BEFORE: This is the third film in my Mothers Day trilogy for this year - I want to mention that I TRIED to call my mother on Mother's Day itself, but there was no answer on Sunday afternoon. Which wasn't that strange at first, sometimes there's a church function in town that runs late, or my parents could have been out for an early dinner to celebrate the day. But after trying again at 5 pm and again at 6, I was starting to get worried. Mom doesn't usually miss the new Sunday night dramas on CBS - so when they still didn't answer by 9 pm, I really got concerned. Eventually I had to text my sister to see if my parents were in transit to visiting her in North Carolina, and I found out they were already there. (I knew they were going to travel down there, I just thought it was going to be later in the month.) Whoops. But I still get credit for trying to make the call, it wasn't my fault that my mother doesn't turn her cell phone ON when she travels - it's apparently only meant to be used in emergencies.
Julianne Nicholson has a small (I'm assuming) role as a college student in this one, and that enables me to stay on topic as she carries over from "Two Weeks". And if you're keeping track, this is my fifth film this year with Renée Zellweger in it, and I have not used her as a link - all her films have been disconnected from each other. Hey, that's just the way it works out sometimes.
THE PLOT: A career woman reassesses her parents' lives after she is forced to care for her cancer-stricken mother.
AFTER: This was apparently the greatest fear among career women in the late 1990's - that a family member would get sick or be in some kind of trouble, and they'd be called back home to fill the traditional caregiver role, and that would torpedo their hard-earned professional lifestyle, and all her hard work would be for naught. "Dolores Claiborne" starts the same way, with a female magazine writer forced to return home to New England, although the circumstances there were different.
There are only two adult children here, as opposed to the four in yesterday's film, but their father is still in the picture here, where last night's film also dealt with divorce, and kids having to deal with mom's new boyfriend (of, like, 13 years). So it's a bit of a wash, since the idea is the same - adult kids return home, and have to regard their mother in a new light. Last night it was all about just coming to terms with her having cancer, but the lead character here also has to come to terms with the fact that her mother is very social and domestically-oriented, and she herself just is not like that. Mom can make a Thanksgiving dinner and then run a meeting of the "Minnies", who decorate their whole town for the holidays, and this just isn't her thing.
In addition, she has to deal with her father in a new way - she's idolized him for years because he's a college lit professor and a published author, then has to deal with the fact that he hasn't published anything in years, his latest proposed novel can't seem to get published, and oh, yeah, he might be cheating on his cancer-stricken wife with one more more of his teaching assistants.
This leads to a TON of avoiding confrontation and the resentment that naturally follows, so at a time when the family should be coming together, instead it starts falling apart. Nearly everyone here favors the passive-aggressive approach, which is not recommended at all, except in cases where that keeps people from becoming aggressive-aggressive. But WHY can't she confront her father about his possible affairs? Maybe there's a rational explanation for everything she's witnessed. Maybe because this all took place before the #MeToo movement, when people were afraid to confront the sexual predators in positions of power? Doesn't matter, the father still seems like a fairly horrible person.
He convinces his adult daughter to move back home by offering her a chance to write the introduction to his next book - only, that seems to be to HIS benefit, not hers. In fact, the whole proposition of taking care of her mother seems to be for HIS benefit, so that his life and routine will stay the same going forward. Why CAN'T he take a sabbatical from work, when his own wife is ill? Oh, sure, midterms. He's definitely the most self-centered person in this family, but the daughter seems to be pulling a close second. OK, I get that she once admired her father and didn't understand her mother's domestic nature, and over the course of the film we definitely see a shift there, but isn't she really more like her father than her mother? Being self-centered and passive-aggressive, that is.
And why can't the BROTHER move back home and take care of his mother? This was made in the late 1990's, people were more progressive over breaking those old gender stereotypes, and not being caught up in what constitutes men's roles or "women's work". So what gives? The son failed college and was working a terrible job in Massachusetts, and that's somehow more important than the daughter's job at THE NEW YORKER? Something just doesn't add up here. Like if my mother took ill, I would at least consider moving back home to help take care of her. Sure, I'd hate to take time off from work, but at least I'd get to lord it over my sister that I moved back home to help Mom, and she couldn't because she had to take care of her own kids.
But since the son was afraid to tell his father that he wasn't doing well at school (same NITPICK POINT as in "Proof" here, why didn't the son attend school where his father was a professor, he could have gotten tuition remission, possibly attended for FREE...) but still, why does the daughter have to move back home when she has a good journalism CAREER going? They never say the name of the university here, but they did film at Princeton. I would have guessed Connecticut, since we see her riding the Amtrak home from NYC, but Princeton would work too. If your father teaches at Princeton, why wouldn't you attend there? A little research on the web tells me that Princeton subsidizes only half the cost of tuition for children of faculty members, but that still seems like a great deal.
But who wore it better? Dying Sally Field or terminal Meryl Streep? Field had the advantage of being seen in those flashback interviews, so she got to look good for a longer period of time, while Streep wasn't afraid to be seen with her hair falling out from the chemotherapy, and then she appeared all gaunt while taking a bath. Streep also got to keep her wits about her longer, and therefore dispense advice to her children longer, and she got to celebrate one last holiday season with her family. But in the end, I probably have to call it a wash.
There's also some messing with the narrative timeline here due to a framing device, as Kate is interviewed some time after her mother's death about some key details. No spoilers here, but we're sort of led to believe that some larger point will eventually be made about euthanasia or the right to die movement, and it never really pays off. I can't say any more, except the film seems afraid to move too far in any one direction in order to make some point.
The whole sequence with Kate writing her article about some Senator sort of went the same way - we never learned any details about this Senator, what he might have been guilty of, or what the article was going to be about. And then when she "accidentally" bumped into this Senator and finagled her way to the airport in his limo, why did she decide to kill the story after that? What, exactly, made her throw away her chance at writing this story, after she fought so hard to keep it alive? A little help here, please.
NITPICK POINT #2: Who has a surprise birthday party where people are expected to wear costumes? This isn't a thing, as far as I'm aware. If this was a running custom every year, where people are expected to dress in silly costumes to George's party, then how can it possibly be a surprise?
Also starring Renée Zellweger (last seen in "The Bachelor"), Meryl Streep (last seen in "Florence Foster Jenkins"), William Hurt (last seen in "The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them"), Tom Everett Scott (last seen in "Boiler Room"), Lauren Graham (last seen in "A Merry Friggin' Christmas"), Nicky Katt (last seen in "The 'Burbs"), James Eckhouse (last seen in "Fat Man and Little Boy"), Patrick Breen, Gerrit Graham, Stephen Peabody, Lizbeth MacKay, David Byron, Todd Cerveris, Hallee Hirsh.
RATING: 5 out of 10 Christmas carolers
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