Plan B Forum

As a critic I’m frequently given the unenviable task of reporting on a bad film.

Time and again hopeful people often ask, “yes, but is it so bad that it’s actually good?” and almost always the answer is, “no, no, it’s just plain bad.” But not this time. If this were a just world, someone like John Waters will end up presenting this film at midnight screenings as audiences, dressed in character, hurl rejoinders at the screen. Mother’s Day, Garry Marshall’s third in an unofficial trilogy that includes Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve, is a goddamn trash masterpiece.


Inelegantly linking many half-baked stories through coincidence and far-fetched plotting, Mother’s Day works as an aspirational film for the most boring people alive. Each scene reveals another layer of woe for Atlanta’s upper-middle class, where everyone lives in an enormous house but no one seems to have a job. (Interesting note: there are, apparently, no black people in Atlanta, except for one plus-sized sass machine who drops one pearl of wisdom for each chunky sight-gag.) The gimmick with these films is to cram in as many characters as possible, and then watch as they all come together. It’s true that if, in real life, you discovered that the gal at the bar was the long lost daughter of the famous woman on TV, it might stir some feeling. But when these are one-note characters spewing sub-soap opera dialogue in drama-resistant scenes, the wow factor is somewhat muted.


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Inelegantly linking many half-baked stories through coincidence and far-fetched plotting, Mother’s Day works as an aspirational film for the most boring people alive. Each scene reveals another layer of woe for Atlanta’s upper-middle class, where everyone lives in an enormous house but no one seems to have a job.