Otherhood is
the kind of movie you watch when you have some free time and just want
something nice and homely. It’s not spectacular, and the plot has a weird sort
of ending. I think the writers could have done a better job piecing it
together. There’s nothing groundbreaking here, and you could argue that the
movie loses its way in the middle when the mothers start acting immature. Plus,
the way it ends makes it feel like the first half is where most of the fun
happens.
Otherhood speaks
to the reality of parenting. No matter how hard you try, parents always seem to
mess up their kids—whether it’s from too much love, too little, not pushing
them enough, or pushing them too hard. The most common issue, which affects
almost all of us, is letting the parents’ insecurities dictate how they raise
their children. All these styles of bad parenting and their consequences are on
display in this movie. That said, the movie does have one thing going for it:
three incredible actresses (Angela Bassett as Carol, Patricia Arquette as
Gillian, and Felicity Huffman as Helen) delivering stunning performances that
make it worth sitting through, just to watch them.
The movie
introduces three friends who are mothers, along with their sons, who have been
friends since childhood. The sons have distanced themselves from their mothers
for reasons you’ll discover if you watch the movie. The mothers, believing
they’ve made countless sacrifices for their children, feel they shouldn’t be
made to feel like failures.
Every year, the
mothers get together on Mother’s Day, and this time, they decide on a whim to
go to New York and surprise their sons. None of them were prepared for what
they’d find when they arrived. They realize they don’t know their sons as well
as they thought and that they’re part of the reason their sons want little to
do with them anymore.
The movie delves
in a realm of awkwardness at many instances that make you cringe and wish the
writers had some sense to know better.
The movie is
based on Whatever Makes You Happy by William Sutcliffe and is written
and directed by Cindy Chupack (who has written for Sex and the City and Modern
Family).
You can catch
this movie on Netflix, and like I said earlier, it’s worth a watch when you’ve
exhausted all your other viewing options.
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