I really wanted to...

...like this film. I did. I did not care one way or the other about the rap nor the language within the lyrics, per se. The music was the vehicle to show that Morris had passion and was isolated, etc. That made perfect sense.

kept me interested, but needed more of an ending

... glad to see these comments, because my reaction to this film felt sort of strange to me, and I wanted to see how others responded. I believe that I am more or less on the same page as the previous two posters.

I, too, wanted to like this film, and through about the first half of it, I did. It was funny, energetic, and dynamic—a brazen fish-out-of-water story that playfully toyed with—and transcended—racial stereotypes. Morris from America managed to be both sweet and crass at the same time, and it found a sense of common humanity even while presenting the apprehensions and ambivalence that come with a kid being an outsider, or a loner, or someone who is not quite part of the crowd. The film did a fine job of asking whether the attentions of an 'insider,' especially one of the opposite gender, happen to be genuine or manipulative—or somewhere in between, or none of the above. The kids feel like real kids—full of tentative outreaches and withdrawals and conflicted inchoate feelings—rather than like premature adults or movie brats.

But in the second half of the film, Morris from America darkens in mood and the tone shifts a little. That darkening and shift are fine, as matters now become more serious and the comedy now becomes more of a drama, but I believe that the film loses it sparkle and appeal. Morris from America becomes more flat, more like just another coming-of-age youth film. It still offers an exotic milieu, to be sure, but the movie seems to lose its irony and humor for the most part, until it brings back its humor in a too-obvious way for the very end. Writer-director Chad Hartigan seems to be searching or even lurching a bit for plot points, meaning, and significant dramatic scenes, as if he feared that the film could be what I feel it became, which is a great idea rather than a good film. Overall, I consider Morris from America "decent," and it proved engrossing overall, with some legitimate laughs, some worthwhile explorations of cross-cultural and cross-racial fertilization, and some authentic replications of adolescent ambivalence and apprehension. And the acting performances were sensitive and effective across the board. Yet the film feels as if it should have amounted to something more, instead of petering out and become a more conventional exercise in life's ups-and-downs for a young teenager.

And I did feel that there was something "off" about the casting of the father. Craig Robinson is fine in the role, but first, having a guy with that heavyset of a physique play a former professional soccer player (a current soccer assistant coach) is not convincing. Obviously, most professional athletes put on weight after they stop playing, but most soccer players—perhaps the most fit of team-sport athletes, because of their constant running—are not going to become that chubby a few years after retirement, especially if they are coaching. Also, so the father came out of the Bronx in, say, the early-to-mid 1990s and became a professional soccer player in Germany? Even if he was not playing in the top league, the idea of an African-American coming out of the Bronx to be a soccer pro in Germany (a soccer powerhouse nation) seems like a stretch. An African-American soccer pro coming out of some middle-class or affluent community in the US would be fine, but out of the Bronx at that time? These sorts of little details—heavyset physique, Bronx background for a black guy who made his living in soccer overseas—just do not add up and undermine the film a bit. Obviously, writer-director Hartigan wanted the Bronx background for the hip-hop/street vernacular credibility, but one cannot have it all.

Again, the idea is great, and I found the first half to be good. But more care needed to be offered in terms of the writing details and the casting, and while some of the close-ups are striking and the colors are vivid without being garish, Morris from America could have used more in the way of visual composition. As the original poster indicated, the film leaves the viewer yearning to like it yet wanting—needing—more.

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