Molly (Eléonore Hendricks) is a young, new mother who feels completely isolated and exhausted as she takes care of her child. With her husband rarely there to lend a hand, she decides to take off and spend a weekend in the Rocky Mountains with her high school friends, who all happen to be dudes, while her husband takes care of the kid with his time off. Consider it a mental health holiday that she desperately needs. When she gets to the house, the guys decide to take mushrooms while they go out to tube on a river and hike back home. Molly is convinced to join in on the hallucinogen fun and we get to witness what transpires.
Gregory Kohn’s Come Down Molly is a pleasant one to watch but when it’s over it might leave you pissed off. Visually, the film is PSA for getting outside and enjoying nature, as the cinematography and long scenes and shots of people enjoying the weather makes you wish you could drop everything and take a trip. Outside of that, there isn’t much there, yet I didn’t hate the film, which is absolutely astonishing.
For not actually hating the film, Come Down Molly still might be the most deceptive drama I’ve ever seen. The official synopsis for the film says that they all go on a “vivid psychedelic adventure,” but let me assure you the vivid part is something we don’t experience, unless pleasant scenery falls in that catgory, and the “adventure” part, well, the shrooms don’t kick-in until the most adventurous part of their trip ends (tubing down a river). To call hiking or laying down in a grassy field adventurous is like saying going to an aquarium to watch sharks in a tank is like actually swimming with them. Whoever wrote the plot did a great job to get me interested in the film, too bad that’s as far my interest got.
While on paper, this film had the potential to be a fascinating character study, the outcome of what I watched was the exact opposite. The film isn’t interesting at all as it really has no substance to it, it’s simply a calming visual art with dialogue. There are three moments in the film, two of which come at the end, where we get any real glimpse of substance or what Molly is actually craving in life. Of course, this happens in the form of a hallucination and leads you on to believe certain things. Those were interesting, but then the film backtracks and provides no insight into what could happen once she comes down from her high. Will this experience of letting go with her friends help her? Does she truly feel disconnected from her child? I’m not looking for answers to every question, I just want to know what the hell the point of the film was. If I wanted to hear people get stoned and chat I could ask some friends, go to a college party or visit a popular spring break destination.
If you’re looking for a psychedelic drama or an engaging story about a mother trying to find a way to connect with herself so that she can be re-engaged with her child, then look somewhere else. The beginning of the film makes you think that this mushroom trip might help with building a story that has potential, but instead all we get to witness is watching people hike, lay down, chat like stoners and see Molly get uncomfortable a few times. Eventually we get an inkling of substance and story but that’s when the film ends and that’s when I can see people getting pisses.
While I didn’t hate Come Down Molly, mostly because it was so calming and had one or two funny moments during a stoner rant involving bumble bees and flowers, it did end up being a waste of time. This is one of those films where nothing happens after the first 20 minutes yet you still have 60 more to get through with nothing really pushing the story forward.
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