Mother's Day Review

There are films that, although cliched and only mildly funny, have enough charm to them to be fairly enjoyable. There are also movies that are so bad, they end up being an enjoyable, guilty pleasure experience for the audience. Mothers Day is neither of those. It is a film that may have tried to be both,  but is so misguided, so without merit, so utterly painful and cringe worthy to watch in its depictions of motherhood, that any mothers whose children take them to see this movie would be forgiven in thinking that this is payback for being late to picking up the kids from soccer practice 10 years ago. Director Gary Marshall continues the pattern of ruining holidays with ensemble romantic comedies (Valentine's Day, New Year's Eve) that are about as romantic as the Anakin Skywalker-Padme love story in the Star Wars prequels, and about as funny as Saving Private Ryan.

To make my point about just how terrible Mother's Day really is, let me list some examples from film and TV that celebrate motherhood exponentially better than Mother's Day:

• Dirk Diggler's alcoholic, verbally abusive mother in Boogie Nights.
• Norman Bates's dead mother in Psycho (Yes, even the remake).
• Carrie's psychotic, fanatic mother from Carrie (1976).
• Stiffler's Mom from American Pie.
• Serial killer Mrs. Vorhees from Friday the 13th.
• Macaulay Culkin's forgetful, and criminally neglectful mom from Home Alone.
• Livia Soprano from The Sopranos, after she conspires to have a hit placed on her son.
• Hilary Swank's white trash, tax evading mother from Million Dollar Baby. (Played by Margo Martindale, who appears in this film as well.)

Where to even start with this film? I suppose with its train wreck of a plot. There's Sandy, played by Jennifer Anistion, a struggling mom raising two boys, whose dirtbag ex-husband (Timothy Olyphant) marries a girl half his age. Sandy complains about the obnoxiously millennial new step-mom not wearing enough clothing (Despite the fact that the movie has Jennifer Anistion walk around in a towel for 10 minutes for seemingly no reason). Then there's Jesse (Kate Hudson) and Gabi (Sarah Chalke), two sisters who are estranged from their wacky racist parents. Gabi is in a lesbian relationship and Jesse is married to an Indian doctor and has a son with him. When the parents stop by for a surprise visit, wacky and inconceivably racist hijinks ensue! Almost every word out of the red neck parents' mouths are cringe worthy and racist (Upon seeing Jesse's husband they ask who that "towelhead" is). The movie also seems hopefully confused over the differences between Indian and Arab as the inconsistent stereotypes are spouted out throughout the film, which unfortunately, garnered genuine laughs from the audience I was in. There's a subplot about a painfully unfunny comedian  named Max helping to raise his infant daughter with his would-be fiance, and in one of the film's most bizarre WTF bits, when they finally marry at the film's end, there are gangly, white pre-teens that were seemingly pulled off the street to do cart wheels at their wedding; "It's just how I always pictured it," Max says with tears rolling down his face. Jason Sudekis also has the misfortune to be in this Titanic sized mess of a movie as a widower raising two teenage girls (He has to buy tampons for his teenage daughter. Hardy har har). He plans on treating Mother's Day like a normal day since his marine wife (Jennifer Garner) died. He obsessively watches tapes of his wife, while his daughters criticize him and tell him to get over it. Despite that, they yell at Papa Sudekis that they have to honor her, and end up running off to the cemetery to visit her grave. Then Jason Sudekis has a karaoke related accident. Still with me? Didn't think so. Julia Roberts also stars as founding Three Stooges member, Moe Howard, or at least that's what her haircut would suggest.
Mother's Day is the cinematic equivalent to having wisdom teeth removed, something I just recently had done. Unfortunately, I was put to sleep and given pain killers for the surgery, something I desperately craved while watching Mother's Day. But honestly, when a movie starts with a song that goes "You might have a mom, she might be the bomb," what else could you possibly expect?