A State of Mind

Writer/Director Yvette Plummer's film "A State of Mind" was shot in eleven days with a budget less than $100,000. An audience, however, would never know it. Plummer manages to deliver a funny, sad, and somewhat sobering look into the lives of three young Black women (an aspiring screenwriter, a social worker, and a struggling actress/beautician). This feature is not visually stunning. The lack of funds certainly did not allow for great visual effect. Yet it was impossible to ignore the characters and messages found in this film. Plummer does not preach, she demonstrates. If Plummer can deliver a winner with a five-figure budget, she should win an Oscar when the big bank finally arrives. "A State of Mind" was a thoroughly entertaining and remarkable achievement!!

This movie is what happens when you give a film school hack a sizeable budget. This movie is about an hour of bad script, bad shots, and bad acting. I have seen better student pieces produced with a 10 dollar budget and a Hi-8 camera. I do however, think that everyone who is interested in producing/directing a movie should watch this. So they will know what NOT to do. Shooting in 11 days can be hard. But if the talents of the writer/producer were up to par then this movie might have been something less than another 2 dollar straight to Flea Market Video production. I have a sneaking feeling that she cut herself the biggest check when it came time to do the budget breakdown, which should not be the case for an indie flick. The shots are ALL on a tripod, there are wide shots and dialogue scenes that last 7 minutes with no cuts, it's like watching a school board meeting on Public Broadcast, there are terribly long pauses between the actor's dialogue,it's like this, "Hi!"....(they stare at each other)....."Hey", and it's almost apparent that the writer has some sort of deeply rooted grudge against men. Whoever green lighted this movie needs to retire because they are slipping. This movie was seriously painful for me to watch, and I only watched it because I had to. This movie will put an insomniac to sleep. Make your children watch this as punishment. But whatever you do don't buy this, just rent it or steal it, we don't need to give this woman any more money, because the last thing we need is a sequel.

I ejected the DVD at the 30 minute mark because "State of Mind" was going no where, had not developed anything, was obviously a shabby low budget production, and not the movie I was expecting anyway. The acting was par or slightly below but the production was flea market value. The litany of deficits is too long for this forum but would include everything from a poor lighting to bad set acoustics and sound to flubs and awkward pick ups on cues, etc. I only got the DVD by accident having clicked on the wrong "State of Mind" on Blockbuster's website. So, I cut my losses at 30 minutes and bothered to write these comments so you can avoid making the same mistake. (D)