Sunday Mornings (2021): These ladies are fun to hang with

Sunday Mornings is a homemade indie effort produced as a pilot for a TV series. Apparently, no one wanted it, and it found its way to a low-populated corner at Prime Video.

I found it recently while playing around with the randomizer at Reelgood.

It is the story of six women in Atlanta raised as sisters. The film basically is a series of vignettes framed as diary entries by the central character, Sunday, portrayed admirably by Courtney Arlett. Arlett as Sunday provides voiceover narration to tie it all together.

All the women were raised by Sunday's uncle. Sunday says in the first few minutes that the other five women are sisters and that they all consider Sunday a sister.

Sunday and her husband have two foster children in their home. Sunday hopes she can have a biological child someday, but apparently she knows that isn't really going to happen. She and her husband treat the two foster kids like they are their own, and the youngsters seem quite happy. The little girl calls Sunday "mommy."

In one of the vignettes, the little girl is being removed from Sunday's home. The girl's biological father is coming home from prison and has claimed custody. The toddler and her foster parents are devastated when that happens. This story is a heartbreaker. It was probably my favorite sequence in this movie.

Elsewhere, the five elder sisters gang up on the youngest one's abusive husband in a pretty entertaining scene. In other strong sequences, one of the sisters goes on a blind date that goes awry, and a movie-night gathering at Sunday's home turns into a heated argument.

Sunday Mornings plays kind of like you're hanging out with the family watching some home movies. It's engaging enough early on until it disintegrates into some inexplicable weirdness in the last few minutes.

I couldn't find a lot of information about this movie. It's listed as a 2021 release, but it carries a 2016 copyright in the end credits.

Sunday Mornings is obviously an amateur effort. It feels like a group of friends who kind of knew what they were doing put together this project. It's a rough production -- clumsy editing, terribly inconsistent sound design, grainy film quality.

The strength of this film is its humanity. These characters feel like real people in real-life situations. The ensemble cast does a pretty good job with a solid if rough script. Sunday Mornings feels like a proof of concept that could have become a good movie in more experienced hands.

The director, Inda Reid, was in a band called ROXXI that toured with Destiny's Child around the turn of the century, according to IMDB. Her bio there says she is an acting coach and teacher.

Reid, who portrays one of the sisters, cowrote the movie with Maria and Michelle Acero, who play the twins. 

I give it 2.5 stars and a marginal thumbs-up. It's engaging if rough around the edges for most of its 72-minute runtime. I'm happy Reelgood tossed it my way. It isn't the kind of film I would seek out. But I found it worthwhile as a character-driven, slice-of-life film.