The trailer touts this as the best comedy of the year. A comedy it is not. I thrice found myself smiling heartily. MUMFORD is both the leading character and the name of the town the story takes place it. MUMFORD the character is a man sort of like THE GREAT IMPOSTER, a film that Tony Curtis starred in back in the 60's. Like the Curtis character, he discovers during his stay at a monastery that he wants to have a new life, so he invents one. The update is that drugs have driven him to seek asylum with the good padres in the desert. While getting clean and sober he realizes that he is a good listener, so naturally he decides that he would make a wonderful therapist. His training as an IRS agent, the life he left for drugs, shows him how to create the person known as Mumford, including all of the phony credentials that he needs to pass as a doctor. When he looks on a map and sees the town of Mumford, somewhere in idyllic, pastoral, America, we are never sure just where, he thinks "that's an omen, that's the place where I belong." The odd thing is, he does help people. All of the folks he treats, get better from his listening and applying his very down to earth logical approach. The performances by a rather star studded cast are wonderful, but the screenplay and the direction are just so slow moving you want to die. If it were REALLY the best comedy of the year I would have been laughing and that might have kept me interested in this guy, but as it turned out I didn't give a damn. It reminded me of COOKIE'S FORTUNE out earlier this year. I admired the cast greatly, but the screenplay and the direction were so boring that you couldn't care enough to stay awake. Its not that MUMFORD is bad, its just DULL. My advice rent THE GREAT IMPOSTER for $1.99 in the classic aisle and save the 7 bucks on MUMFORD.
