“Morris from America” centers on the title character (newcomer Markees Christmas) and his single father, Chris (Craig Robinson) as they try to stay together on the isolated terrain of Heidelberg. They find a comfortable routine – buying ice cream, arguing over hip-hop, ignoring the heavy memory of Morris’ dead mother that hovers on the fringes of their lives. But their strong relationship isn’t enough to fully satisfy their desire for connection and community. It’s here that the film really finds its most interesting ground in addressing how loneliness shapes us.
“I don’t need friends,” Morris says early on.
“Everyone needs friends,” assures her language teacher Inka (Carla Juri).
Morris doesn’t have many options when it comes to friends and his stay at a local youth center only makes that clearer. Morris and the children around him are a study in contrasts. They are slender blondes and redheads without any seriousness. They throw insulting nicknames like “Big Mac” and “Kobe Bryant” at him to remind him of his place in their world. He’s a chubby, dark-skinned hip-hop guy. But he eventually finds the closest thing to friendship in 15-year-old Katrin (Lina Keller), an attractive girl who feigns femininity through the usual mix of teenage rebellion.
“Morris of America” shows how even minor age differences in adolescence seem like lifetimes. Even before his DJ and motorcyclist pal comes onto the scene, it’s clear that Morris doesn’t stand a chance and Katrin is just teasing him. But that only emboldens him further. There’s a laid-back charm to watching their friendship develop. Christmas and Keller have a chemistry that feels genuine to the kind of unrequited crush between them. But Katrin is not relieved of the racism Morris faces elsewhere; if anything, she pushes it to the surface. She’s a little too curious about her blackness, asking about her love of rapping, whether black people can dance, and her “big black dick” in one particularly squeaky scene. Christmas’ performance elevates moments like these as he displays a mix of confusion, longing and embarrassment. He finds hints that the script and directing seem to bypass, drawing attention to how the character’s loneliness and disconnect from the culture around him lead him to find faint approximations of what he truly aspires to. Though sometimes even he can’t fix a rather flawed scene involving a pillow, Katrin’s sweater, and an explicit song by Miguel.
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