The Front Room

Grade: C

A new movie’s IMDb page often has a video at the top, with cast interviews. You get to see them out of character, cutting up, and we find that they like each other in real life. I wish there was one for The Front Room, particularly for footage of Kathryn Hunter (all 3 witches from Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth). She is a lovely, sweet-looking 67-year-old. In The Front Room, she is an elderly, grotesque monster not unlike Anne Ramsey’s Momma in Throw Momma from the Train.

The Front Room was rolled out by A24, but it feels a bit Blumhousy. Though that studio has some great ones, I mainly associate it with the cheap mediocre horror they churn out, like Night Swim, Imaginary, and Afraid – and those are just from this year alone. The Front Room is billed and made to look like horror, but it’s more of a dark gross-out comedy, with elements of a monster-in-law conflict film. It’s not scary. It’s not funny.

The star, Brandy Norwood, played the title characters in both the sitcom Moesha and a TV movie of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella. Last holiday season, she was in the very dismal Best. Christmas. Ever! – which wasn’t even the best Netflix Christmas ever. In The Front Room, Norwood and Andrew Burnap play interracial couple Belinda and Norman. Belinda is very pregnant with their first child. Norman’s estranged father has just died. His even more estranged stepmother Solange is leaving every last penny of the inheritance to Belinda and Norman, in exchange for Solange moving in with them.

Enter Kathryn Hunter as Solange, a quintessential nightmarish movie archetype. She gingerly stumbles around hunched over two canes, and speaks like she just appeared in a production of Steel Magnolias in hell. (She pronounces Norwood’s character as “Belinder.”) I bet it was a fun role to play, and it’s too bad we don’t see them laughing after the director called “cut.” Instead, we get this movie. She is a bit much for this soon-to-be family, including veiled passive-aggressive remarks about race, and forcefully suggesting a different name for the baby – which they reluctantly agree to.

She has incontinence problems, evacuating pee, poop, and vomit  – accompanied by her screeching out “M-E-double-S!!! I made a M-E-double-S!!!” When her racism is insinuated, she intentionally makes an M-E-double-S at the dinner table while saying “I’m a racist! Mama! Dada! Goo goo gah gah!” Does a racist act like a baby? Let me rephrase that: does a racist LITERALLY act like a baby?

You’d think there would quickly be a conversation such as “This isn’t working out. We need to put you in a home.” The film also gestures at religion, and how weird the traditions can look. There’s a scene where Solange invites a handful of her church friends to pray over the new baby. They lay hands on it, while doing all kinds of chants, not necessarily in English, with lots of tongues sticking out going “lalalalalalala!” I’ve never seen anybody do that.

I didn’t hate The Front Room. You can’t call it boring or forgettable. I will remember it. Almost all of its ridiculousness is played with utmost sincerity. Almost. I liked the shot where we see something final has happened to a character, while an upbeat worship song pops on the soundtrack. A late, brief flashback fills in a blank in a fun manner. But otherwise, The Front Room is an overblown M-E…no, I won’t end my review that way. Too easy.

Grade: C