Review: More Than I Want To Remember

Summer 2022 saw Paramount+ and MTV Entertainment use a lot of their “heavies” in adult animation to execute one of the best premiere summers any streamer has had. The likes of Beavis and Butt-Head, Star Trek: Lower Decks, and South Park were all well-represented and continued to show why MTV Entertainment is one of the leading producers of animated comedies in the world.

But, now we need to see Paramount+ diversify. Much in the same way Netflix is a fantastic choice for animated comedies, dramas, and sci-fi, Paramount+ is going to do something similar. The lineage is on their side, however, as MTV has had an excellent history in diversifying it’s adult animation portfolio, so I have faith this will happen. Prime example, this new animated documentary short-film entitled More Than I Want To Remember.

More Than I Want To Remember follows a 14-year-old Banyamulenge girl named Mugeni hailing from the jungle villages of Congo who has to flee from her small village after rabid fire-bombs separate her from her family. She eventually makes her way to the United States where Mugeni is soon adopted by a kind family that does their best to assimilate their new arrival to American life. As time goes on, Mugeni wishes to try to find her family and links up to a local church for Banyamulenge citizens for assistance and is successful in her eventual reunification.

The Amy Bench directed quarter-hour features Maya Edelman as the lead animation director who does a marvelous job of capturing the essence of Mugeni’s story in animation aesthetic that features fascinating influences clearly on display from both Maya’s USSR upbringing, as well has her fellow animators from Lebanon and Chile. The result is a story that is fast-paced but successful in it’s showcase of achieving the American dream.

Hopefully, films like More Than I Want To Remember will become more prevalent on Paramount+, stories like this from MTV Documentaries take me back to a pre-Vice era where MTV was one of the leading journalistic authorities on the planet. A short-film like this does a little bit for a long way to see that the production company can reclaim some of that austerity.