Paramount Pictures, Skydance Productions, Michaels-Goldwyn

Barbra Streisand, Seth Rogen, Adam Scott, Colin Hanks, Kathy Najimy, Nora Dunn, Ari Graynor, Casey Wilson

Andy Brewster (Seth Rogan) is an inventor, and has just come up with a great organic cleanser, but he’s struggling to get it recognized in the marketplace. He’s also saddled with a bit of a Mom (Barbra Streisand) who’s got a habit of going just a little too far most of the time. She loves her son, and is very proud of him, but gets them into some situations that would make Lucy Ricardo blush. You can always expect something inappropriate to pop out of her mouth at any time. Joyce is convinced her son is a genius and highly successful, but he’s struggling. Mom has a great idea for how to demonstrate the product, but Andy won’t listen. He starts off on a road trip, cross country, to try to convince large store chains to carry his product, but with an ulterior motive to have his Mom reunite with a lost love who could be the Dad he’s been looking for for all his life. So with Mom in tow, these two head off on a cross country journey reminiscent of “National Lampoon’s Family Vacation”. It’s one disaster after another for these two until they reach the West Coast to reveal his real reason for the journey.

This is a fairly decent film. I think Paramount missed the boat in the way they pushed it to the public though, and I believe this is the reason that it did not do nearly as well as it should have. That being said, It’s well worth catching this one on DVD for a simple evening at home. The film came off as a rip-roaring, outrageous, comedy with gag after gag, in a non-stop laugh fest. Though it has really funny sequences, the strength of the film is not in the “rolling in the aisle” humor, but much more with the depth and beauty of this Mother-Son relationship. When you’re dealing with the talent and experience of a Barbra Streisand, she does much more than just silly jokes! Fortunately, the writers and directors knew the depth of the family relationship and wrote it very, very well (unlike, for example in Meet the Fockers, where Barbra and Dustin were totally wasted in cartoon roles setting up underhand joke pitches for DeNiro and Ben Stiller), Barbra builds a character that we really like, and get very involved in. Likewise Seth is much better in this movie than in many of the roles I’ve seen him in. He too is a frustrated young man who misses not having a father, knows he developed a great product, but can’t get anyone to listen to him, and is struggling to get along with Mom who believes he is so great, that he can’t live up to it, but yet puts him in one embarrassing moment after another. I would hope that if they would have stressed the character relationship part of this film, rather than trying to pass it off as another Hangover movie, it would have gotten stronger legs. But I’m here to say, that since you missed it in the theater (everyone did), be sure to take the chance to see it on DVD now, and I bet you’ll enjoy both the strong comedy that this pair can perform along with a lot deeper feeling and caring for these characters that just makes the movie better. I feel that this is one that is worth watching.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

 

 

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