Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose (2023) review

Notable parapsychologist Nandor Fodor (Simon Pegg) receives a letter from his colleague Harry Price (Christopher Lloyd) informing him that the Irving family from the Isle of Man claims that there's a talking mongoose named Gef (voiced by Neil Gaiman) living on their property so he takes his assistant Anne (Minnie Driver) along with him to investigate.  It's based on a true story and the movie tries to take the situation "seriously" - teenager Voirrey Irving (Jessica Balmer) just so happens to be skilled at ventriloquism - but there's an excessive amount of voice-over in the first third and the quirkiness dries up very quickly (Anne and the villagers "believe" in it, while Nandor's understandably skeptical).  The overriding 'point' was better summarized in a 1969 song written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and sung by Peggy Lee: let's break out the booze and have a ball.