Fully Realized Humans
**Seen at the 2020 Atlanta Film Festival.
In “Fully Realized Humans,” there’s a scene that, I cannot help but feel, is probably an homage by star-writer-director Joshua Leonard to his 1999 breakout film, “The Blair Witch Project.” You’ll probably figure out which one it is when you see it- it certainly isn’t the scene everyone will, inevitably, talk about when they watch this comedy. Again, you’ll figure out which one it is.
The screenplay by Leonard and his co-star, Jess Weixler, has a lot of insight and intelligence, as they chronicle their characters, Elliot and Jackie, and the anxieties they face as they await their first child together. This feels like a very personal story for Leonard, and that authenticity comes through in every one of the film’s 74 minutes. That authenticity grounds some of the crazier moments in an emotional reality that makes them funnier to watch.
There’s a point in their journey as they prepare where they have a revelation that changes their entire outlook on life, and their lives. Such revelations can feel as though they open your mind, and that’s great, but they can also make you do things that go outside of the societal norm, and that is where some of the wilder moments in the movie come from, and when they come down to Earth, it’s in the middle of the scene that I mentioned at the start of this review. Leonard and Weixler do a very good job of keeping Elliot and Jackie sympathetic every step of the way in this movie, and I really enjoyed taking this journey with them.
The final scene of the movie brings home all of the emotions and journeys these two have gone through. I am not a parent myself, but one of the things this does well, I think, is capture the concerns we have about whether we might be good parents, and what bad habits we might have learned from our parents. Elliot’s arc really starts at that most memorable scene in the movie, and it leads him to basically every choice he makes throughout the film, culminating in the moment where he and Jackie, having reached the end of their journey emotionally, challenge their parents to face what they passed on to their kids. This movie, once again, gets the emotions and the dynamics right, and the moment it builds to is one that we leave the movie being grateful that it got to in such an entertaining, and enlightening, way.
