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Painful in pink, Bradley performs hip-hop karaoke. |
Dir. Garry Marshall
The last of a trio of holiday-themed movies by
producer-director extraordinaire Garry Marshall, Mother’s Day takes a slightly jumbled, somewhat disjointed look at
the modern world of relationships through various families whose lives semi-intertwine
in Atlanta. There’s a lot going on here—maybe too much—but a roster full of A-list
stars and an upbeat, heartwarming disposition sprinkled with plenty of light
humor make it worth sticking around for the final frame.
A comedy of manners, Mother’s
Day derives most of its gags from dissecting issues of race and
homosexuality. This occurs in the context of a retired married couple, Flo (Margo Martindale) and Earl (Robert Pine), paying a surprise visit
to their daughters, Jesse (Kate Hudson) and Gabi (Sarah Chalke), one of them
married to a woman, the other married to an Indian guy. The sisters, each with
kids of their own, have kept their weddings secret from their conservative folks,
lest they conjure just the conflagration the movie begins with and
follows. While its heart is
in the right place, the resulting humor is mildy funny at best, embarrassingly
not so at others.
An overreactive anti-terrorist racial-profiling scene is one
of the latter. It comes at the conclusion of a 10 mph cop chase through the
suburbs involving a mobile home and a parade float gussied up as an enormous womb-vagina.
Jesse’s husband Russel (Aasif Mandvi),
wearing little more than a hastily-borrowed pink sateen robe, is forced face down
on the asphalt at gunpoint. He’s the only one in the otherwise white group of
those involved made to do so by the police and it takes the black female police
officer (Donielle Artese) to recognize
Russel as her doctor to de-escalate the situation. Perhaps the moment serves as
social commentary, but as a means to elicit laughter it quickly turns uncomfortable.
Another principle plot line follows recent divorcee Sandy (Jennifer Aniston), struggling to find
her place in the world now that her GQ-looking ex-husband Henry (Timothy Olyphant) has recently
remarried, this time settling down with Tina (Shay Mitchell). Tina is drop-dead gorgeous, a tad on the younger
side and as their new stepmom, Sandy’s kids love her.
As she tries to get her life sorted out, Sandy crosses paths
with widower Bradley (Jason Sudeikis),
the melancholic and goofy father of two girls, one of them in the flower of her
youth (a brilliant performance by Jessi
Case as Rachel). Sandy and Bradley’s interpersonal dynamics provide as much
pathos as hilarity. Jennifer Aniston truly shines.
But Mother’s Day is really Julia Roberts’ show. As Home Shopping Network host Miranda Collins,
Roberts’ emotionally retrained embodiment of an economically-strong public
figure is next level stuff, affording some of the film’s most enduringly
sentimental sequences. At times she’s teary-eyed (meeting her granddaughter for
the first time), at others comedic (carrying said grandaughter for the first
time). The HSN-fashioned television segments with Miranda in Oprah-style glory are
spot on.
As in all his films, Marshall brings back Hector Elizondo, this time playing
Lance Wallace, Miranda’s agent. Marshall astutley references Pretty Woman, the 1990 blockbuster he
directed that made Roberts famous, when Miranda, sitting by herself at a table
in a fancy-ish eaterie, hears approvingly from Lance, “Yes, that is the salad
fork.” For a rarified moment in cinematic history 26 years in the making, it’s a
scene that’s strangely easily missed.
Either way, it’s a fitting role reprisal in what would turn
out to be Garry Marshall’s final film. Marshall, who died on July 19, 2016 at 81
was the famed producer of such American classics as Happy Days, Mork & Mindy
and Laverne & Shirley (starring
sister and future director Penny
Marshall). His spectral presence throughout the film holds everything together with a lasting message best summed up by playground
philosopher Jesse assuaging a fellow mother worried about her kid's exposure to germs in the sandbox: In the end everything is going to be
alright.
(Oh, and a huge thumbs up for John Lovitz
as pug-carrying comedy club owner, Wally Burn.)
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