Morris From America
Director: Chad Hartigon
Starring: Craig Robinson, Markees Christmas
Two stars
There’s a major suspension of disbelief required for this film, and that is that Germany, possibly the greatest footballing nation on Earth (with apologies to any Brazilian readers) would need to import football coaches from America. Once we dispense with that improbable premise, we can move on to the film.
Thirteen-year-old Morris (Markees Christmas) and his dad, Curtis (Craig Robinson) have moved to Germany following the death of Morris’s mother. Curtis is a football coach, but I’m trying to let that ridiculous idea slide. The pair are equally stranded in ‘fish out of water’ territory as they try to adjust to their new life, culture and language. All this while missing, of course, an important member of the family.
Fortunately, Morris and Curtis are united by a love of hip hop, and this sentimental theme keeps them together throughout the film as Morris goes through the traditional teenage cycle of girls, discos and offers of illicit substances. All in a foreign country.
As a European, albeit one whose country is apparently leaving Europe, I found the cliched approach to ‘otherness’ a little annoying. Germany is portrayed as a country where school talent shows involve kids riding unicycles and playing the flute, the antithesis of Morris’ freestyle rapping, which is of course booed offstage by his peers.
It’s apparently some parochial backwater, anxiously waiting for electricity and Coca Cola. I can’t be sure if that’s the same Germany that makes BMWs and basically runs Europe, but if it is you might think this sort of American jingoism would be on stronger ground by staging the film in, say, Belorussia, where at least they probably need football coaches from America, looking at the national team’s recent performances.
It’s probably not politically correct to call racism on a film in which two black Americans move to a universally blonde and white Germany, but this film does portray Europe as some kind of backwater where our heroes have to fight to have their hip hop culture accepted in a sea of electronic dance music (EDM) silliness.
I’m far from a fan of EDM, but to suggest the whole of Germany is a disco with a 14-year old aspirant Deadmaus onstage seems a little trite. Even the film’s most significant German character, Morris’s German tutor, is played by a Swiss actress in the form of Carla Juri – an odd decision in a film that largely demonises the German supporting cast throughout. Was there no German actress available that could portray an interfering, controlling teacher and add to the casual racism with some degree of realism?
So what we get is a coming of age story, complete with all the usual trappings of teenage uncertainty and dates that don’t go as planned, with an added dose of German language, and a hip hop soundtrack including the likes of Jeru Tha Damager and Christmas himself. The film took around US$60,000 (Dh220,000) at on its domestic release, which seems about right.
cnewbould@thenational.ae
