Hot (OK, lukewarm) on the heels of Valentine's Day and New Year's Eve comes Mother's Day another collection of interlinked romantic tales from director Garry Marshall.
Sandy and Henry, divorced parents of two boys, get along amiably enough. Then Henry remarries, to a hot 20-something. Meanwhile, author and shopping channel host Miranda has a secret. Meanwhile, sisters Jesse and Gabi live next door to each other but their redneck racist homophobic parents don't know that one of them is gay and the other is married to an Indian. Meanwhile, Bradley, father of two girls (one of whom is newcomer Ella Anderson as plain but likeable almost-pubescent daughter Vicky) is still having difficulty in getting past the death of his wife over a year ago. Meanwhile, Zach wants to marry Kristin, mother of their daughter, but she has an issue. And Mother's Day is coming up...
Like its predecessors in Garry Marshall's holiday romance anthology series, this film is broadly likeable, populated by a good cast, featuring multiple, lightly interlinked threads where quite nice people face not very serious problems which get neatly and sometimes improbably resolved by the end, and which leaves you with very little aftertaste. It's all pretty inconsequential.
That's not to say it's bad - it's too anodyne to be bad, but it's like a meal which is pleasant enough to eat but afterwards you wonder why you didn't choose something with a bit more spice in it.
I was going to say that there's nothing to take offence at, but the sisters' racist homophobic parents are fairly offensive. As someone with a moderate sense of dramatic structure, however, I found their utterly unjustified (from the point of view of character) change of attitude even more offensive: the film provided no reason why they shouldn't have been as racist and homophobic at the end as they were at the start.
Did it matter? Probably not. Nothing in this film matters very much. It's like spending a pleasant evening in the company of some people you're friends, but not deep friends, with. Next day you can't even remember what you talked about..
Sandy and Henry, divorced parents of two boys, get along amiably enough. Then Henry remarries, to a hot 20-something. Meanwhile, author and shopping channel host Miranda has a secret. Meanwhile, sisters Jesse and Gabi live next door to each other but their redneck racist homophobic parents don't know that one of them is gay and the other is married to an Indian. Meanwhile, Bradley, father of two girls (one of whom is newcomer Ella Anderson as plain but likeable almost-pubescent daughter Vicky) is still having difficulty in getting past the death of his wife over a year ago. Meanwhile, Zach wants to marry Kristin, mother of their daughter, but she has an issue. And Mother's Day is coming up...
Like its predecessors in Garry Marshall's holiday romance anthology series, this film is broadly likeable, populated by a good cast, featuring multiple, lightly interlinked threads where quite nice people face not very serious problems which get neatly and sometimes improbably resolved by the end, and which leaves you with very little aftertaste. It's all pretty inconsequential.
That's not to say it's bad - it's too anodyne to be bad, but it's like a meal which is pleasant enough to eat but afterwards you wonder why you didn't choose something with a bit more spice in it.
I was going to say that there's nothing to take offence at, but the sisters' racist homophobic parents are fairly offensive. As someone with a moderate sense of dramatic structure, however, I found their utterly unjustified (from the point of view of character) change of attitude even more offensive: the film provided no reason why they shouldn't have been as racist and homophobic at the end as they were at the start.
Did it matter? Probably not. Nothing in this film matters very much. It's like spending a pleasant evening in the company of some people you're friends, but not deep friends, with. Next day you can't even remember what you talked about..