Review: Botched gags and idiotic characters make Mother’s Day a comedy flop
REVIEW: Mother’s Day stars big names like Jennifer Aniston, Kate Hudson and Julia Roberts — but even they can’t save it from its idiotic gags and characters.
Leigh Paatsch
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Mother’s Day (M)
Director: Garry Marshall (Valentine’s Day)
Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Kate Hudson, Julia Roberts, Jason Sudeikis, Britt Robertson, Timothy Olyphant
Rating: *
No need to save the date
These days, veteran filmmaker Garry Marshall is content to make literal ‘date’ movies: hammy, hug-and-mug affairs where the single occasion marked on the calendar is actually the entire plot.
Following on from the dire double-bill of Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve, we now come to Mother’s Day.
It is a big fat blob of sticky, sit-commy gloop supposedly celebrating the feminine side of good parenting.
Instead, it lands in a very bad place: an echo chamber of botched gags gibbered by idiotic caricatures who are intended to come off as naturally wacky, but appear to be clinically insane.
Give this junk more than half a thought, and it will leave you hellbent on spending all future Mother’s Days pretending you were conceived in a test-tube.
The characters we meet here are tenuously interconnected by either the fact they are a mother, or have a friend of a friend who kind of knows one.
Jennifer Aniston is a divorcee who doesn’t care as much about her kids as she does about her ex’s younger, hotter new wife.
Kate Hudson has married an Indian dude, and has been keeping it a secret from her bigoted mum for years. Guess who will be paying who a surprise visit?
Britt Robertson has had a child with an aspiring stand-up comic, but is too scared of getting serious and marrying the guy.
Jason Sudeikis is a recent widower with two daughters who don’t rank their father as much of a replacement mother.
Julia Roberts shows up in a spooky, strawberry wig for her scenes, perhaps hoping her own actual children won’t recognise her.