Netflix’s quest to release a shitty romantic comedy for every minor holiday continues with Bride’s mother, which guarantees that this Mother’s Day will be completely forgettable. Note that it’s not explicitly about Mother’s Day, but rather a mother-daughter relationship strained by a monumentally familiar collection of rom-com clichés. Which isn’t to say it fails in the talent department: The cast is led by Brooke Shields, Benjamin Bratt and Miranda Cosgrove, and it’s directed by Mark Waters, a veteran filmmaker who’d probably rather we remember The house of yes and Bad Girls rather Ghosts of girlfriends past either Bad Santa Claus 2. And once your latest release inevitably hits Netflix’s Top 10 for a few days and then disappears from view, you’ll probably still prefer to be remembered for The house of yes and Bad Girls.
BRIDE’S MOTHER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The essence: RJ (Sean Teale) takes Emma (Cosgrove) to a curiously empty restaurant, only to turn on the lights and reveal a stunning flower arrangement that the Queen of England would find too clumsy. Just the best backdrop for her proposal to his only one: he gets down on one knee and she says yes and then immediately worries about sharing the happy news with her mother. Because? He didn’t bother to tell Mom that she was seeing someone while she was in London interning for a tourism company that had just offered her a six-figure social media endorsement deal. He cuts to: San Francisco, where Emma surprises her mom at work. Lana (Shields) is a superstar in genetic research and surely a very successful, smart and confident person, so it’s going to be EXTRA FUNNY when she eventually starts acting neurotic and tripping over things and falling into pools and stuff like that. Oh, the irony. So rich, so hilarious. You’d better wrap yourself in a corset so your sides don’t burst with so much laughter.
What, you ask, could derail such an extraordinary woman? A tortured movie plot, that is. A tortured movie plot that leaves everyone at a lush resort in Phuket, Thailand, because no one in their right mind would bother to watch a wedding rom-com set in Hoboken or Kalamazoo. It’s an annoying cliché, but it’s not the most tortured part. No, that would be the positively mind-blowing COINKYDINK that Emma’s future father-in-law, Will (Bratt), dated Lana in college. Emphasis on DINK, because he did RUNNOFT without warning and it broke her heart. Decades have passed and now here they are, in Phuket, feeling uncomfortable and gutting themselves for the sake of their beloved children. What are the possibilities? THE LORD WORKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS.
And so begins Lana’s tests of strength, because not only does she have to deal with a bunch of musty old feelings from decades ago, but she also discovers that her role in the wedding has been significantly diminished since she’s a literal Instagram. wedding sponsored and organized by Emma’s employer. So the usual question we struggle with while watching these destination wedding rom-coms, that is, who the hell is it? pay For all this, for once you have an answer. Lana looks at the agenda and literally sees an asterisk on the page. I mean, they even write Lana’s reception speech for her. And since she has little to do while people take Emma around for photo shoots and product presentations, everything you need for a dream wedding! – Lana lounges at spas and pools with her sister Janice (Rachael Harris) and, of course, accidentally bumps into Will and his sculpted abs while she’s showering. Oops!
The main conflict here is how Lana will handle these major blows to her self-esteem. And the answer is, wrong. So bad that our protagonist becomes a disgusting idiot that she says she is enduring all this humiliation for the happiness of her daughter, but in reality she is doing it all by herself. She jokes and attacks like a neglected teenager. She becomes so competitive that she ends up drilling a pickle ball into Will’s testicles, leaving it up for debate whether it was an accident or not (cue Janice: “Game, ready, ouch!”). But she and her kindly ex eventually become less cold, and she soon finds herself trapped in a half-hearted love triangle with Will Perpetually Shirtless and Lucas (Chad Michael Murray), also Perpetually Shirtless Shirtless, a handsome vacationing doctor. Will any of these people ever act like adults? Spoiler alert: Of course not!
What movies will it remind you of?: Please note that this movie has nothing to do with Father of the bride and its many remakes and sequels and sequels to the remakes. It has a plot that can inspire writers of Ticket to paradise Call your copyright attorneys. He also reminded me You again, an equally detestable slab of idiocy in which people also fall into swimming pools—specifically, Jamie Lee Curtis and Sigourney Weaver in the middle of a fight. It is a horror. Note that You again It’s not a movie I want to remember for any reason. I don’t like being forced to remember You again. You don’t want me to make comparisons with You againbecause that’s when things get bad and ugly.
Performance worth seeing: This material, which should be cut and fed to the worms as soon as possible, does not favor mold. Shields can be a likable leading man in light comedies, but she’s forced to become an ill-fitting quasi-character who seems more strident and self-absorbed than a supportive, disinterested mother. It’s as if the director cornered her and forced her to constantly wrinkle her face. Makes you want to change the title of this one. Brooke Shields’ Wrinkled Face: The Movie.
Memorable dialogue: Emma drops this stupidity when she finds out that her mom and Will used to be A Thing: “If RJ is my half-brother, then the wedding’s off!” she jokes, proving that rom-coms and incest jokes go hand in hand. the hand like ice cream and botulism.
Sex and skin: Bratt holding a pillow over his nether regions, but that’s it. He didn’t even butt a blow.
Our opinion: The Script-o-Matic has produced more typical Hallmark nonsense that sets up a potentially lucrative examination of complex mother-daughter relationships, then ignores them in lieu of groin-based comedy and tremendously terrible scenes in which Shields lets herself fall in an ill-fitting suit. get dressed or make a decrepit moan like “I have underwear older than him,” when a younger gentleman shows some romantic interest. At least there are no animal jokes in this one, because usually in destination wedding rom-coms set in tropical locations, someone inevitably gets shitted on by seagulls, or humped by dolphins, or stung by a jellyfish, leading to a character to urinate on another. character. Honestly, I was hoping that this particular collection of idiots would have encountered a group of ravenous crocodiles so they could all meet their bloody end, but then I reconsidered the fantasy upon realizing that the complete indigestibility of these characters would have killed the poor creatures.
Where was it? Right: Emma and Lana’s underrealized relationship. Smiling and patient Lana tries to be a supportive mother even though her daughter is handing over her wedding to a corporate entity (the film borders on being a glossy advertisement for a tour company that will remain unnamed in this review). , thank you) and marry the son of the son of a bitch who left her heart in tatters? There’s something to that dynamic, but this movie is empty and cowardly, uninterested in anything more than a plot full of silly misunderstandings, clumsy antics, boring dialogue, and shirtless guys. We have seen and heard every moment of Bride’s mother before, and you don’t really need to see or hear them again, especially when they’re performed so lifelessly.
Our call: JUMP IT and JUMP it hard. Nobody but you is a destination wedding romantic comedy that is also on Netflix. Look at that one instead. It’s funny where Bride’s mother It’s nonsense: to the bone.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic living in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
