Review of the film “Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose” by Adam Segal

Adam Segal’s film “Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose” is about a forgotten newspaper sensation of the 1930s – a mysterious animal that may or may not have been discovered in the British countryside. Yulia Shagelman calls not to be deceived by the word “comedy” in the description of the film: the story about the search for a talking mongoose turned out to be sad and with a touch of philosophical reasoning.

The most amazing thing is that the picture, whose title looks like some lost Harry Potter spin-off, is actually based on real events. On the British Isle of Man lived the Irving family, whose members in 1931 began to say that an Indian mongoose (a completely uncharacteristic animal for these places) had settled in their house, which at first simply made different sounds, and then suddenly spoke in a human voice, introduced itself as Jeff, and also reported that he is the “spirit of the earth” and the eighth wonder of the world. Gradually, Jeff became practically a member of the family and began to have lengthy conversations with the Irvings.

Apart from them, no one else saw the little animal, but many heard it – residents of the island, journalists interested in the unusual story, and after them researchers of paranormal phenomena. The first of these specialists to visit the Irvings was Dr. Harry Price (Christopher Lloyd), who was accompanied by the editor of The Listener magazine, Richard Lambert (Emilio Calcioli), and then came the famous psychoanalyst and parapsychologist of Hungarian origin, Nandor Fodor (Simon Pegg). They all dedicated extensive articles and even books to Jeff. And despite the fact that a rational explanation was always at hand – the Irvings’ daughter Vara (Jessica Bulmer) did not even think of hiding her talent as a ventriloquist – the Jeff phenomenon continued to occupy the respectable public so much that even the House of Commons discussed it.

In the film by Adam Segal, based on his own script, Fodor is portrayed as a skeptic who, of course, does not believe in any talking animal, but decides to go to the Isle of Man at the invitation of his respected colleague Price to figure out what is happening there: an ordinary fraud in order to become famous or a unique case of mass hallucination.

Fodor, and with him the authors of the film, are occupied with the question of the perception of reality: can something be considered real only because we see it with our own eyes, or is our (sub)consciousness capable of projecting its fantasies, fears, dreams and painful memories and convince us of their materiality? This is an interesting and complex topic, and in the hands of a more skillful director, it probably could have turned into an interesting and complex film – perhaps even the audience would have been distracted from the fact that all this existential fuss is going on around, God forgive me, a talking mongoose .

Segal assembled a strong cast in the film (although even Pegg, who plays his hero with full dedication, often flounders helplessly in endless tedious dialogues and monologues rather than making them lively and convincing), dressed him in period-appropriate costumes and filmed them against the backdrop of picturesque landscapes and interiors so dear to the hearts of lovers of cozy old-fashioned British cinema. However, he has not decided on the main thing: what is he filming – either a philosophical parable about the eternal questions of existence, or an eccentric comedy (there is nothing funny in the film, but some situations make you giggle reflexively at their absurdity), or a drama about how loneliness and unfinished gestalts make people believe in anything that can bring them comfort. The film has the potential to pursue any of these ideas, but ultimately they all prove as elusive as Jeff the mongoose.