Review of My First Mister (2001) by Alex M — 18 Jan 2004

[size=3]It's hard to imagine a film with a more detrimental third act than Christine Lahti's [i]My First Mister[/i]. The movie, which tells a story about an unlikely friendship (and perhaps love) between a 16 year-old teenaged girl who is a Goth fan and a 49 year-old conservative man who represses everything, manages to create two characters we deeply care about before crumbling before our very eyes. The first hour of the film is sweet, humourous, observant and touching...the final stages of the film are melodramatic, cloying and concerned with subplots that have absolutely no dramatic weight. It's a shame, really, for the lead performances by Albert Brooks and Leelee Sobieski are wonderful in their ability to convey the hidden depths of each character without bludgeoning us with visible "acting". If only Lahti and her screenwriters had trusted the central story and followed through to its conclusion (whatever that conclusion might be), [i]My First Mister [/i]might have been a very good film. Instead, the movie becomes concerned with caricatured supporting characters (who are played by some very good actors...John Goodman, for example) and a convoluted crisis involving a long-lost son. Although there is nothing wrong with old-fashioned melodrama, it completely ruins the naturalistic and spontaneous tone of the first hour of this film. The final act of the movie seems to have been made by different filmmakers, a travesty considering how enjoyable [i]My First Mister [/i]is for most of the running length. As a showcase for Sobieski and Brooks, the movie succeeds...as a fully-rounded story, it fails.[/size].

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[size=3](BASIC)[/size].