Based on Jordan Harrison's play. With Lois Smith playing Marjorie, also her role in the play. Smith had played Doctor Hineman in Minority Report... she helped point Anderton in the right direction; her character had a very cerebral talk on life and survival in that one. Jon Hamm is a younger version of her husband Walter; turns out he's a hologram. Lots of repetition, as the family members interact with each other, the living and the holograms. This one probably isn't for everyone... you have to be forgiving of the timeline, and sometimes it takes a while to figure our what's going on. Memory. Tricks of the mind. Geena Davis is Tess, Marjorie's daughter. At one point, Tess says in time, our memories get fuzzier and fuzzier, since we remember the memory, not the actual event. I guess. I like where it's going, but it's a bit too ethereal and confusing. I felt out of the loop for most of the film. Directed by Michael Almereyda.

Marjorie Prime is adapted from a play. It involves a lot of talking and is never really opened out.

It is a film that involves a lot of words which reveals its various strands. The characters in front of us are imperfect holographic recreations of people who have died.

Set in the future, Marjorie (Lois Smith) is suffering from Alzheimer's. She listens to stories told to her by a holographic younger version of her late husband Walter (Jon Hamm) in order for her to remember and keep her memories going.

Yet Walter is not the only hologram in the family as their daughter Tess (Geena Davis) talks to Marjorie about the past and some event that affected the family. Tess's husband Jon (Tim Robbins) also needs to recall his relationship with Tess and how he first proposed to her.

The film should had been an interesting look at our memories and how we perceive our loved ones with the regrets of what was left unsaid. It is a shame the film told its story in such a lifeless way.

You might not want to watch "Marjorie Prime" if you're either sleepy or grumpy. It's a slow, cerebral, and very melancholy film. But it's also thought provoking and satisfying in the way that well told stories about death and loss can be.

Set in a near future, it tells the story of three family members -- a mother, her daughter, and the daughter's husband -- who deal with the grief of losing their loved ones by communing with virtual reality recreations of them. It's based on a play, and it shows; the film isn't especially cinematic, and it might test the patience of viewers who want more from a movie than a succession of lengthy mostly two-character dialogues. But it's superbly acted, and it raises questions about the nature of memory that are fun to ponder. The film suggests that our memories already manufacture virtual realities around the events we've already lived through, and that the idea of some day being able to have conversations with versions of those we've loved won't be that different from sifting through the memories of them that we have available to us now.

Lois Smith gives an award worthy performance as the matriarch who kicks off the film and who we see in the first scene chatting with her dead husband, played by Jon Hamm. Geena Davis plays her daughter, and Tim Robbins her son-in-law. All four actors are superb. A final scene, that finds the three virtual reality creations free from their owners and having a conversation between themselves, is especially haunting.

Grade: A-