Grin and bear it, Jen. It’s a... MOMCOM CATASTROPHE!
Mother’s Day Cert: 12A Time: 1hr 58mins ★★★★★
Film distributors, as I have remarked from time to time, work in mysterious ways, but rarely as mysteriously as with
Mother’s Day, which arrives in cinemas here three months too late for the day itself in this country but just in time for, er… Father’s Day. Which, you’ve got to admit, is odd.
Mind you, this is the sort of film that even perfect timing can’t help much. In the United States, where Mother’s Day was on May 8 this year, the film was released an ideal 10 days beforehand, yet didn’t even recoup its budget. Which, presumably, is why this exasperating schmaltzfest – directed by 81-year-old Garry Marshall – is now heading our way.
Marshall, of course, has form in this area. For having made his name as the director of such deservedly popular hits as Pretty Woman, Frankie And Johnny and Runaway Bride, he has padded out his later career with so-called ‘portmanteau’ films like this, in which all sorts of vaguely interwoven stories unfold independently before coming together in some sort of horribly contrived, supposedly heart-warming way at the end.
Valentine’s Day was one of his in 2010, as was the similarly constructed New Year’s
Eve a year later. And now he’s back again with this one, which somehow manages to annoy almost from the first bars of the opening music.
Poor Jennifer Aniston, picking the wrong project for what seems like the millionth time in a row, plays the central character of Sandy, the sort of divorcee who surely exists only in Hollywood films – she’s gorgeous, fit (she spends a lot of time in her jogging gear) and the mother of two happy boys. She even gets on with her ex-husband, until – as the film gets clunkily under way – he announces he’s just remarried, to a part-time model at least 25 years her junior.
This all-too-predictable set-up would be a lot funnier if Sandy didn’t look like the still lovely Aniston, whose character can hardly complain – not at least if we’re expected to laugh or sympathise – about the tiny shorts her rival is wearing while she drifts around in something floaty and diaphanous. But, of course, she does. Living close by in this conspicuously affluent bit of southern suburbia are two sisters, Jesse and Gabi – played by Kate Hudson and Sarah Chalke – who are both hiding secrets from their bigoted, RV-driving Texan
‘Too much doesn’t ring true and this is exposed for what it is, a crude comedy that doesn’t make us laugh’
parents. And somewhere in the neighbourhood is the obligatory single dad, Bradley, who’s been doing the best he can to raise his two daughters ever since their Marine mum was killed in Afghanistan. Bradley is meant to be a former Marine himself, although as played by a game but wonderfully miscast Jason Sudeikis, you certainly wouldn’t know.
Throw in a feisty shopping-channel presenter (Julia Roberts channelling Mary Portas to an alarming but effective degree) and a young comedian (Jack Whitehall, clearly auditioning to be the new Hugh Grant) and our ensemble is complete.
No one is actively bad but the film still manages to hit so many jarring notes. When the Texan parents roll into town, their racism is genuinely unpleasant (‘towel-head’ jokes – really?), so much so that you almost overlook the homophobia that soon follows. Even worse – or maybe I mean even less convincing – is Sandy’s ex, Henry, played by the smoothly handsome Timothy Olyphant, a man so insensitive – we are asked to believe – that he wants his sons to share a large part of Mother’s Day with their new stepmum. This might be more believable if he and Sandy were locked in some sort of acrimonious divorce hell, but they’re not. As a result – like too much else here – it just doesn’t ring true and is exposed for what it is: a crude comedy device that doesn’t really make us laugh. Roberts, whose fourth Marshall film this is, is actually quite good – managing to be both funny and, eventually, just a little bit moving too. But elsewhere, this is a film of collapsing inflatable slides, terrible raps (if you think Sudeikis is unlikely as a former Marine, just wait for the moment he grabs the mic) and groan-worthily clumsy clown metaphors. You know that old visual joke of tugging at a loose corner of a handkerchief only to discover that the handkerchiefs go on and on and on? Well, apparently, that’s just like the endless love a mother has for her children. Oh, please. At the end, we know eventually everyone will see the error of their ways; that’s what always happens in this sort of film. But enough already. No more, Mr Marshall, no more.