Last year, between the two of us, we watched an average of 317 movies.
This year our goal is to top that by watching at least one a day.
And as an extra special torture, we've decided to write about all of them.

23 July 2008

The Big Lebowski, dir. Joel Coen (1998)

Smother, dir. Vince Di Meglio (2007)

NIKKI says:
What is it with Diane Keaton and her new career as a meddling mum? How is it that there's become a "meddling mum" genre at all? The Family Stone, Because I Said So, Mama's Boy ... and now this. I liked Diane when she was funny and vital and used her talents for good instead of banal. Smother is apparently so bad, no one in America wants to release it.

Well, it wasn't that bad. It was pretty bad, but I'd recommend it over Because I Said So. Dax plays a guy who loses his job right when his wife, played by Liv Tyler, wants to start trying for a baby. At the same time, Liv's writer cousin comes to stay, as does Dax's mother, who is convinced Dax's dad is having an affair. Shenanigans ensues and mum ends up getting a job with Dax, ruining his relationship, getting drunk at a bar, and vomiting on the floor all in the space of a few days. And then, of course, she starts to feel sorry for herself and she and Dax begin to see each other's points of view and its all happily families at the end when mum drives off with the writer cousin.

But, it's all so very weak. The jokes are lame, the smothering mother angle has been done to death, as has the baby-wanting wife scenario, and no matter how much effort Dax gives his performance, everyone involved just looks they want to be somewhere else. More over, the final scenes take place at a funeral where Diane and Dax make a mockery of a woman's death with their petty fighting and we're not supposed to care because the dead women was so insufferable. So -- dead old hag jokes, that's about where we're at with this one.

Sorry Diane, but you're losing me.

Had the movie played up its dramatic storyline involving a 60 year old woman losing her husband to infidelity after so many years, maybe we would've had something. But it only briefly touches on that, which is most disappointing.

2/5

Steve did not view.