A neurotic, twice-divorced sci-fi writer moves back in with his mother to solve his personal problems.
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Reviews
Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!
Thanks for the memories!
Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.
I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.
I watched this movie with an open mind and I came out disappointed. I had never seen a movie try so hard to be funny and really wasn't! I sort of like Brooks but this movie I really didn't care for.Debbie Reynolds did an okay job as Mother. She was quite sexy in a "cougar-type" of way! Ha-ha So it's very believable when her son discovers she occasional meets up with a 'Charles'(Peter White) for occasional sex! Original choice Nancy Reagan would have been interesting casting. But she declined because of her husband's condition at the time.Rob Morrow is the other son. As Brook's brother they seemed to play off each other rather well. Lisa Kudrow appears for a bit as a blind date gone wrong for Brooks. John C McGinley appears also for a bit as Brook's pal trying to console him about his recent divorce. Others that were wasted were: Isabel Glasser as Morrow's wife, Vanessa Williams(Not the singer) as Kudrow's roommate.Joey Naber(Angel Town) had a nice bit as the TV delivery man as did Peter White as Reynold's "occasional" lover.The song by Simon and Garfunkel, 'Mrs. Robinson', was changed to accommodate the words and storyline of this movie by Brooks. Now called "Mrs. Henderson".
Albert Brooks seems to have made a career out of writing, and starring in, successful small films about a man (played by Brooks) who has some self-esteem issues. By small films I mean they can be shot in any city, don't require special effects, and use very good actors but ones who are not fantastically expensive at the time of the filming. I usually find his movies enjoyable, but not "rolling in the aisles with laughter" funny. (Very few shows cause me to laugh out loud, and fewer crack me up the way some of Alec Guinness' classic comedies did.)This film is no exception. It is not the funniest or wittiest film of our time, but it is funny, witty, insightful and points out the humor of the human condition. In this case the story is about a writer (Brooks) who has recently been divorced, again, and is trying to understand why his marriages, and relationships with women in general, have been so unsuccessful. He realizes that the common factor in his marriages is that he marries women who are not supportive of him; they don't see him as a successful author. He comes up with the idea that his problem with women stem from his relationship with his mother (played delightfully by multi-talented Debbie Reynolds), who always finds fault with him but dotes on his younger brother (played by Rob Morrow), a sports agent with a wife and children. So he decides to try an experiment of moving back into his old room in his mother's house to try to learn more about why they interact the way they do.Woody Allen also writes comedies that are strong on character, but Allen seems to me to be on a higher tier, with more complex characters and deeper situations. I don't see Brooks as the West Coast Allen.
If I enjoy a film enough to purchase it, then it means I KNOW I can enjoy repeated viewings of it, and that is certainly the case with "Mother". The story is character-driven, and the comedy is clever and often subtle, rather than being filled with broad, gag-oriented laughs--so it won't appeal to everyone. Debbie Reynolds is wonderfully understated, and does a great job of shedding the glamorous persona we're used to seeing from earlier films and TV roles. Albert Brooks is his standard but enjoyable self, and though his screen characters are known for their complaining, I never found it irritating. Lisa Kudrow has a small but funny role as one of the women Brooks dates early in the film.
Mother is a beautiful movie, in that it gives us an insight to our relationships with our parents. While I am not female, things might be a little different for daughters, but as a son, I can see the same behaviors that have cultivated in my mother. And she can see it in her mother. My girlfriend can see it in her mother, and her grandmother. While the comedy is a little dry, and actually slightly confusing on the initial viewing, if you return to the movie after a year or so, it will make complete sense. It only gets better after that. I can understand being underwhelmed by this movie the first time. Please don't judge it too harshly. I know I would have rated it a 6 or so when I first saw it, and now I've given it a 9. Maybe I should explain why it doesn't get a 10. There are a few sequences that should have been altered. I found the date scene to be a little too long, and the Mrs Robinson sequence should have been almost completely eliminated. It is a painfully bad gag, and the humor of it is something that can only be appreciated by those of a certain mind set. Don't worry, I'm not insulting you if you like it.