Marjorie Prime

In the opening scene of Marjorie Prime, an elderly woman and a younger man sit across from each other in a plush living room and have a long conversation. If something feels a little off about the way they are interacting, we soon learn why. Marjorie (Lois Smith) is 85 years old and in the early stages of dementia, and the man she’s conversing with isn’t a man at all.

He’s a sophisticated hologram, or a “Prime”, programmed to look and sound exactly like her late husband Walter (Jon Hamm), and to recall memories that Marjorie and her family have fed to him. For example, Walter remembers the time he proposed to her, after they saw My Best Friend’s Wedding. “Julia Roberts, etched forever on our lives,” Marjorie complains. “What if we saw Casablanca instead? Let’s say we saw Casablanca in an old theatre with velvet seats, and then on the way home, you proposed. Then, by the next time we talk, it will be true.”

Read the rest of my review at Little White Lies