'Mother's Day' Review

From the creator of 'Pretty Woman' and 'Valentines Day' comes 'Mother's Day'. Maybe its just cause I'm in the UK but do many people do such extravagant things on this day?

Sandy (Jennifer Aniston) is a single mom whose troubles are made worse when she finds out that her ex-husband is marrying a hot twenty-something. Meanwhile her friend Jesse (Kate Hudson) continues to refuse to tell her family that she has a family with a man of South Asian descent as her sister also doesn't let it be known that she has a lesbian life partner. Bradley (Jason Sudekis) is a widower who now has to try and raise his two daughters on his own whilst dealing with the loss of his wife. Miranda (Julia Roberts) is a well known personality and author who chose a career over a family which led her to give up her daughter. Kristin (Britt Robertson), Miranda's daughter now has abandonment issues and won't allow the father of her child Zak (Jack Whitehall) to marry her until she deals with it.

As you can see from that synopsis, you can see that it is a pretty filled to the brim film. And this does really hurt the film as it tries to give each of the characters their fair share of screen time. The characters are thrown in and out of the film so much that you struggle to grow to care about any of them really as the disappear for large chunks of the film. A lot of the main focus seems to be on Jesse's (Hudson) family full of insecure adults who struggle to be able to come clean about their true and harmless lives. The family aren't the greatest people in the world which doesn't really want you to see as much of them.  Most of the jokes throughout the parts of the film with this family are borderline offensive especially with the only minority being the target of racial stereotypes to make the parents seem charming.

This also doesn't allow the likeable actors and actresses to shine like they should. I've enjoyed previous films with Jennifer Aniston and Jason Sudekis and this film really disappointed me with how it used them. It hinted in the trailer that they would come together but it just drops it entirely until the ending. I would have liked to have seen more focus on this story as they were easily likeable and much more entertaining to watch. They could've scrapped everything else and made this just as a romantic comedy with an interesting premise of the two coming together with their past experiences and both sets of children. However they decided to go with more stories which became overcrowded very easily.

The films main purpose looks to celebrate motherhood. However the mothers in this film are just complaining the whole time and we only see one time where a mother does something that is actually good. They don't do anything that is worth celebrating. One doesn't let their family know of their child. One abandons her child at birth. One wants to look better than her ex rather than just being a good mother. And the worst one is racist. So not exactly making these mothers worth celebrating to be perfectly honest.

When I was in the cinema seeing a pre screening of this movie, it was filled with casual viewers and has been one of the most packed of the Cineworld Unlimited screenings I've been to. And for the most part, the audience seemed to really love it. They were laughing out loud quite a lot. However this really wasn't the case for me. I seemed to be the only one not having a good time which seems to have been the case for most comedies this year. The jokes really aren't that great as they mainly try to shock you but they end up failing. This is mainly down to the writing with a lot of the characters having some terrible dialogue. I hope Jack Whitehall didn't write his own stand up routine in this film as it was way below his standard.

Final Verdict = 

'Mother's Day' really isn't that great of a film as it spends too much time focusing on some awful characters. Some terrible writing doesn't help this film at all either. However it has been proven to me that some may really enjoy this but unfortunately wasn't really the case for me.

So have you seen 'Mother's Day'? If so what did you think of it? I hope you enjoyed this review and if you go see this film, I hope you enjoy it more than I did! Once again thank you for reading my review, it is much appreciated!

By Angus McGregor