Mumford

A film about a psychologist who arrives in a small town. The man has just moved in and opened a practice. His name is the same as the town's: Mumford. He builds a practice quickly because he is unlike the other therapists: he listens, speaks plainly and gives opinions. His patients are peculiar. One is a compulsive shopper, one lives in fantasy, one has an exhaustion nobody can explain. The richest man in town wants to talk to him too. Then a problem surfaces. Mumford has no qualification and the name is not his. He had another life before he came. The question the film asks is this: if the help genuinely helped, how much does the lack of a licence matter? The narrative gives no clear answer. The register is calm; the film moves like a comedy but makes a fool of nobody. Loren Dean plays Mumford, with Hope Davis, Mary McDonnell and Alfre Woodard as patients. Jason Lee and Martin Short are in the cast. Lawrence Kasdan directed. It failed commercially and was little discussed; it was later counted among the director's well-liked but overlooked work. A pleasant discovery for anyone who likes character comedy and small-town stories. For a viewer expecting incident, it moves calmly and builds no large conflict.