| Small Canadian indies rarely get theatrical releases, so I want to support Morningside but are they ever making that hard. It’s a tragic drama about nothing. That’s a slight exaggeration on my part, the beginning is about gentrification and the ending is about senseless violence and systemic racism within police departments, but the full hour and a half in the middle is about nothing. The entire movie is establishing a dozen nondescript boring characters just for something to finally happen at the very end. | | 2025
Directed by: Ron Dias
Screenplay by: Ron Dias, Joanne Jansen
Starring: Alex Mallari Jr., Kiki Hammill
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Morningside is a community center in a Scarborough neighbourhood which is closing and being torn down at the end of the year in three weeks’ time. A condo will be built in its place, now being called North York, so rich white people won’t be afraid to move there. Filmed on location in Scarborough, locals should get a lot more out of this than outside folks since it is about their community and every location used in the film is recognizable.
Most of the characters work for this community center, or are friends with people who work in this community, or have some other vague reason for being a character in the movie. All but two of these characters have no real discernible characteristics, have no reason for us to care about until tragedy strikes in literally the final scene.
The only two characters that actually have a personality are Josh and Amber. Josh (Alex Mallari Jr) works as a security guard at Morningside, who likes taking potentially violent conflicts into his own hands because he’s applied to be a police officer, even though as his boss keeps telling him and threatening to fire him, he’s supposed to report to the police and not get involved. When he passes the test for the police force, he then finds out they’re not hiring, so his future remains in limbo.
Amber (Kiki Hammill) is a teenager and a phenomenal singer she practices at the community center while her mother arranges for singing lessons to help get her to the next level. Meanwhile she’s a typical teenager who broadcasts her personal life to the internet and has a boyfriend she’s hiding from her mother. Like most of the characters in the movie, Josh and Amber have no real connection to each other. They’re just random characters like everyone else but good enough to at least make an impact, and the two actors make a big favourable impression to be able to stand out.
The dialogue is likely realistic, but it also seems very specific to these characters. Like a group of friends who have their own short forms and phrases, which makes it exceedingly difficult for outsiders to connect with them. All characters, other than Josh and Amber, remain boring and mostly unidentifiable.
While the film does eventually lead to a tale of violence and tragedy, it takes the full hour and a half for anything to happen. In addition to being too little too late, it’s extremely pessimistic. These characters had very shitty lives at the beginning of the movie, and they are all decidedly worse after. The only main takeaway is that violence is bad.
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