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Slipping by, sadly almost unnoticed, in last weekend’s bid for new film dollars was this pleasantly low-key little movie from somebody with one of the most successful track records in Hollywood: Lawrence Kasdan, who scripted Raiders of the Lost Ark and Episodes 5 & 6 of Star Wars, and whose writing/directing double-duties include The Big Chill and Grand Canyon.
In Mumford, he casually unfurls the tale of a little Northwestern town that shares names with its most popular psychologist (Loren Dean). Sporting a preternatural wisdom that belies his fresh-scrubbed youth, Doc Mumford seems to be almost singehandedly holding the community together via gentle, practical insights. His clientele includes Skip Skipperton (Jason Lee), whose computer modem company jump-started the local economy, but whose loneliness has driven him to an unusual hobby; a druggist (Pruitt Taylor Vance) with hopelessly noirish sexual fantasies; an affluent mom (multi-Oscar-nominated Mary McDonnell) consumed by compulsive consumerism; an egotistical criminal attorney (Martin Short); and a lovely young woman (Hope Dana) stricken by chronic fatigue.
All these good folk gradually come to profit greatly from Mumford’s counseling. The rub is, he’s got a major problem of his own; he’s a fraud, living out the latest of several identities. But he’s finally found one he’s good at, that he likes and it likes him back. So what’s a guy gonna do?
Though it suffers slightly from a mild case of Whitman/Hallmark Syndrome -- the idea that anyone’s troubles can be cured with a little fresh romance -- Mumford is still an amiably eccentric little movie worth attention, notable for featuring a big-time director working with a wonderful lower-tier cast. Kasdan spins a quiet, intricate, but never slow story that I liked a lot even though the theater I saw in it had apparently just had its projector lens serviced by someone with a fondness for KFC Extra-Slick 10w-40 recipe. B
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