User Reviews

"The Realest Real" is a 2016 short film, so a very recent release and I got curious about this one as I saw Mahershala Ali in the cast. He is one of the big Oscar contenders this year apparently and has been known so far mostly for his recurring role in Kevin Spacey's "House of Cards". Anyway, back to this one her. The writer and director of these slightly over 6 minutes is Carrie Brownstein ("Portlandia") and the story is about a young woman who wants her idol to be her mother. A very bizarre idea because honestly why would you wish for stuff like that. You have to really come up with a nice explanation to make this film work, even if it's a short one, and I don't think Brownstein got even close to that unfortunately. The second half of the film is about the main character's two mother (the new one and the real one) arguing who's the actual mother. Oh well.. in fact they don't argue, but just keep saying stuff like "I'm her mom" for ages. This should tell you the level of creativity here. I myself was very unimpressed and 4 stars out of 10 is still pretty generous overall I guess. Neither direction nor acting and especially not writing were convincing in this mix of fantasy movie and family drama. Watch something else instead. I hope Brownstein can step things up in the coming years if she decides to make more (short) films in the future.