MOTHER

REVIEWED BY CHARITY BISHOP

Our rating: 3 out of 5

Because of: sexual humor, language

Rated:

You know who she is. The woman that raised you, that nursed you to health when you had the flu, that read you bedtime stories and tucked you in at night. But if you're John (Albert Brooks), she might have also ruined all of your future relationships. An unpopular sci-fi writer with a bad track record for running off women, John has just come out of a second messy divorce. He sits alone in an empty house mourning the loss of all her furniture. He has one chair, a phone, and a side table left. And, for some inexplicable reason, he decides to call Mom. Beatrice (Debbie Reynolds) is mechanically-challenged, overly opinionated, tactless, and feels the urge to share with the world all of her son's problems. She doesn't like his writing. She thinks he's an idiot for being a vegetarian. She refuses to purchase good groceries because "it's all made at the same place, they just package some of it more expensively!"

To be quite frank, she drives John nuts. Which is why he's going to move back in with her. Just to determine if he can figure out where his dysfunctional relationships started. If he can make it with mom in her tottering old age, he can accomplish anything. His brother Jeff (Rob Morrow), the favorite of the two children and always a mama's boy, believes him to be out of his mind. So does Beatrice. She doesn't understand why he thinks he's staying. She doesn't want him moving back into his room. She tries to feed him pork chops. She also feels the urge to tell everyone they meet, from the post man to the woman at the lingerie store, that he's divorced. Getting through mom's layers of caustic cruelty is going to be difficult, but ultimately John will discover what makes her tick, why she hates him so much, and find his muse again, all the while making wildly successful Jeff green with envy... and buying the most expensive peanut butter in the store.

Always tongue in cheek but surprisingly accurate to the relationships in our lives, Mother appears to be nothing more than a comedy but it's actually an exploration of dysfunctional relationships -- and we all have them. Every single one of us has known a Beatrice who makes cryptic comments with double meanings, demeans us at every opportunity, and whom we just cannot seem to please. Discovering that this person has a reason for being the way they are, that it started somewhere and can come to an end, but more importantly, that they have a life and memories just as we do, is the pivot from which this film rotates. Remember that and you'll have your heart warmed toward the end as these two very different and yet very similar people discover that one another are actually worth knowing -- not as mother and son, but friends. Reynolds is marvelous -- she's still gorgeous but plays the eccentric "old widow" role very well. Brooks is also quite good, and there's a cameo by Lisa Kudrow that will make your eyes roll back into your head with frustration over her character's complete idiocy.

Most of the content is minimal but bears mentioning and sours an otherwise fabulous film. There are a dozen profanities, including two abuses of Jesus' name, one of Christ, and two of GD. Jeff uses a vulgar expression ("screw you") when angered. There's a heavy dose of sly sexuality. At mentioning that he wants to pass on his seed (have children), John's friend tells him to go masturbate in the garden. To humiliate his mom after she announces yet again to a complete stranger his personal problems, John takes her into Victoria's Secret and tells the sales lady he wants to purchase his mother crotch less panties. Beatrice has a boyfriend. She makes an off-the-cuff joke about how they're not intimate, they just have sex on occasion. He pesters her about watching what is presumably a dirty video but she refuses because her son is in the house. The worst joke in the movie is when John and Jeff get in a fight about their mother, one accuses the other of acting like a jealous lover, and a bad taste joke is made about John enjoying sleeping with his mom -- all to the horror of the old man down the block.

I found that the worst of the offenses, and it ruins an otherwise charming film about singling out the problems in your life and learning to appease them rather than allowing them to rule you. Track down an edited version or catch the television reruns, because Mother does have a good heart. It's just a little hard to find at times beneath the scratchy tin foil.