Mouse

Grade: B+

Mouse is from the directing team of Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson, who did 2024’s Ghostlight, which gave us an unflinching look at grief through the lens of the healing power of live theatre. Ghostlight and Mouse share two cast members: Katherine Mallen Kupferer and Tara Mallen. Mouse also brought to mind last year’s A Little Prayer, a quiet family drama that made my top ten list. Though Mouse falls slightly short of A Little Prayer, not quite reaching that level, it could be a worthy bookend to it, not to mention Ghostlight.

Mouse opens in the spring of 2002, with Minnie (Kupferer) looking out her window, watching a house get toilet-papered. She’s hoping they’ll come do her house next, as that would at least mean someone remembered her. But no, she doesn’t appear to be popular enough to even receive an overnight Charmin rite of passage from a senior. Mouse’s first 15 minutes feel like their own movie, until something happens that changes everything, including the tone.

Minnie’s best friend Callie dies the morning after the last day of school. Minnie was just at her house for a sleepover, and woke up early to go to work. She had to hear about the death flippantly and unceremoniously on her walk home from work, as a jogger passing by says, “You’re Callie’s friend, right? I just wanna say sorry, or whatever.”

The film effectively takes us back to 2002, with the needle-drops, landline phones, DVDs, wooden TV dinner trays, and teenage boys expressing an interest in joining the military so “we can get Osama.” The movie has scenes and moments that you don’t often see on the screen. Feelings are acknowledged and questions are tackled that don’t come up much. At Callie’s funeral, a random classmate is one of the speakers, and she claims to have been Callie’s best friend. A slideshow set to music shows Callie with many other peers, with her real best friend Minnie nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, Minnie is wondering when pictures were submitted for this and why nobody asked her. Though I’ve never been in that exact situation, that feeling of “wait a minute, how did I miss this boat” is something I’ve felt so hard.

Mouse is a thoughtful piece, filled to the brim with wisdom, even if that doesn’t always make for fun moviegoing. Kupferer as Minnie and Mallen as her mother Barbara give convincing, naturalistic performances together and apart. British actress Sophie Okonedo does an enormous amount of heavy lifting as Callie’s mother. David Hyde Pierce has some unexpectedly poignant moments as the school’s drama teacher. But the person I was the most excited to see was Iman Vellani, who finally gets to break out of her usual role as Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel. I always figured she was too talented to be stuck in that one role all the time, and her appearance in Mouse is the beginning of a branching-out for her career.

One of the last scenes is a school cabaret where Minnie is one of the performers. She doesn’t sing that well, so you will wonder why she made the cut to do this in the first place. Also, practically every single character we’ve seen Minnie meet is present and accounted for in the audience. It feels more cinematic than true to life, but the film regains the originality it had before in its closing scenes.

I was exhausted getting out of Mouse. It’s so rich, dense, and heavy that I’m not sure how often I’d revisit it, but I absolutely think it’s worth a viewing. Grief is a screwed-up process. Everyone goes through it in their own way, with no right or wrong. One size doesn’t fit all. We’re all just trying to do our thing. Mouse always points towards hope, especially at the end. We can see it in the loving, optimistic final tableau.

Grade: B+