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Save mom, skip ‘Mother’s Day’

By Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service
Published: April 29, 2016, 5:37am

It seems there’s no stopping Garry Marshall’s terrifying cinematic rampage on our nation’s treasured holidays. Having ruined both “Valentine’s Day” and “New Year’s Eve” with his star-packed omnibus projects, the director has burned his way through the calendar, landing on “Mother’s Day.”

This time around, Julia Roberts, Jennifer Aniston, Kate Hudson, Jason Sudeikis, Britt Robertson, Margo Martindale, Timothy Olyphant, Aasif Mandvi, Sarah Chalke and Shay Mitchell, among others, are subjected to the inter connected, fake-heartwarming, holiday-themed story. It claims to be a tribute to the idea of maternal love, but it’s not heartwarming or about mothers so much.

Sure, most of the characters are parents, but it’s only nominally about motherhood. “Mother’s Day” is far more concerned with exploring the ideas of marriage, careers, single dads, the military, prejudice, jealousy, grief and clown wisdom. There are a few tossed off lines about the irreplaceability of a mother’s love, but nothing feels sincere.

The script is credited to no less than four people, and is a shoddy mish mosh of product placement for a bizarre selection of brands, from Morton’s Salt to Cadillac; there’s blatantly spoken exposition and personal psychoanalysis, terribly edited bits of dialogue stuffed in to make everything more painfully obvious — “I have abandonment issues,” a character needlessly explains.

For the humor, “Mother’s Day” relies on a hearty dose of generational and gender panic. The characters panic about tampons, social media, texting, teen dating, and the wearing of shorts.

In the film, the actual holiday of Mother’s Day ends up being a pretty terrible day for all involved, including two ER trips and a runaway RV chase. It’s possible the day is OK for two of the characters, who possibly get married on that day, but it’s impossible to tell because there is no logic to the space and time of this film.

We are also granted one of the most surreal moments of recent cinema when single dad Bradley (Jason Sudeikis) wildly overcorrects his initial lack of enthusiasm for the holiday due to his wife’s death. Stuffing the house full of flowers and balloons, he gives his teen girls a car and a karaoke machine, with which he performs a rousing rendition of the classic hip -hop tune “The Humpty Dance.” He dances with his teenage daughters. While singing “The Humpty Dance.” At a Mother’s Day party.

“Mother’s Day” is a total mess, but what’s truly offensive is that they didn’t even try to make this cash grab even remotely watchable.

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