Mother's Day

WARNING: This review is hidden because it reveals the content of the film.
Click here to show this review. It’s Garry Marshall giving his ensemble cast romantic comedy holiday-based movie thing another shot and unfortunately for us, it’s still no good. In fact, it’s pretty terrible.

It feels like a bunch of 22-minute TV show episodes stitched together. Set shortly before Mother’s Day, several stories weave in and out of each other: Sandy (Jennifer Aniston) is a divorced mother of two who feels inadequate after seeing her ex’s new wife Tina (Shay Mitchell.) She’s friends with Jesse (Kate Hudson) who hasn’t spoken to her racist parents for years (Robert Pine and Margo Martingale.) They disapprove of her husband (Aasif Mandvi.) Jesse knows Kristin (Britt Robertson) a new mom on the fence about marrying her daughter’s father because of abandonment issues. She was adopted and therefore never knew her real mother. Meanwhile Miranda (Julia Roberts), a career-driven woman who is “definitely not” a mom is interviewing Sandy for a job and Bradley (Jason Sudeikis) is trying to figure out what he and his two daughters will do for Mother’s Day, since his wife died a year ago.

I chuckled maybe three times during some scenes where Kristin’s husband Zack (Jack Whitehall) does stand-up. Take note of that word. I chuckled. I never laughed out loud. It’s a nothing of a plot. You don’t care about anything that’s going on because none of it feels real. What I didn’t mention earlier is that Jesse’s racist parents are also homophobic, bad news for Jesse’s lesbian sister Gabi (Sarah Chalke) The conflict that stems from them all meeting sounds like it was originally about Jesse revealing that she doesn’t care for her mom’s apple pie, not that the daughters have been secretly married for years. There’s no real drama there, nothing that you and I can relate to. Partially because it’s mostly played for laughs and also because none of the reactions are anything like they should be.

“Mother’s Day” is a bunch of pretty people complaining about their insignificant problems or issues being made to feel trivial. You could make a movie solely about Bradley mourning the loss of his attractive wife but this film isn’t interested in real emotion. His plot becomes “she died a year ago, isn’t it time to move on? ” with tampon-related humor and a very safe “my daughter growing up too fast” plot tacked on. The adoption story lacks any kind of spice and becomes a gray slush. Everything about it is glossed over. Excuses are made for why this conflict is only coming up now instead of say… when the woman was 16, the age most people would start thinking about their real parents. Oh, and her biological father? He just doesn’t exist apparently. We never see that guy.

An issue that keeps coming up in “Mother’s Day” is dead parents. Kristin wants to see her birth mother. Where are her adoptive parents? Dead. Her boyfriend. Where are his parents? There’s a big event where they SHOULD be present, but they aren’t so I assume they’re dead. Miranda’s parents? Dead. Gabi’s in-laws? Never mentioned so I guess they’re dead too. I know it’s probably not supposed to be the case, but this film feels so sloppily written that you can’t help but pick at it. At one point Jennifer Aniston’s character Sandy puts money into a vending machine, only for her candy to get stuck. She reaches in and tries to grab the candy... and eventually does! Anyone who lives in the real world knows this is impossible. There wouldn’t be anything left in the bottom rows of that machine if you could do that. It’s trivial, but what can you do to amuse yourself in that just sits there looking stupid besides search for the hints that it’s all set in some parallel universe where our day-to-day rules do not apply?

If you want a better film to watch with your mother, consider something else. Maybe “Psycho”? Sure the Alfred Hitchcock’s thrill-a-minute suspense fest doesn’t have eye-rolling references to “Pretty Woman”, a sassy black lady who comments about white people rapping, a kid peeing in some random purse while the adults look exasperated or - wait. Those are all terrible things. What I hate most about “Mother’s Day” is the experience I had in the theater. There were only 3 other people sitting there with me and none of them laughed, but the film is so schmaltzy and wraps itself up such an artificially cute fashion that it tricks you into thinking it’s good. I heard the other visitors comment that they liked it on the way out. WHY? HOW?! “Mother’s Day” is a laugh-free, predictable, unimaginative and lazy production that delivers nothing and still demands your money. (Theatrical version on the big screen, May 14, 2016)