Mother’s Day

Garry Marshall’s run of somewhat successful holiday-themed films comes to a definitive end with Mother’s Day, as the movie, which predictably follows an assortment of characters in the buildup to the title occasion, suffers from a seriously bland and generic atmosphere that’s compounded by an almost total lack of interesting subplots. This is despite an opening stretch that admittedly does hold some promise, with Marshall, working from Anya Kochoff, Matthew Walker, and Tom Hines’ screenplay, offering up a series of somewhat intriguing figures and scenarios. (Jason Sudeikis as a grieving father of two young girls certainly seems like a can’t-miss proposition, while Kate Hudson and Sarah Chalke are convincing as close siblings who are hiding big secrets from their parents.) It’s the immediate inclusion of lackluster storylines that slowly-but-surely triggers Mother’s Day‘s downfall, with the best and most potent example of this everything revolving around Jennifer Aniston’s almost shockingly shrill soon-to-be-divorced character Sandy. (It really is remarkable just how terrible and annoying Aniston is here.) And although the movie has been sprinkled with a few decent sequences (Sudeikis’ Bradley performing a karaoke version of “The Humpty Dance” is an obvious highlight), Mother’s Day‘s growing lack of substance, coupled with an overall atmosphere of bottom-of-the-barrel mediocrity, effectively cements its full-on transformation into a fairly interminable piece of work.

*1/2 out of ****