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Title: Mammoth (2009)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Gael García Bernal | ... | ||
| Michelle Williams | ... | ||
| Marife Necesito | ... | ||
| Sophie Nyweide | ... | ||
| Natthamonkarn Srinikornchot | ... |
Cookie
(as Run Srinikornchot)
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| Tom McCarthy | ... |
Robert 'Bob' Sanders
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| Jan David G. Nicdao | ... |
Salvador
(as Jan Nicdao)
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| Martin de los Santos | ... |
Manuel
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Chiqui del Carmen | ... |
Grandmother
(as Maria del Carmen)
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Perry Dizon | ... |
Uncle Fernando
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| Joseph Mydell | ... |
Ben Jackson
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Doña Croll | ... |
Alice
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Caesar Kobb | ... |
Anthony
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Matthew James Ryder | ... |
Bob Sanders' Collegue
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Piromya Sootrak | ... |
Cookie's Daughter
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n New York, the immature family man Leo Vidales is a successful businessman, owner of the Underlandish, a successful website of digital games and married to Dr. Ellen Vidales, a dedicated surgeon of the emergency room of a hospital. They have a daughter, Jackie, who is an intelligent girl that is raised by her nanny, the Filipino Gloria that spends more time with her than Ellen. Gloria has two sons in Philippine that miss her. When Leo need to travel to Singapore with his partner Bob (Tom McCarthy) to sign a millionaire contract with investors, Ellen operates on a boy stabbed in the stomach by his own mother and she feels connected to the boy and rethinks her relationship with Jackie. Meanwhile Leo is bored waiting for the negotiation of Bob with the investors and he decides to travel to Bangkok and lodges in a rustic cottage on the seashore. Leo meets the young prostitute and mother Cookie and he has one night stand with her. Meanwhile, Gloria's ten year-old boy Salvador misses her ... Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
I notice that many of the positive reviews for this film are from Scandinavia. I'm not, and I ran into some real holes in the story. The subject of the film is parents and children, and what happens when the two are separated by necessity. The film opens in New York, where Leo, the main character, has become fabulously wealthy, and loves his kid, but must fly off to Bangkok to seal a deal that will make him even wealthier. His story is the skeleton of the movie,but it's also the weakest and least convincing. Two other stories (or four) complete the film, showing us family separations-by-necessity that are more convincing. I for one found the story of the Filipino nanny much more watchable and believable. The Philippines produces too many intelligent, well-educated people for its economy to support, so roughly 15% of the adult workforce are forced to leave the country to work overseas; Gloria, the nanny, is one of them, and she has to leave her children in Olangapo while she sends money back from New York. I knew about that situation going in, but the film does a nice job of dramatizing it. meanwhile, the main story, starring Gael Bernal as the wealthy-but-tortured New Yorker, just doesn't work, partly because it's either poorly-written or not written at all. Bernal is a good actor, but here he sounds as if he's been asked to improvise his own dialogue, and it sounds just like improvised movie dialogue from other badly-improvised movies: boring, flat, and very, very, very repetitious. Improvisation can be done right, and when it is, it works beautifully, as in Happy-Go-Lucky and The Class, but not here. Whether it's improvised or not, Leo's part of the film is one long boring cliché. There are some other little glitches in the film that strain credulity, but overall I'll ignore the Leo section and give it a 6 out of 10.