Motivational Growth (2014) | Movie Review

There are films out there that have hundreds of millions of dollars in the coffers, offering stunning visuals of rock-em-sock-em robots or 12-story iguanas, yet have absolutely nothing to say. Then there are films that are centered around one man isolated in his apartment, engaging in entire conversations with the mold in his bathroom, that are trying desperately to move you into contemplation. Motivational Growth is in the latter category.

Ian (Adrian DiGiovanni) is a man of solitude who has spent months electively locked inside his one-bedroom apartment, isolating himself with nothing more on his agenda than obsessively watching television. His food is delivered to his door, his cleaning skills are virtually obsolete, and his mind is slipping into absurdity – This is a man with little to live for. When the worst catastrophe imaginable happens, his TV breaks, a series of circumstances lead Ian to question his own sanity and he begins to strike up random conversations with The Mold (voiced by genre legend Jeffrey Combs).

Yes, you read that right. The Mold (he refuses to be identified as anything else) that resides along the edges of Ian’s bathroom sink has been given life and vocal skills. Affectionately referring to Ian only as Jack, The Mold unloads snippets of advice intended to propel Ian forward and alter his current course. Utilizing The Mold’s monotone life lessons, Ian does eventually begin to see that improvement. He starts to take pride in his appearance again, in turn fueling an uptick in his confidence that leads him to finally speak to Leah (Danielle Doetsch), the girl he has long been stalking through his door’s peephole.

Things are changing for Ian…or are they? Is this reality or another figment of Ian’s TV warped mind? Does The Mold have the best intentions at heart? Does Ian not own one single SOS pad? These questions and more come into play before the film finally relents with a few confounding answers.

Motivational Growth is a Rubik’s Cube style of filmmaking that fits comfortably in no single genre. For every gross-out gag that screams of a top-shelf Troma film, to every 4^th wall-breaking monologue that reminds us of the quirkiness of Wes Anderson, to the absolute absurdity of Cronenberg: Motivational Growth is a melting pot of film styles. Director Don Thacker wants to paralyze your mind with both frustration and curiosity as the film posits question after question and the audience attempts to decipher the underlying meaning of it all.

While the film does have a genre legend’s voice to fall back on, the entirety of the story hinges on the performance of DiGiovanni. Thankfully, Thacker entrusted his most important role to an actor who seems to have a relatability and effortlessness with the dialogue that instantly creates in Ian an endearing character the audience is willing to follow. Even as he rambles incessantly with yapping fungi, DiGiovanni’s Ian remains a character whose plight we can sympathize with.

Jeffrey Combs manages to sell the insane reality of The Mold’s conversing by doing little more than approaching the material with a seriousness this concept would not typically seem worthy of. You will walk into this film with the idea that Ian’s entire world is absolutely ridiculous, and you will walk out wishing your bathroom mold would talk back to you (it won’t, I tried).

Motivational Growth is not without its issues. By relying so heavily on dialogue and random visuals to convey Ian’s state-of-mind, the pacing of the film does tend to get stretched a little thin in the film’s final act. While Ian’s growing confidence and ensuing character change were all very necessary, the film could easily benefit from a tightening of the plot points to remedy the occasional veering off the tracks the narrative manages during this ending stretch.

Quibbles aside, Motivational Growth is a mind-numbing film that wants you to exit the theater debating the existential happenings that you and your friends just sat through. Is the movie for everyone? Absolutely not. Some people just cannot handle the concept of watching a grown man waxing philosophical with bacteria. But if you can find your way past the low-budget wrapper, there is enough of a delicacy inside that Thacker’s psychological paradigm is easily worth the bite.

Starring Jeffrey Combs, Adrian DiGiovanni
Directed by Don Thacker
Written by Don Thacker

Aaron Peterson
The Hollywood Outsider