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The Drama (2026)

Mike: Why do you want to talk about fucking

in front of your family? Or her family?

Okay no I did not like this movie, but I love Mamoudou Athie and it's his birthday today so we're going there. He certainly wasn't the problem with that movie. He's funny in it. Anyway I am trying to think of, to quote one of our too-oft-ignored series here at MNPP, "The Moment I Fell For" him, but it was a slow build over several years I think. I really enjoyed the movie Patti Cake$ in 2017 (how in the hell is that movie a decade old?) and that was probably where I first saw him; after that the next highlight would be the one-season-wonder Archive 81, which is brilliant and which I still resent Netflix for cancelling. But (skipping over his fun turn for Yorgos in Kinds of Kindness) it weirdly wasn't until...

...  last year's curiosity By Design, the movie where Juliette Lewis turns into a chair, that I realized -- hey Mamoudou is actually sexy as hell. He does this interpretive dance with said chair that is H-O-T. (On a sidenote Vinegar Syndrome just dropped By Design for pre-order this month -- you truly will not see another movie like that one. It's from Amanda Kramer, who also directed our beloved gay greaser fantasia Please Baby Please. Can't wait to see what she's doing next!) Anyway let's get Mamoudou cast as the proper lead in a big romantic movie next. A gay one, preferably.