Review
Title: Reviews for Non-Existent Movies
Author: Eric Goulden Kimball
Publisher: Ships of Hagoth
Genre: Creative Short Fiction/Commentary
Year Published: 2023
Number of Pages: 92
Binding: Paperback
ISBN: 9798210209290
Price: $5.99
Reviewed by Conor Hilton for the Association for Mormon Letters
A couple of my siblings and I were hanging out the other day discussing alternative approaches to the Star Wars sequel trilogy, walking through options, giving flashes of summary, commentary on what those events and images would mean, etc. Reviews for Non-Existent Movies, the latest book-length offering from publisher Ships of Hagoth, written (pseudonymously?) by Eric Goulden Kimball, has much of that same energy—if you find yourself imagining a new, fresh take on Superman, reimaging Star Wars films, or dreaming of what your ideal Joseph Smith biopic would look like, then this is the book for you.
Reviews for Non-Existent Movies is playful and inventive, a blend of criticism, cultural commentary, and convention-defying fiction. The book is a collection of fourteen reviews, each, as the title suggests, reviewing a movie (or two or three) that does not exist.
The reviews offer summaries of the films, inflected with some analysis and commentary on the film as well as the state of cinema generally. The reviews tease a world not quite like our own (most conspicuously in the review for Independence Day – Fallout which gestures at a cataclysmic alien invasion and its after-effects as it reviews the latest installment in the Independence Day franchise).
The design of the book feels a little lacking compared to the inventiveness of the idea and the liveliness of much of the prose. It’s perfectly serviceable, but combined with scattered typos throughout, gives the book an unfortunate air of unprofessionalism.
That aside, the reviews themselves are often engaging, making me long for real-world counterparts to these films! Conjuring that feeling of wishing I could see what the reviewer had seen. The two reviews that do this most for me are Clark Kent and Richard Dutcher’s Smith. Kent engages with Superman in a fresh way that I hope makes its way across the desk of some WB executive before the next cinematic iteration of the character makes his way to the big screen. And Smith offers a taste of a dizzying, strange, deeply imaginative, peculiar conclusion to the film, which will forever cause me to be disappointed in whatever Joseph Smith biopics actually get made.
I don’t think I have ever read another book quite like Eric Goulden Kimball’s Reviews for Non-Existent Movies. The target audience for this literary experiment is likely small, but those that fit in the niche will almost certainly be pleased with the results. I hope more authors of Mormon literature can take a leaf from Kimball’s playful, experimental book and stretch the conventions and form of literature to new heights and lows. Not everything works here, but it’s a fun, breezy ride worth taking. And who knows, maybe some enterprising filmmaker will take a stab at bringing to life something akin to Smith as Kimball describes it. But if not, at least I’ll have the idea of the film to take with me.