When one packs their things, say goodbye to their old lives and move to the big city to follow their dreams; that old life left behind doesn’t stop existing or evolving. Instead, the life left behind continues to live and change becoming a foreign battlefield of old emotions.
This is the setting for Noël Wells’ Mr. Roosevelt. Drawn back to her hometown after her old cat dies, Emily Martin (Noël Wells) not just has to accept that her ex-boyfriend Eric (Nick Thune) has moved on with a new woman named Celeste (Britt Lower), but also has to accept the path she has taken in life and her shortcomings when it comes to the chasing of her dreams.
Quirky with an authentic backbone, Mr. Roosevelt becomes an enjoyable yet emotional viewing experience, that will push audiences to evaluate their one lives and individual journeys. It is clear that Noël Wells who serves as the film’s director, writer & lead actor is telling a story close to her own heart. With the passion of legitimate real emotion being felt within every character and moment of emotional catharsis. The emotions of the film feel real because they are real.
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The inner self-destruction of Emily, while heightened for the comedic cinematic landscape, is ultimately a sensation many in the audience will be able to relate to. With her deeper self-judgments and disappointment of her own life speaking to an authentic core of the modern human experience. This drama and emotion feel needed as it not just elevates the film overall but also grounds it enough to where the quirky humor connects how it should.
The whimsical sense of comedic taste has grown exponentially over the previous number of years, with plenty of films failing to craft screenplays that truly embrace the concept in the right way. These films can quickly become cringy and boring, but Mr. Roosevelt is able to avoid this trap.
Not only does the humor avoid being annoying, but it never takes away from the deeper emotions of the film. Instead making the overall project more palatable and enjoyable for the deeper themes and emotions it explores. It heightens the world and emotions but never dumbs it down or causes the film to lose focus of what it is trying to say. Genuinely, this might be the most impressive aspect of the feature as it is so hard to pull off, yet Mr. Roosevelt does it exceptionally well.
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While this is largely due to the screenplay, the praise of course also has to largely go to the actors who pull off both sides of the film’s identity with a craft and confidence. Noël Wells is charming yet venomous in the perfect sense that feels authentic and compelling. She will bottle her feelings to keep the peace, but isn’t afraid to lash out at times giving her a unique relationship to characters such as Celeste.
Nick Thune also deserves quite a bit of praise for his more inner display of conflict that slowly builds across the film’s runtime to its grand conclusion. Britt Lower is also perfectly self-aware in performance becoming a completely innocent yet completely unbearable source of happiness and passive-aggressiveness.
These elements come together to elevate Mr. Roosevelt above most other entries in the same genre to come in the recent few years. Walking a dangerous tightrope between comedy and drama, the film holds its balance and finds a combination of the two that works on nearly every level. Sure, maybe there are funnier films out there and more emotionally devastating films, but there aren’t many that present themselves like Mr. Roosevelt or achieves what this film does.