Rating: D (can I give this an F? is that a thing?)
What is it with holiday specific movies always being so terrible? I’m not meaning Christmas movies (although there a lot of disappointments there) I’m meaning films like Valentine’s Day, The Holiday, New Year’s Eve and now to add to the list, Mother’s Day. All of them follow that same formula of intertwining characters that meet and somehow know each other but it just always falls flat. I’ve not seen any romantic comedy follow this successfully since Love Actually, so WHY do they insist on continuing to make them?
This was the longest and most boring two hours of my life. The attempts at seeming “fresh” and “liberal” fall flat completely as social issues are used as a punch line (which is never funny btw, I didn’t laugh once. NOT EVEN ONCE!!). Gabi (Sarah Chalke) is a lesbian and her sister, Jesse (Kate Hudson), is married and has a child with her husband who is apparently non-specific “Indian”. For whatever reason, their crazy xenophobic parents are just so disappointed in them but their characters are so cartoony and the seriousness of this kind of bigotry doesn’t work at all. How can they make it out to be ridiculous when it’s still a very real and relevant issue, particularly in the United States?
Jennifer Aniston is also hanging out in this, she was probably the only good part about this film because she’s great and I’m glad she’s still getting work, even if the scripts are terrible. None of the plot lines meet up organically and everything feels forced, clichéd and awkward. She has a romance with Jason Sudeikis (that guy from Horrible Bosses) who can’t cope with purchasing tampons for his daughter at the supermarket or even say the word out loud which I think was supposed to be a joke? Like, haha how gross and weird are periods right! So weird that men can’t even say the word tampon! Hectic.
Anyway, this movie sucks and you don’t need to see it. Let’s work together to not support these “insert non specific holiday name-day” movies and maybe eventually they’ll stop?