In Mother of the Bride, the new Netflix rom-com starring Brooke Shields and Miranda Cosgrove, you’ll get to see a bunch of beautiful people wandering around a resort in Phuket, Thailand and delivering the most painfully inane dialogue you’ll hear in a movie all year. It's only 90 minutes, but feels much longer. Though directed by Mark Waters, who previously directed the classic comedy Mean Girls, this is a film that feels doomed to die a quick death in the depths of the streaming behemoth. Scribe Robin Bernheim, whose previous writing credits include The Princess Switch movie series, pens what could be generously described as a sincere yet disposable story of a mother and daughter trying to find happiness.
In theory, this could be sweet. But when you keep hearing the most ham-fisted and stilted conversations in a seemingly constant loop, it ensures that, in execution, it’s one of the bigger misfires for the streamer. In a similar vein to Netflix’s recent Unfrosted, it proves to be a strained comedy that feels like it was made based on a few jokes that get stretched out into a feature until it all comes apart. Even when a game cast does all they can to hold it together, they’re not able to work miracles in a movie that desperately needs them. As you observe some of the picturesque locations that are all shot in a way that makes them feel flat and overlit, it looks like the stock footage that would play in the background of a commercial for Cialis. The longer it goes on, the more you’ll wish it could take a turn into the comparatively cheery world of Infinity Pool just to spare you from the banal nightmare unfolding here.
What Is 'Mother of the Bride' About?
This all begins with a wholesome proposal where RJ (Sean Teale) proposes to Emma (Cosgrove) in London. Before he can even finish, she is already worrying about how she will tell her mom. This is because Lana (Shields) doesn’t even know Emma was dating RJ, let alone that they are now engaged. Though this disconnect between the two hints at more complicated questions about their relationship, this is smoothed over quite quickly as the real thrust of the movie is about what happens when they go to the resort wedding.
Footing the bill is Emma’s work in a ridiculous arrangement so that she can be a brand ambassador for them, but this is just a means to an end rather than a way to explore potentially deeper ideas, as last year’s gem Influencer did. Instead, it’s about the discovery that RJ’s father is actually Will (Benjamin Bratt), who Lana had once been in love with though hasn’t seen for years. As Emma didn't ever tell her about who she was dating, this is the first time everyone pieces together their history. Thus, as the kids are getting married, their parents begin to reconnect and reflect on the life they could have had together.
This sounds like it could be fun and, at moments, the playfulness comes through. Much of this is due to the chemistry between Shields and Bratt, as we genuinely come to believe their characters had this long history together. A friendly doubles pickleball game takes a turn when Lana and Will become hypercompetitive, with the funniest gag coming when everyone else walks off the court so that the two of them can duke it out. That it then ends in a more broad gag surrounding a blow to the genitals is just one of the many ways the film undercuts what it has going for it. Everything feels cloying with characters forcing out dialogue that spells out all of what were often already iffy jokes or emotional developments. It reaches a point where it's hard to refer to them as callbacks when there is so little cleverness to them.
'Mother of the Bride' Feels Like Everyone Is a Robot
For every random shot it takes at the long-deceased Emily Post, there is Chad Michael Murray playing an attractive younger guy at the resort who starts to get the hots for Lana. A date that she shares with him is appropriately awkward, but all of this is because of how Shields manages to trudge through the mountain of clunky dialogue to find small slivers of humor. It just isn’t ever enough to make Mother of the Bride feel even remotely close to natural. Every joke or development gets telegraphed from a mile away, with Cosgrove being reduced to being the film’s primary deliverer of exposition. Some of the bits about how the wedding becomes consumed by the sponsorship deals and just general meddling of brands could have more teeth if it wasn’t wrapped up in the more banal package of the best of the film. It all just keeps coming back to how stiff each of the characters is.
There is a moment about midway through where Lana, Will, and a group of their friends go out to a remote beach away from the resort that starts to flirt with a more self-aware silliness à la Wet Hot American Summer. Immediately you realize that this is giving the movie far too much credit, as all the more potentially audacious absurdity is certainly unintentional. Instead, it seems like every character is a robot, and not in a good way. Every person speaks like they’ve been programmed to dispense information in a movie rather than naturally interact as people. Not once do you believe it especially when it increasingly descends into sappiness.
It wants you to buy into the heart and the humor without earning either. If you’re looking for a recent streaming rom-com that manages to actually strike this balance genuinely, best take a trip with The Idea of You instead. This movie makes you want to walk into the ocean. That way, you won’t have to hear any of the woefully bad dialogue any longer. Then again, this Netflix misfire may somehow find a way to haunt you even if you escape to your watery grave.
Netflix's Mother of the Bride is a disposable rom-com with painfully inane dialogue and robotic characters.
- Brooke Shields is able to occasionally break through the poor dialogue and create some fun moments.
- The film feels overstretched with it spelling out the already iffy jokes and ideas.
- All of the dialogue is clunky and unnatural, rendering everything completely stiff.
- Visually, the film is so overlit and flat that it looks more like a Cialis commercial.
Mother of the Bride is now available to stream on Netflix in the U.S.
