around a woman named Marjorie (Smith), who is in her 80's and battling dementia.  The film is set in 2050, and she lives in a posh seaside house where her daughter Tess (Davis), with whom she has a complicated relationship, has purchased a holographic projector that simulates her late husband Walter (Hamm).  The movie is almost entirely a series of conversations between two different people, in the first half Walter talking to Marjorie and her son-in-law Jon (Robbins).  The back half looks into the future with Marjorie and then Tess dying and becoming holographic "primes."

The film's premise is interesting, perhaps looking at how we sacrifice our current situation so fully by living in the past, or how we never really resolve conflicts with loved ones, or the loss we experience when they leave us.  But Marjorie Prime is more intent on thinking it's interesting than actually becoming so.  Central to the story's plot is a family secret, about how Marjorie's son Damien committed suicide 40 years prior, but this feels so tacked on and never properly addressed.  The idea of a family skirting around the same unspoken horror as the death of a child tearing them asunder has made dozens of great movies in the past, but Marjorie Prime treats it almost with the same importance as a forgotten first date.

This "great idea, poor execution" is consistent throughout the film.  We never really understand why Tess and Marjorie dislike each other, nor what Jon's opinion on his wife's family is, or really anything knowable about Walter.  Smith is the centerpiece, and too compelling to make this a complete failure, but Davis & Robbins add little to these roles, including understanding; both were actors who once sung onscreen, but years of inactivity or minor roles have left them unable to coast off of their once formidable onscreen personas and there's nothing "new" at play here.  Hamm has the hardest role, but is a complete miss as a robotic presence trying to find his programmed self.  I know it's become fashionable to diss January Jones whenever she's not Betty Draper, but honestly-has Hamm done anything worthwhile outside of Mad Men?  He's wooden and does little other than be handsome in Marjorie Prime.  The movie is a slog as a result, boring when it should be thrilling, and without enough central conflict to get anything out of its concept.