Review: Mama’s Boy

Jon Heder is a selfish, high maintenance 29 year-old who still lives with his widowed mother (Diane Keaton- not my favourite actress) who is far more loving, giving, and self-sacrificing than the pretentious, purposely developmentally-challenged turd deserves. When mum starts dating motivational speaker Jeff Daniels (the kind of guy who won’t allow the word ‘can’t’ to be in his vocabulary), Heder is jealous, suspicious, grossly possessive, and downright petty, going about trying to split them up. This despite warnings by pretty aspiring singer Anna Faris (who writes anti-corporation songs) to grow up, and start living his own life. Naturally, he ignores this good advice (not to mention her obvious, if perplexing, interest in him), and sets about ruining his mother’s happiness. But then he actually digs up some real dirt on Daniels...Could Heder actually be right about him? Just what is this guy hiding? And who trusts motivational speakers, anyway? Old pro Eli Wallach (in his 90s and still never missing a beat) steals scenes as Heder’s bookstore owner employer who is fed-up with him and tries to give him a reality check (with the film’s funniest, unprintable line). Sarah Chalke plays a mystery woman somehow connected to Daniels’ past.

This 2007 black comedy from debut director Tim Hamilton isn’t as bad as you’ve heard, but a wrong-headed misfire nonetheless. The actors all do rather well under the circumstances, notably Faris (despite my not having a clue what her character sees in Heder), Daniels, and Wallach, but the film is a total miscalculation. It wants us to sympathise with a highly irritating and selfish main character (Heder- who does his one thing well, but it’s still just one thing), whilst his chief nemesis (Daniels) comes across as a decent, well-meaning, and only marginally deceitful person for at least most of the film’s length. In order for this film to have worked, it needed to be the other way around, or at least make them both repulsive. Horrible Hollywood ending, too just doesn’t fly with everything that precedes it. The screenplay by Hank Nelken (“Saving Silverman”, “Are We Done Yet?”) clearly needed to be significantly restructured. It’s not an awful film, really (the performances are too good), just unpleasant and misguided.

Rating: C-