DIRECTOR: Garry Marshall LEAD
CAST: Julia Roberts, Jennifer Aniston, Kate Hudson, Jason Sudeikis, Britt
Robertson, Timothy Olyphant, Hector
Elizondo, Jack Whitehall SCREENPLAY:
Tom Hines, Anya Kochoff Romano, Matt Walker STORY BY: Tom Hines,
Lily Hollander, Garry Marshall, Matt Walker EDITOR: Robert
Malina PRODUCERS: Brandt Andersen, Howard Burd, Daniel Diamond, Mark DiSalle,
Mike Karz, Wayne Allan Rice CINEMATOGRAPHER:
Charles Minsky MUSIC: John Debney NARRATED
BY: Penny Marshall GENRE:
Romantic Comedy PRODUCTION COMPANY: Capacity
Pictures, Gulfstream Pictures, PalmStar Media
DISTRIBUTOR: Open Roads Film LOCATION: United
States RUNNING TIME: 118 minutes
Technical assessment: 2.5
Moral assessment: 2.5
CINEMA rating: V 14
Mother’s
Day, the holiday, is fast approaching, and families, especially mothers in the
upscale neighborhood of Buckhead, in Atlanta, are nearing panic mode as they
prepare for the special day. Mother’s
Day, the movie, is played out like a deck of playing cards—as the cards are
thrown on the table at random, one never knows what each may reveal, because
nearly all the characters in the houses harbors a secret. Divorced mom Sandy (Jennifer Aniston)
can’t get over the fact that her ex-husband is marrying a teenaged whistlebait.
Sisters Jesse and Gabi (Kate Hudson and Sarah Chalke)—one is married to an
Indian, the other is a lesbian whose partner is a single mom—shield their own
children from their bigoted Texan grandparents. Widower Bradley (Jason
Sudeikis) suddenly has to cope with maternal duties raising two young daughters
recently orphaned by their military mother who died in Afghanistan. Miranda (Julia Roberts) whose skills as
tv-shopping guru have raised her to celebrity status is about to meet a
biological daughter she had abandoned as an infant.
With
such a roster of mega-stars believably playing their roles in a story that
throws the limelight on relatable mother-oriented fixes, viewers may not bother
at all to scrutinize the other technical aspects of the movie, such as
lighting, sounds, music, cinematography, etc. At least not the moviegoers in Metromanila who filled up the
cinemas during last Mother’s Day weekend.
Most American film reviewers (regularly published in mrqe.com) may
understandably have a different take on Mother’s Day—presumably rooted in
social cultural factors—thus they mercilessly lash out at its director for
habitually exploiting the “estrogen crowd” with such holiday-based potboilers
as Valentine’s Day (2010) and New Year’s Eve (2011), and now Mother’s
Day.
The
critics’ claim is true that Mother’s Day does not go deep into the
issues it brings up, rendering it superficial and rife with “forced nuttiness”
and “shallow sentimentality”. The
contentious issues—sudden death of a spouse, racist beliefs, homosexual
relations, modesty in dress in the presence of children, career vs. motherhood,
parents and children’s differences in outlook, etc.—are indeed serious enough
to each merit a drama feature themselves.
But it must be remembered that Mother’s Day chose to be a comedy,
and as such is bound to be light, albeit laced with pathos. It is deliberately “shallow”, not
probing the psyche of the characters, but rather assigning them their specific
spot in the picture, surrounding them with challenges, and leaving the thinking
and the analysis to the viewer.
That Mother’s Day touches on the abovementioned issues and
engages the imagination and discernment of the viewer is enough. Not many movies designed to make us
laugh can do that.
