The Mimic
There are plenty of times in Thomas F. Mazziotti’s “The Mimic” where it feels too clever for its own good, and a sense of self-awareness and smugness takes over, and it’s kind of obnoxious. That said, there were more times than not where I just appreciated the way the film was going about its business comedically, and it delivered. If you don’t get on this film’s wavelength, it’s completely understandable, because even when it’s entertaining, it can still be fairly self-aware and obnoxious.
The film begins with The Narrator (Thomas Sadoski), as he talks about how his life has seemingly been taken over by The Kid (Jake Robinson), a 31-year-old who just moved into town, and has started working at the local newspaper he works at. We hear a story about how The Kid did some cocaine in The Narrator’s attic, The Narrator’s dog followed him, and the attic collapsed in. The Kid is a thorn in The Narrator’s side, and The Narrator feels like he is dealing with a sociopath. The rest of the film has us following The Narrator as he is trying to decipher The Kid, and prove that he is, in fact, a sociopath.
As I said, there’s a self-awareness to this film that could be insufferable, but Mazziotti as the director is more capable of keeping the film light and enjoyable as we watch his study in male insecurity and admitting uncomfortable truths about ourselves. The film is ultimately a two-person show between Sadoski and Robinson, and their chemistry together is fun, but the inclusion of cameos by people like Gina Gershon (as a woman The Kid picks up at a bar), M. Emmett Walsh (in a very meta scene involving the “writer” and “director” or the film), Austin Pendleton (as an elderly driver following The Kid too close) and Jessica Walter as one of the women working the newspaper with The Narrator do a lot to earn our goodwill whenever the film starts to fall into an attitude of “look how clever I can be.” “The Mimic” is trying to be a movie akin to Charlie Kaufman’s work (at least some of his earlier work), but it works best when it finds its own rhythms, and has its own personality. By the time The Narrator and The Kid find themselves on a tennis court, and in The Kid’s house, I just enjoyed this movie for how loopy and entertaining it managed to be.
