MOTHER'S BOYS
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1995 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): *
Okay, you are a producer. You have your investors committed to make a movie called MOTHER'S BOYS, and you are ready to spend their money. Lets see, first you decide to buy a world class cinematographer (Elliot Davis) in order to create a visual masterpiece, which it sure is.
You still have money left, so you get yourself some stars. You get Joanna Whalley-Kilmer, who must have the most beautiful face of any actress alive, from SCANDAL, Peter Gallagher, who excels at playing hunks with little upstairs, from SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE, and Jamie Lee Curtis, who always looks good except in this movie, from a zillion flicks. Darn, you are now just about broke. Oh well, anyone can direct a show with these stars and a cinematographer who could teach something to Monet about lighting effects.
You start the shooting. Ops, you forgot to get a scriptwriter. Well, you hire that college kid that has been hanging around the lot saying he would work for next to nothing - you pay him accordingly. You read what he has written. It is pretty boring, but you do not worry because the picture will be beautiful, and you have these gorgeous stars too. On second thought, you better ask for a rewrite. Tell him to put something really scary in it. He figures that hurting small children is a classic scare tactic so why not hurt three of them and maybe even kill a few or maybe not. At any rate, that'll sure make the audience take note if it doesn't gross 'em out.
Again, you start to shoot but realize that you have forgotten to cast the roles of the three children. No problem, those three sort of ugly kids who live next door will do - who cares if they can't act, they are not the stars after all.
The studio takes one look at your results and puts it on the shelf for a year, see copyright date in the credits, figuring they have a genuine turkey on their hands. Oh well, maybe one of the stars will get arrested or die or something to get some publicity, but no such luck. They send it out to the second run movie house and save overhead by not advertising it.
MOTHER'S BOYS is rated for the child endangerment and other scary scenes. It would probably be acceptable for teenagers. See this movie if you want to study cinematography or sets or to stare at Whalley-Kilmer's face; otherwise, skip it and see just about anything else. For the above three items, I generously award it a single *.
**** = One of the top few films of this or any year. A must see film. *** = Excellent show. Look for it. ** = Average movie. Kind of enjoyable. * = Poor show. Don't waste your money. 0 = One of the worst films of this or any year. Totally unbearable.
REVIEWED WRITTEN ON: April 16, 1994
Opinions expressed are mine and not meant to reflect my employer's.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews