I'll tell you why so serious

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Stepmom (1998): Dir: Chris Columbus / Cast: Julia Roberts, Susan Sarandon, Ed Harris, Jena Malone, Liam Aiken: Nauseating spectacle advertised as a cheerful comedy but fits more as a dramatic punch to the genitals. Julia Roberts plays the stepmom who represents growth and the acceptance of further responsibility. Many unnecessary problems enter the lives of the children. The daughter's problems at school are not relevant and poorly handled, and the son's trip to the hospital only serves as an excuse for the two leads to bicker. Roberts is a fashion photographer who wishes to communicate with the children. Sarandon suffers from cancer and uses a former job to cover it up. The result is a boring farce with two highly paid actresses rehearsing Family Feud. Directed half-heartedly by Chris Columbus who seems to lose touch with the subject matter. He dealt with this theme in similar fashion in Mrs. Doubtfire,which is much funnier, while this film is about as depressing as being on a ledge and readying to jump. Roberts and Sarandon bicker until arriving at a contrived revelation. Ed Harris as the ex-husband only surfaces for plot convenience. As for the children, they sniffle and whine until those closing credits indicating the film is over gives viewers reason to cheer. As oppose to a theme of amendments, it presents a celebrity argument. Score: 1 / 10

It's a very meaningful movie that explores life, death, love, forgiveness, joy, hope, jealousy, fear and pain from different angles from the angle of a mother, a lover, a parent and a child. The most interesting thing I found from this movie was the unconventional and definitely unintended friendship between the mother and stepmum. The selfless love they have for their spouse and the kids was so heart warming. It's a movie that will pull heart strings, put a heart warming smile to your face and leave you feeling inspired to expand your heart and mind to love others more, especially those in our lives who are hard.

I'm a huge fan of Julia Roberts, for me she's one of the last remaining great Hollywood icons. However, this film is probably one of the most dreadful movies I've ever seen and it's really beyond me how she could every agree to act in this movie. Something that really made me hate the movie, is the completely uncritically displayed behaviour of the father. There is just one word for such a guy and that is 'jerk'. He does not take care of his sick ex-wife, he does not take care of his kids, and he destroys the most promising career of a young woman, just to replace his boring and wrinkled wife with a younger model. Of course the new girlfriend steps in when the Mum needs treatment and Daddy is absent again (wonder why he can afford two enormously expensive houses but no babysitter), sure she even looses her job over this, and sure she's the selfless angel that meets every insult and bad mouthed comment with a smile, that throws away a successful career for someone else's kids; just because of looove. What a terrible and outdated gender cliché, and I'm sure no one over 16 will buy this story.If you haven't already been nauseated by this plot, you surly will be by the tacky dialogues and scenes, which if it wasn't enough already, are sugarcoated with a non-stop layer of cheesy background music. This film leaves you with the feeling of sticky caramel between your teeth and of a disgusting overdose of sugary candy in your mental stomach. The cancer illness of the mother is portrayed so believably as if a 40 BMI person was dying of anorexia. Seems like dying of cancer is just a piece of cake and mostly a matter of lying elegantly in some chair wrapped in a shawl. This is probably the most pathetic part of the movie. Unless you are really into unrealistic, blimpish, and corny movies, save your time and watch something else.

Director Chris Columbus continues to explore the family turmoil of divorce in the tearjerker Stepmom, a story that pits the birth mother against the new mother.This comedy drama stars Julia Roberts, Susan Sarandon, and Ed Harris together with Jena Malone and Liam Aiken.Jackie, a one-time book editor, is now the consummate soccer mom juggling the schedules of her two kids in her New York ranch outside of Manhattan. Her ex-husband Luke, who gets weekend custody of the kids, is living in the city with a woman half his age named Isabel, a high- fashion photographer with a strong sense of style. Since Luke is always away at work, the burden of getting the kids ready for school when they are with their father falls on Isabel, and she just isn't the nurturing type. The story heats up, however, when Jackie learns that she has cancer. Facing the horrors of medical tests and chemotherapy, she realizes that, should something happen to her, her kids will be left with this irresponsible Isabel as their mother, especially after Luke proposes marriage to her. What ensues is part parenting lesson, part competitive parenting, but 100 percent family bonding, as Jackie must learn to allow Isabel to be part of her world and her family.The movie manages to touch on that chord because it shows how an ambitious woman might feel hampered by the responsibility of children just because she's fallen in love with their dad.It's an issue that haunts millions of second wives everywhere, and Julia Roberts portrays that role extremely well. Susan Sarandon's performance as a mom about to be replaced by her ex-husband's new girlfriend has a lot of bite, and it's a shame the script opted to marginalize and trivialize her plight in its final reel.The film tries to avoid complexities in the screenplay and it wimps out in the end, solving the problem by giving Sarandon a terminal illness. Instead of allowing Jackie and Isabel's relationship to unfold on something less than a high note, the movie has to quell its best thing with a false payoff because it doesn't know what to do with real life. That is the reason why this film falls short its potential to have been a great film.