From the director of Valentine’s Day, New Years Eve, and other holiday titled movies, we get a feature about our beloved mothers. While it was not at the top of my list for reviews I was feeling risky and went and saw it anyways.
The best way to describe this movie is that it’s five completely separate movies that were painfully woven together to make one movie, but they still couldn’t secure half the funding.
Let’s start off with the few good things about this movie. Some of my favorite talent was on screen, like Jennifer Aniston, Jason Sudeikis, and Sarah Chalke. Although I went for those actors, I stayed for Jack Whitehall, who if you don’t know is a stand up comedian, and every time he was on screen he enticed laughs from the nearly empty theater that I went to.
There are so many story lines in this so I’ll try my best to at least mention them all. The first story line and conflict that I can think of is Sandy (Jennifer Aniston) having to deal with her ex-husband, Henry (Timothy Olyphant), having a younger, hotter fiance (Shay Mitchell). Even her kids are charmed by the showering of presents from their dad and soon to be step mom.
The next story line is a a little complicated, but don’t blame me because I didn’t make the movie. A pair of sisters, Gabi who live in adjacent houses are harboring secrets from their parents. Gabi (Sarah Chalke) is hiding that she is a lesbian and Jesse (Kate Hudson) is hiding that she is married to Russel (Aasif Mandvi), who is a man of color. The pair’s parents, Flo (Margo Martindale) and Earl (Robert Pine), pay them a surprise visit in time for Mother’s Day and chaos ensues.
My favorite story line is of a couple, Kristin (Britt Robertson) and Zack (Jack Whitehall), who have just recently become parents. Kristin is feeling pressure to get married from Zack who has proposed multiple times, but Kristin has concerns since she doesn’t know who her own mom is. Zack is struggling to start up his stand up career and in the process he has to take care of his kid during his big shot.
The final story line is of Bradley (Jason Sudekis) and his family. It has been about a year since his wife died and he is adjusting to being a single parent.
If all of these story lines seemed nearly impossible to follow that’s because they were. It seemed as though the writers really wanted to make sure you knew that this movie was about mothers, because apparently just having a movie about one family and titling it ‘Mother’s Day’ would not have been clear enough.
One of the biggest issues about this film was the blatant and over abundant product placement. Now there is a reason for all of the desperate cash grab; there were big budget actors involved. According to sources Julia Roberts, who had four days of filming, was paid nearly three million dollars. Now for those of you bad at math that’s almost seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars a day. Her role in this film was so much of a side note and after thought that I do not feel as though it warranted over ten percent of the film’s budget.
If I had to give this film a rating it would be three and a half out of ten due to the invasive advertisements and too many plots that were intertwined with no real reason.
★ ★ ★ ½
If you’re still on the fence after reading this Mother’s Day movie review, then check out the trailer bellow.