Rare Treat

Director Stuart Acher and screenwriter Jeremy Catalino do in 20 minutes what some filmmakers don't accomplish in years. Their short film "Bobby Loves Mangos"--mystery, comedy, drama, even commentary on domestic strife--excels in every category it jumps into.

"Bobby Loves Mangos" takes place in Troy, ME, a place reminiscent of what small-town America once was--in the movies, at any rate: polite, cheerful, and innocent. The first time we see Dwight Stevenson (Frank Ridley), a middle school principal who loves his job and knows each student by name, he is surveying his kingdom, standing on the blacktop of the school playground, feet planted on a huge, colorful, chalk-drawn US map. After this arresting shot, he enters his office and takes part in a routine which he and his secretary continue to enjoy after 13 years: each morning, he and April (played by Paula Plum, an actress with a name straight off the Clue board) discuss whichever episode of "Murder, She Wrote" aired the night before. And each morning, or so it seems, April sighs and says, "I just wish the rest of Maine were as exciting as Cabot Cove."

Well, April, Cabot Cove's got nothing on Troy. What happens after Stevenson and April watch a mysterious videotape delivered early that morning owes as much to "The Twilight Zone" and "The X Files" as it does to Angela Lansbury's perennially popular show. The tape features a 40ish-year-old man named Bobby Derrick, who claims to be speaking from the year 2018. The adult Bobby--Stevenson and April know Bobby Derrick as a student at Troy Middle School--has come back, in a sense, to warn the principal of a fatal bus accident which occurred that week (this week) in history, on a school field trip to the Museum of Science in Boston. Bobby was spared because he had eaten mangos the night before, not knowing he was allergic to them, and as a result missed the field trip. The 50 others on the bus were not so lucky.

I won't say another word about the plot, for "Bobby Loves Mangos" is a mystery, and it would be impolite to give much more away. However, the twists and turns that this film goes through in the ten or so minutes that remain are impressive, to say the least. It is impossible to say where this short film is the strongest. The writing is creative, clever, and funny; the direction sophisticated; the score inspired. But I'll put my money on the actors. I could swear that the agony that these people go through, not knowing whether or not to believe the unbelievable, is real. Their facial expressions convey panic and disbelief and curiosity in the span of a second. Living on a steady diet of Jessica Fletcher solving crime after crime on "Murder, She Wrote," both Stevenson and April try their hands at sleuthing, but they are up against something that Jessica F. was never up against, forced not only to piece together clues, but to reassess their entire belief system.

Forced to reassess their entire belief system in a comedy, no less. Truly original, truly delightful, "Bobby Loves Mangos" is a real peach.