Marvelous Mandy (2017)
Starring Paula Marcenaro Solinger, Jonathan Stottmann, Ryley Nicole
Directed by Chase Dudley
Talk about looking for love in all the wrong places – Jeezus Christmas, what does someone have to do in order to meet that special someone, and NOT have them turn out to be a completely psychopathic nutbag? Ah well, “caveat emptor” as they say – and while we’re on the subject of “beware before you buy”, those words can certainly apply to Chase Dudley’s film, Marvelous Mandy, and at the risk of sounding too terribly negative…I’m still waiting for that “marvelous” part to show up.
Harvey (Stottmann) is a chap whose love life is in a bit of a holding pattern – his wife left he and his young daughter, Clementine (Kenna Hardin), and Harvey is not only trying to be both a father and mother to his little one, but he’s attempting to fill the void his bride created when she took off. Problem is, Harvey has never been smooth with the words – in fact, he’s downright sad to watch work, and when the day comes that he meets “author” Mandy (Solinger) at a tiny bookstore where she works at, it’s one of those connections you only read about. Okay, I might be embellishing the truth here a bit – you see, Mandy writes the series of out-of-print books that Harvey’s daughter loves, and she’s only too happy to offer them up to him so his daughter can take her mind off of her wayward mother. Oddly enough, Mandy isn’t exactly who she claims to be, and her sanity is as tattered as some of the pages in the old books she sells at the shop…ah to hell with it, no more beating around the bush – Mandy’s nuttier than a squirrel turd, and Harvey’s in entirely the wrong place at the wrong time. She’s already run through a gaggle of male suitors in the past, and our leading man is currently on her radar – what a lucky fella, indeed.
As the movie rolls along, we see Mandy’s unraveling psyche begin to erode even further, and there are bodies to be left in its wake, and even though Solinger and Stottmann more than hold their own in their roles, it’s simply not enough to keep this flick from sinking a slow death, and surprisingly, it’s not the plot that does it in – it’s the technical aspect that murders this movie (bad pun altogether). I’m not sure who gave the ok to ship this film off in the visual state that it’s in, but the audio and video are simply atrocious – muffled sound, horrific editing and lighting problems would be enough to make the casual fan try adjusting the settings on their televisions or laptops, but for an A/V dork like myself, this was straight-up torturous to have to sit through. The gore that was on display did work rather nicely, effectively capturing Mandy’s violent outbreaks, and Dudley was certainly not shy to let the crimson flow freely, but sadly it’s only one step forward, two steps back for this stunted thriller. My advice for those looking for a little crazy with their amour? Step back in time to something like Fatal Attraction, cause this Mandy was far from marvelous, or memorable, or magnificent – you get what I’m saying.
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
