MOTHER'S DAY Send This Review to a Friend
Timed for the occasion, “Mother’s Day” is such a terrible movie that it could be reason to cancel the national holiday. One complains about throwing everything but the kitchen sink into a film. This one seems as if all the kitchen sinks in a neighborhood have gone missing.
The pity is the utter waste of good cast members, tossed in to portray the assembled roles in multiple plots in quest of both easy laughs and doses of sentimentality. The set-ups involve mothers and daughters, old and young, in the misfire of a movie that seems will never end. Blame Garry Marshall as the director presiding over the mess, with enough blame to be shared by four screenwriters—Tom Hines, Lily Hollander, Anya Kochoff and Matthew Walker.
A good example of the humor is the women of the Atlanta neighborhood building for a Mother’s Day parade a float shaped like a vagina. An idea of sex bias and racism to be overcome is the discovery by a yahoo-type mom (Margo Martindale as Flo) that one daughter is a lesbian and another is married to Russell, an Indian-American (Aasif Mandvi) with a dark-skinned child. Naturally, Flo, after her initial anger has to quickly adore her grandchild and even become friends with her son-in-law’s Indian mother, who had objected to her son marrying a white woman and who thinks the kid is too light-skinned. Got it all?
I would need a week to write about the entire plot. But a few further samples: Jennifer Aniston plays Sandy, a divorcee who nurtures hope that her ex will come back to her, only to have him (Timothy Olyphant) reveal he has already married a much younger woman. Kate Hudson plays Sandy’s friend Jesse, married to Russell.
Then there is Julia Roberts as a home shopping TV star with a past that will be revealed in another plot twist meant to stir emotions. We also have Jason Sudekis as Bradley, a physical trainer, and his daughter, who are about to face the first Mother’s Day without wife and mom, as she was a casualty in the military. Do you want more details? I could continue, but there is no reason to indulge movie masochists, the best audience for “Mother’s Day.” An Open Road release. Reviewed April 29, 2016
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