“Mickey Hardaway” is a well-intentioned, slow-moving indie drama about a sensitive young man’s hard upbringing and the consequences of all the blows he’s taken along life’s way.
It’s your standard-issue “film festival movie” — indie, an unknown cast shot mostly in black-and-white, just polished enough to avoid the “amateurish” tag, but not compelling or exciting enough to draw the viewer in.
Static scenes, stentorian writing and flat performances work against the plot’s good intentions and make the first feature from writer-director Marcellus Cox — expanding on his earlier short film of the same title — kind of a slog.
We see a couple enjoying a glass of wine on the patio after a hard day, when a young Black man (Rashad Hunter) shows up with a gun. We don’t see the trigger pulled.
The story, told in flashback, sees that title character, mildy-embittered/mildly-disturbed comic artist Mickey Hardaway, convinced by his loving girlfriend Grace (Ashley Parchment) to see a local shrink. When we meet that psychotherapist (Stephen Colfield) in his home-office, we recognize him. He was the shooting victim.
Whatever happens in these long chats/treatment sessions in which Mickey recalls his abusive childhood, those who had faith in his talent and the rageaholic father (David Chatham) who didn’t, we know the therapy didn’t work. Mickey got a gun.
The sessions aren’t quite sleep-inducing, but underlit, filled with tired platitudes by the doctor and starchly-written lines stiffly-delivered by an unanimated Mickey.
“Life,” he says, is his “problem. Life is hard. I GET that.”
Each actor seems to be competiting to see who can wholly master monotone first.
The flashbacks are generic, never moreso that when Mickey recalls meeting “the oine Grace and their day at an amusement park dissolves into living color.
Mickey’s scintillating description of their first meeting sets the tone, here.
“It was an interesting encounter.”
Not exactly words that make one swoon.
Mickey standing up to his abusive father, as a teen, has a whiff of Tyler Perry lecturing about it. He’s finally “not afraid” of the old man, and openly wishes he’d abandoned his family.
“That’s a Black stereotype (runaway fathers) I could actually live with.”
Dad rants on about an abortion that should have been and a son who is a “waste of flesh.”
The characters are stock tropes, the situations predictably abrupt and contrived.
A teacher (Dennis L.A. White) wants to help your kid follow his dream to a better life? Let’s punch him out. It’s more dramatic.
A good scene passes by, here and there. But the monotony — of message and line-delivery — is contagious.
The overriding gripe I have with this modest-budgeted pic is that there’s zero urgency to any of this. Leaving out the beating heart of any involving narrative proves fatal here.
Removed from the rarified air of film festivals, where rooting for every “plucky, sensitive, underdog” indie is the rule, always in competition with other “plucky, sensistive, underdog” indies, a “film festival movie” like “Mickey Hardaway” is exposed to the REAL competition — meriting the viewer’s attention over everything else competing for it. That’s a contest this one can’t win.
Rating: unrated, violence, profanity
Cast: Rashad Hunter, Stephen Colfield Jr., Ashley Parchment, Gayla Johynson, Alana Aspen, Dennis L.A. White and David Chatham.
Credits: Scripted and directed by Marcellus Cox. An Indie Rights release on Apple TV, Prime Video, Youtube Movies
Running time: 1:45
