Garry Marshall is back with another film named after a holiday, as if (the probably nonexistent) fans of New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day were somehow clamoring for a third film set in this sad, outdated, brightly-light world.
Mother’s Day stars a bevy of rom-com veterans, namely Julia Roberts, Kate Hudson, and Jennifer Aniston. Jason Sudeikis rounds out the four-some as a single dad perspective while newcomers like Shay Mitchell, Britt Robertson, and Jack Whitehall complete the cast. Each of the three main actresses play hollow, vapid echoes of their stereotyped personalities. Aniston is Sandy, a neurotic divorcee with two sons grappling with her husband (Timothy Olyphant) marrying his young bombshell of a girlfriend (Mitchell). She’s all over the place, stuttering and holding her face in her hands with an exasperated, “I’m so neurotic – isn’t my life hilarious?’ Meanwhile Roberts plays a home shopping jewelry design mogul, cold on the outside but just a touch sad underneath her horrible red bob wig as she contemplates that all she has in life is her career. Hudson stars as Jesse, a woman estranged from her conservative Texan parents because she hasn’t told them she’s married and has a child with her husband Russell (Aasif Mandvi), a man of Indian descent. Meanwhile her sister Gabi (Sarah Chalke) lives next door with her wife Max, even though their parents think she’s engaged to someone named Steve.
As the cast prances around in workout gear (conveniently showing off the Fabletics brand, Hudson’s personal athletic line) and gripes about their husbands and kids, it all feels incredibly stale and done before. The script, the direction, and the performances are so phoned in, so thoughtless, that I was truly left wondering what kind of dirt Marshall has on these actors. Besides being a vehicle to advertise Fabletics and M&Ms (what vending machine has ROWS of just M&Ms?!), Mother’s Day never aims any higher than mediocre. The jokes fall flat and become incredibly predictable. More so, when Jesse and Gabi’s Texan parents come to visit in their RV decked out with longhorns on the front, the jokes quickly begin to feel offensive. A racist (and let’s not forget homophobic) parent calls their son-in-law a “towelhead” and it’s played for laughs because it’s so outrageous. Sorry, jokes like that shouldn’t even be on screen in 2016. Not only because that’s unacceptable but also because there’s so much better comedy out there. Just write better jokes! And stop portraying Texans as racist homophobes! (Says the Texan.)
Besides comedy, the other side of the coin for this film is its emotional impact. But instead of taking the time with these fewer characters than past holiday films to build up real emotion, Marshall and the writers instead choose to coast through it with cliché after cliché. Meant to pull at your heartstrings, the surging music and fond looks between characters only feel cheap and fake. Subtlety is thrown aside as we see Sudeikis’s Bradley visit the grave of his deceased wife (played in her one scene by Jennifer Garner), a veteran who died on duty, as it is accompanied by stoic and cheesy snare beats to help remind us once again that she was, indeed, a member of the military.
In a world where women wake up with perfect makeup and perfect bodies, Mother’s Day feels like a downright sad attempt to stir up emotion. In many ways, it feels like an affront to mothers everywhere, especially ones that don’t live in idyllic suburban settings with well-to-do occupations. With a bland script, bland acting, and a bland director, I can only hope the cast and crew got paid damn well.
