Review: No need to remember 'Mother's Day'
Unless your mom has an extremely low bar for movie satisfaction, it’s best to do her a favor and skip a date to Mother’s Day.
Director Garry Marshall’s latest effort (* out of four; rated PG-13; in theaters Friday) to ape the holiday-themed, intertwined-tale magic of 2003's Love Actually — Valentine’s Day (2010), New Year’s Eve (2011), etc. — may boast a star-studded cast but it’s a spectacular dud on every other level with tonal whiplash, a little casual racism played for jokes and a script seemingly pulled from Hallmark cards rejected for being too hokey.
Honestly, Independence Day has less disasters than this movie does.
'Mother's Day' is all about family for director Garry Marshall
The plot is a mélange of motherly melancholy. Sandy (Jennifer Aniston) is a frustrated Atlanta interior designer wrestling with the thought of sharing her two boys after her ex (Timothy Olyphant) marries a much younger woman (Shay Mitchell). Bradley (Jason Sudeikis) is a gym owner with two girls and a hole in his heart a year after his military wife’s death. Kristin (Britt Robertson) has abandonment issues so she’s in no hurry to marry Zack (Jack Whitehall), the British bartending father of her infant. And Jesse (Kate Hudson), who’s married to an Indian doctor (Aasif Mandvi), and her lesbian sister Gabi (Sarah Chalke) keep their families secret from their redneck mom (Margo Martindale) — which becomes an issue when she shows up unannounced.
The stories are loosely connected, though one thread is actually a character: Julia Roberts’ Miranda is an Oprah-level home-shopping maven who hawks mood jewelry. One of the few interesting characters of the whole piece, she has a big reveal that, while not a shocker, is at least a smidgen nuanced compared to the predictable fluff that came before it.
It was a 'Pretty Woman' reunion at the 'Mother's Day' premiere
Painfully overlong and overstuffed, Mother’s Day tries to do too much with a variety of storytelling gymnastics, laughable dialogue and one-dimensional characters. They’re a neurotic, mostly unrelatable bunch so when the overtly apparent emotional manipulation comes — and, oh, does it ever — the feels are mostly fleeting.
The closest it comes to being a real tearjerker is a third-act moment with Miranda and a scene involving Zack, his cute baby and a comedy club. It’s almost enough to make you forget that the infant spends most of the movie in bars.
Marshall, one of the great creative minds of Hollywood and the man behind Happy Days and Mork & Mindy back in the day, offers a modern wink at his sister Penny’s A League of Their Own — “There’s no texting in soccer” — and even pays homage to his own work, with Hector Elizondo playing a confidante to Roberts’ character, much like that in Pretty Woman. Instead of a smart nod, it’s more of a reminder of what Marshall did before his current obsession for calendar-ready interlocking schlock.
At this rate, Flag Day may not even be safe.