Insipid, tasteless 'Mother's Day' comedy a waste of talent
Warning: Side effects of watching Garry Marshall's "Mother's Day" may include, but are not limited to, symptoms similar to an overdose of artificial sweeteners.
I can't remember a movie ever being this comically cloying, preciously pandering, dramatically drab and recidivistically racist.
In "Mother's Day," adults are technologically challenged fuddy-duddies bewildered and stymied by those newfangled things called computers and phones.
(Jennifer Aniston's working single mom Sandy discovers that "tweet" is a verb. And she doesn't like it! You can almost hear the canned laugh track.)
Overweight women are targeted for ridicule in scenes involving pole dancing and struggling to get out of a butterfly chair. Har-de-har-har.
The screenplay, a sophomoric enterprise credited to Anya Kochoff Romano, Matthew Walker and Tom Hines, intends to diffuse anti-Indian and anti-gay sentiments through humor, but the ill-conceived jokes nervously teeter on a thin line between bad taste and overt racism.
"Mother's Day" follows the lazy ensemble-cast formula established by Marshall's earlier comedies "Valentine's Day" and "New Year's Eve."
You know instantly who's who because the characters are required to identify themselves through their clunky, forced, expository dialogue.
"You're my sister and I live next to you!" Gabi (Sarah Chalke) tells her sister Jesse (Kate Hudson), who apparently needs to be reminded where she actually lives.
Both sisters have been living lies so that their bigoted parents (Margo Martindale and Robert Pine) won't find out Gabi is married to a woman (Cameron Esposito) and Jesse is married to an Indian doctor (Aasif Mandvi).
As Mother's Day ominously looms on the horizon, other characters prepare for it with nervous apprehension.
Sandy (Aniston) becomes crushed by news that her smug ex, Henry (Timothy Olyphant), has eloped with a youthful hottie named Tina (Shay Mitchell), who can't wait to become an instant mom to their two sons.
Struggling British stand-up comic Zack (Jack Whitehall) and girlfriend Kristin (Britt Robertson) already have a son, but she refuses to marry him. "I have abandonment issues!" she screeches.
Meanwhile, fitness gym owner Bradley (Jason Sudeikis) struggles with grief a year after his U.S. Marine wife died, leaving him with two daughters to raise.
While buying tampons at a store, he meets Sandy, with two boys to raise. You can almost hear "The Brady Bunch" theme playing.
Finally, Julia Roberts plays Miranda, a TV shopping network mogul and the unfortunate victim of a glowing pageboy coif. Although childless, she confides to Lance (Hector Elizondo) that Mother's Day fills her with anxiety.
"Lance, you're my agent, and I love you!" she says, just in case Lance has forgotten.
"Mother's Day" is an abysmal mess, a misconceived symphony of artificial emotions playing our heart strings with a sledgehammer.
During a Skype session, Jesse's bigoted mom cracks a stereotypical joke to Jesse's Indian mother-in-law, who doesn't understand it.
"But it sounds racist," she says. "And funny!"
Well, one out of two isn't bad. Oh, wait. It is.
“Mother's Day”
★
Starring: Kate Hudson, Jennifer Aniston, Julia Roberts, Jason Sudeikis, Britt Robertson, Timothy Olyphant, Hector Elizondo, Margo Martindale, Jon Lovitz
Directed by: Garry Marshall
Other: An Open Road Films release. Rated PG-13 for language, suggestive material. 118 minutes