NANDOR FODOR AND THE TALKING MONGOOSE

Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose, Saban Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 31, 2023

"Gef the Talking Mongoose" is a true story—insomuch that such obvious bunk can be considered "true." The strange phenomenon that became popular fodder for British rag newspapers in the 1930s is treated with utter sincerity in Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose, an intriguing failure of a movie.

It has to be clarified early that the movie fails—and in so many ways—because writer/director Adam Sigal has assembled such a talented cast, put forth so many philosophical ideas about perspective and the supernatural, and created an air of equal parts mystery and oddity in his telling of the tale of the investigation of this urban legend. The movie has so much to say about the appeal of the fantastical, the fear of the unknown, and the allure of accepting the impossible over the terror of existential doubt. However, it's also dull, aimless, and builds to an anticlimax of exposition that is only topped by a final shot that seems to toss aside all of the Big Questions the movie has been asking.

The central figure, the eponymous Nandor Fodor, was a real person—a parapsychologist, born in Hungary and somewhat known for his studies of alleged supernatural occurrences. He's played in in the movie by Simon Pegg, in a performance that communicates—beneath a serviceable dialect—an existential angst and pernicious doubts about himself, his choices, and a world beyond in which he longs to believe. His work is good enough here that it belongs in movie that's much more interested in this character.

In this one, Nandor, along with everybody else, just gets to talk and talk about the mongoose, the family that claims the unseen animal speaks to them regularly, and, then, the mongoose some more, while talking around the certainty that the beast is either a hoax or some collective delusion and the misery that something so wonderful couldn't possibly be real. The mongoose, you see, is a metaphor for the great mysteries of life and death, and in case that isn't clear by the end of the movie, Sigal ensures that Nandor and his colleague Dr. Harry Price (Christopher Lloyd) speak talk and talk about and around that subject during the story's final, deflating scene.

Obviously, the issue isn't that these characters talk. It is, though, that they speak so much about what already has been established or that Sigal hasn't bothered to establish, with his screenplay being so busy giving us so much exposition and so many anecdotes that relate to this material's thematic aims. It's basically a string of tall tales within the confines of the movie's central one, with discussions about the nature and subjectivity of reality, the history of Harry Houdini's objections to fake spirit mediums (a subject that our protagonist, who works in the same field, somehow doesn't know of), a summary of the quirk of talking bird, and a bit more.

The actual investigation into the claim of Gef (voice of Neil Gaiman), the supposedly speaking mongoose that resides on and around the farm of a family on the Isle of Man, feels less like a story here and more like an excuse for these characters to ramble on incessantly, without actually saying anything of value. Nandor, a heavy drinker still mourning the death of an estranged father who didn't approve of his career decisions, decides to tackle the investigation into the mongoose, which has captured the curiosity and attention of people in the local town and beyond.

Is it, as family patriarch Mr. Irving (Tim Downie) says, a real talking beast that's just too shy and scared to be seen by anyone? Is it some collective psychosis being experienced by the family and that has spread to the local community? Is it just a parlor trick being performed by daughter Voirrey (Jessica Balmer), a self-taught ventriloquist who shows Nandor's assistant Anne (Minnie Driver) that she can throw her voice into the very walls out of which the mongoose's voice sometimes comes?

Look, the movie basically proves it has to be that last option, but because the characters don't ever say it outright, it's still an open question apparently. Every scene that comes after that feels disingenuous or dishonest, because Sigal assumes the mystery, which isn't much of one, and the endless talking about it, which gets to continue because these characters only exist to do that, are intrinsically compelling. They certainly might have been within an actual narrative, instead of the approach taken by Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose, which amounts to characters ambling around a story with their heads in the clouds.

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