STEPMOM A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 1998 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): **
Director Chris Columbus's STEPMOM, which would have more appropriately been titled MOMMY'S DYING, wants to be two movies.
As seen in the film's light-hearted trailers, STEPMOM wants to be a comedic look at the perils of being a stepmother, and, indeed, the movie's first act sticks to that plan.
After this breezy start, the movie quickly slips into bathos with scenes of CAT scans, chemotherapy, and a mother's dying. Rather than examining the relatively unexplored territory of stepmothering, the movie wants, most of all, to be another terminal illness picture, of which we have one a month. The maudlin script, by a committee of no less than 5 writers, expects you to bring extra tissues and use every one of them.
In a stellar performance, Susan Sarandon plays Jackie, the obsessively prepared and sanctimonious mother. Jackie has her two kids' lives as perfectly organized as the rigidly positioned post-its on her refrigerator that specify their monthly schedules. Whenever they go out, she packs them a first-aid kit so complete that doctors would envy it.
Jackie's kids are a cloyingly sweet 7-year-old, Ben (Liam Aiken), and a smart-mouthed with a heart-of-gold 12-year-old, Anna (Jena Malone). As Luke, their busy father, Ed Harris is the show's wallpaper in front of which the two female leads enact their drama.
Julia Roberts plays Luke's live-in girlfriend and soon-to-be wife, Isabel. Isabel is an efficient and talented fashion photographer whose beauty outshines all of her models. The treacly script has a throwaway and not credible subplot about her being fired for trying to mix a career with parenting. Anna hates her and fires cheap insults at her at every opportunity. Ben is more flexible about his treatment of his stepmother. "Mommy, if you want me to hate her I will," he tells Jackie with a sincere innocence. Think the kids will eventually fall in love with the stepmom they hate? Well, duh!
The film is at its best when it tries to grapple with the issues and conflicts surrounding divorce and remarriage. Luke tries to explain to Ben that one of his parents had to move out since they were constantly fighting. "I fight with Anna all the time," Ben retorts. "Can I move out?"
The sudsy movie got some of the best response from our audience when Isabel finally stopped stifling her emotions and told the pompous mother to shove it by laying into her with some carefully chosen expletives.
The by-the-numbers plot has Isabel taking the kids to Central Park while she conducts a photo shoot. One of the kids - surprise! - gets lost, which makes Isabel feel very bad about not being a dutiful parent like Jackie. And Jackie gets to rant and rave and generally feel superior.
The body of the movie has Jackie getting sicker and sicker, while trying to hide her terminal cancer. Jackie and Isabel eventually, of course, bury the hatchet and become bosom buddies. (We know that they are soul mates at heart since they each independently lead the kids in a sing-a-long and lip-synch to their favorite song, Marvin Gaye's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough.")
Try as hard as they can, the superlative acting by Sarandon and Roberts can not overcome the schmaltzy material. Manipulative to the end, the movie prolongs Jackie's dying as long as possible. It wants to wring every last tear possible out of the audience.
STEPMOM runs too long at 2:04. It is rated PG-13 for profanity, thematic elements and dope smoking and would be fine for teenagers.
Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com Web: www.InternetReviews.com
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