Mother Movie Makes You Cry For HGTV, And Your Mommy

image via slashfilm.com

From total ruin to a beautiful restoration, Mother! shows a dream house. HGTV does this all the time and no one complains. The Property Brothers find a client willing and able to knock a wall down to ‘open up the kitchen’ and everyone cheers.

Jennifer Lawrence is the remodeler in Mother!. She shows the same hyper-attention to detail found in art restoration. Nothing is overlooked, nothing is unimportant. It’s a refreshing take from a movie star I’ve enjoyed ever since she started getting roles once reserved for the Sissy Spaceks and Renée Zellwegers of Hollywood.

Was it too much of a stretch? No.

If you enjoy Street of Dreams, home shows, or just cruising open houses in the neighborhood, Mother! works. I’m reminded of watching bad guys in the Middle East sledgehammer ancient artifacts and firing artillery at monumental sculpture that offended their spiritual sensibilities.

If cleaning up the canvas of life was as easy as hammers and guns, we’d all be saviors. But it doesn’t work like that. Neither does Mother!

Reading reviews and opinions is not helpful for this mother movie. They miss the HGTV connection, the Rolling Stones at Altamont connection. Baby boomers remember Altamont?

Too many reviewers seem to forget that the man, he, was a poet. No spoiler there. What’s a poet but the writer who nails it in the fewest words. If they can’t do that, they turn to short stories. Failing there, they turn to novels. More words, then more and more and more.

But this poet hits it out, so far out he becomes a sensation.

He writes a poem and lets his wife read it. She cries over it while he talks on the phone. Who was on the phone? His publisher. In the tradition of who reads stuff first, the wife was second. And mother movie hurt.

Keeping with tradition, the publisher has a few more jobs to do before the movie is over. Part of her job was overseeing the sensation’s new audience. It made Beatlemania look tame. More like a soccer riot.

Absent the religious angle, and why not, Mother movie is a writer movie. The writer marries a fan. More fans show up. Everyone wants a souvenir, a piece of the action.

The next time you read a poem and feel moved, don’t travel to the poet’s home and look for souvenir. I walked past Bob Dylan’s place in Brooklyn, drove by Ken Kesey’s place in Pleasant Hill, Oregon. Did I feel the urge to stop? Of course. But I didn’t. Neither should you.

Let out of control fans have their day; watch the Mother movie to see how that day might turn out. Is it the worst movie ever made? Not even close. This is the worst movie ever made.