Tonight I got to go to a preview of a movie called Mother and Child at the deluxe Sony screening room on 55th and Madison.It stars Annette Benning, Naomi Watts, Kerry Washington (who I had never heard of), Jimmy Smits, and Samuel L. Jackson.
First off, let me say that I was in tears throughout most of the movie. So it must have worked in some pretty important senses. However, it was actually rather tepid, rather meandering, and rather cliche. I mean, I liked it, but it wasn't much more than well done middle-brow melodrama. Sort of Oprah book-of-the-month-ish.
Two of the female leads (Benning and Watts) play somewhat tightly-wound, painfully independent women who are hard to get close to. Annette Benning plays her testy neurotic character with a heartbreaking vulnerability, while Watts' ice queen was just a little too overly-confident for me to relate to. The men in the story are just sort of props supporting the female performances.
The movie's narrative is about adoption, and the characters lives intersect in very predictable ways. It also (although perhaps not intentionally), had a screaming Keep Your Baby message (lest you and she be miserable for life). Like I said, it worked. I mean, I really fucking needed a tissue.
2 comments:
Please note that the official casting order for this film is: Naomi Watts, Annette Bening, Kerry Washington, Jimmy Smits, and Samuel L Jackson. So whatever you wanted to be related to, it is Watts and Bening in this order. Regards.
Thank you for your clarification. I will delete this post till well after the movies released. It's not intended as a serious "review", just notes on what I read and watched and saw.
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