THE STORY – A poetic, emotionally expansive father-son story about Black family, grace, imagination, and the hope that love can transform even the most fragile relationships into something more healing and beautiful.
THE CAST – J. Alphonse Nicholson, Danielle Brooks, Bodhi Dell, Myles Bullock & Bre-Z
THE TEAM – Walter Thompson-Hernández (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 95 Minutes
For the residents of Los Angeles’ Watts neighborhood, the residents of the southern block are accustomed to the roaring sounds of outbound flights. Unfazed by the daily disturbance of commercial airliners, the community of working-class tenants has managed to live alongside the thundering noise. The raucous commotion is a mere setback to their ordinary routines. On the flipside, the children of the neighborhood are far more naive. For the young eyes of twelve-year-old Lil Ant, the LAX air traffic is an enchanting spectacle. The child’s impressionable gaze fondly worships aviation, as he dreams of flying away from his Los Angeles abode.
The blissful naivety of youth is at center stage of Walter Thompson-Hernández’s sophomore entry ”If I Go Will They Miss Me”. Adapted from the award-winning short film of the same name, the ambitious feature captures Lil Ant’s playfulness and angst when his absent father Big Ant finally returns home after his prison sentence. Reconciling with the absence of his family’s unreliable patriarch, Thompson-Hernández empathetically begins his tale of imperfect fatherhood through the eyes of a vulnerable child. We learn about Lil Ant’s parents, as he recounts the origin of their love and eventual separation. Accompanied by the tune of “This Bitter Earth,” covered by the legendary Jon Baptiste, Thompson-Hernández punctuates Big Ant’s timidness, humility, and cowardice through his son’s passive voice. The intimate setup remarkably captures the essence of the dysfunctional family.
Through the routines of the newly reconnected unit, “If I Go Will They Miss Me” avoids the typical trappings of manipulative poverty porn. The Watts neighborhood is depicted through Lil’s Ant’s impressionable gaze, represented as a warm and diverse community. Thompson-Hernández explores Watts’s Hispanic- and Black-dominated population through onscreen ethnography. The attention to accuracy beautifully immortalizes Thompson-Hernández’s childhood home through his protagonist’s experiences. On top of his obsession for all things aviation, Lil Ant’s imagination is frequently drawn to the gods and monsters of Greek Myth. Lil Ant’s idolization of mythical tales visually coincides with his father’s return, rendering his paternal visage as a contemporary Odysseus. The visualization of Lil Ant’s wondrous imagination is by far the most interesting aspect of Thompson-Hernández’s quotidian portrait.
Thompson-Hernández introduces the aforementioned motif early in his story of fatherly acceptance, accentuating the child’s idolization of his newfound patriarch. Regrettably, the motif is underutilized, and the film explores the child’s psychology only sparingly. As the film alternates perspectives between Lil Ant’s father and his loving mother, the film loses its creative edge. The alternating points of view ultimately limit the specificity of the character’s experiences, which is further diminished by its tight 90-minute runtime. Big Ant’s impulsive and mean-spirited behavior is only explored at the surface level, relying on heavy exposition and overwritten scenes of the character mumbling his emotions directly to the viewer. As a result, its linear narrative lacks emotional poignancy.
The stilted dialogue-writing also disrupts the poetic flow of the film’s elliptical storytelling. By handholding his audience, Thompson-Hernández replaces the intrigue of his initial aesthetic anchor with saccharine storytelling. The push-and-pull dynamic between father and son repeats itself with little deviation, remixing similar plotbeats from pre-existing cookie-cutter Sundance fare. While Danielle Brooks’ commanding performance as an unconventional matriarch provides the film’s emotional rawness, the rest of Thompson-Hernández’s coming-of-age chronology feels derivative of stronger cinematic works of visual poetry. The underwhelming application of tonal montage fails to produce new expressive images, relying on its largely static composition for aesthetic allure. Thompson-Hernández ultimately prioritizes tiresome repetition over directorial ingenuity.
Despite its admirable intentions and unabashed adoration for the community of Watts, “If I Go Will They Miss Me” is undermined by its nauseatingly obvious screenwriting and repetitive storytelling. The film’s creative voice feels derivative of the work of Barry Jenkins, Ramell Ross, and Raven Jackson—borrowing heavily from their creative use of tonal montage. Muddled by its ambition to spotlight each of his characters’ perspectives, Thompson-Hernández rejects subtlety for cheapened catharsis. Relying on expository emotion over natural resonance, “If I Go Will They Miss Me” is a disappointing coming-of-age fable.
