phd_travel This hidden gem is a pretty scary and well filmed thriller. And that cast is amazing - all top notch. Jamie Lee Curtis is terrific as the unhinged family abandoning mother of three boys who returns after a 3 year absence and wants her place in her family back. Unfortunately for her, her husband played by the multi talented Peter Gallagher has moved on with a young assistant principal played by the very lovely Joanne Whalley Kilmer. The young children mainly the eldest ends up a pawn in the wack job mother's plans. Vanessa Redgrave plays grandmother.The movie is quite scary and unpredictable. Not dated even though it's from the early 90s. Watch it.

MBunge This movie is a great example of why a guy who's gone through a bitter divorce should not try to make a Fatal Attraction-style erotic thriller. I don't know if it was the writers, the director or some studio executive, but I know that somebody vital to this production was really ticked off at his ex-wife. It's the only possible explanation for this misfire.Robert (Peter Gallagher) is a successful architect with a girlfriend (Joanne Whalley-Kilmer) and three sons. He also has a wife who left him three years ago and is only now returning because Robert has finally started divorce proceedings. Why he waited three years to do that is a whole 'nother story that isn't even touched on in this film. Judith (Jaime Lee Curtis) is fairly intense and everyone, including her own mother (Vanessa Redgrave), acts like there's something wrong with her. However, for the first 45 minutes of Mother's Boys, Judith more or less behaves like a normal woman who made a terrible mistake and wants her family back.After that first 45 minutes, Judith goes from 0 to crazy in less than 45 seconds and the rest of the story is about how she tries to turn her favorite son Kess (Luke Edwards) against Robert and his new girlfriend as part of a Rube Goldberg-esque plan to kill the girlfriend. The problem is that after that first 45 minutes, the movie could have revealed that Robert was crazy, his girlfriend was crazy, his sons were crazy or Judith's mother was crazy and it would have made as much sense as what actually happened.Mother's Boys automatically assumes the audience is going to identify Judith as the bad guy and sympathize with Robert and his hot girlfriend, so it does nothing in its first 45 minutes to establish or validate that dynamic. Characters react negatively to Judith without any justification for those reactions presented to the viewer. And while she does go eventually crazy and retroactively prove those reactions accurate, it feels arbitrary and forced. Only if you're inherently biased against the mother in divorce proceedings will you connect with the outlook in this film.Now, there's a bunch of other garden variety dumb stuff here, like Robert letting Kess spend the weekend with Judith AFTER she fakes a violent attack on herself and blames Robert's girlfriend. Judith takes a broken piece of glass and cuts her own face, yet Robert has almost no hesitation in sending his son to be with such a psycho. And Robert's the one we're supposed to be rooting for? There's also the fact that both Robert and Judith apparently thought it was okay for their very young children to play around with real handcuffs. Who lets kids play with real handcuffs?Fundamentally, though, it's the prejudice against the wife/mother character than dominates this movie and warps it into something silly and superficial. This could have made a good story but only if it was told by somebody that wasn't already angry at his ex-wife.There is some female nudity here, but mostly from an obvious body double with only a nip slip from the sensual Jamie Lee Curtis. An oddly oblique incest reference also crops up.Mother's Boys might have some use as a Rorschach Test for women dating a recently divorced guy. If he thinks this is a great film, he's probably still got a lot of rage to work out. As general purpose entertainment, it's a failure.

Boba_Fett1138 Just imaging "Kramer vs. Kramer" gone extreme and you've got "Mother's Boys". The movie uses exactly the same concept of "Kramer vs. Kramer", of a mother who abandoned her family for 3 years but has now returned to reclaim her kids from the father. It was someone was simply saying; Hey that "Kramer vs. Kramer" movie is a good one, lets turn it into a thriller!It's not like the concept of the movie is a terrible bad idea but however the execution of it is. The movie offers too little big surprises and the movie surely could had used some more tension and other thriller elements. The movie is filled with some missed opportunities, they could and should had made the mother character far more psychotic and evil. She basically now gets too little psychotic to do in this movie, which causes the tension and mystery of this movie not to work out.Surprising to see how big the cast of this movie is. It's perhaps also the only reason why this movie still remains a watchable one. The actors still make the movie interesting and worthwhile to watch. Although Jamie Lee Curtis and Peter Gallagher aren't even in the same league! Jamie Lee Curtis totally outclasses Peter Gallagher so much, that at almost becomes embarrassing to watch. Jamie Lee Curtis plays a great role and she handles it just right. Joanne Whalley also pulls off alright and there are some fine supporting actors such as Vanessa Redgrave, John C. McGinley, Joss Ackland and Paul Guilfoyle but their roles are unfortunately all way too small.It's not a terribly bad movie but it's also not really one that ever surprises or leaves a big impression on you. A real lackluster and filled with many missed opportunities and wasted potential. Therefor I also can't really recommend this movie to anyone.5/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

Theo Robertson Be warned if you're one of those people who looks at the cast credits of movies and says " hmm some fairly well known names there I think I'll watch this " then you don't know what you're letting yourself in for . On the surface the cast list is good with well known names like Jamie Lee Curtis , Joanne Whalley , Josh Ackland and Vanessa Redgrave along with a few familiar faces like John C McGinley and Peter Gallagher but it's vital to remember that good casts don't always make good films MOTHER'S BOYS does get off to a highly entertaining start . Notice I said highly entertaining start and not a good start . It's down to the incompetence of director Yves Simoneau where we see a biology class full of children being asked to dissect frogs , so one young lad decides to give Mr Frog a damn good stabbing which causes his class mates to run around screaming . Remember the bit in NAKED GUN where OJ Simpson gets shot then he starts crashing into things ? Well we see a similar situation here where children knock things like mice cages over which contributes to even more panic . I was expecting someone to bang into a cage housing giant dinosaurs thereby letting loose a brontosaruas but sadly this doesn't happen . It's still very amusing though . As the story continues we eventually find out ( After about 40 minutes which is never a good sign ) that the plot involves divorcée Robert Madigan being stalked by his ex-wife Jude . So it's basically one of those psycho thrillers from the mid 1990s that we've seen far too many times I should warn you though that my utter distaste for this movie isn't because it suffers from a worn out premise , I saw FEAR the previous week and enjoyed it immensely , no my problem with MOTHER'S BOYS is that it contains a scene where Jude walks around naked in front of her 12 year old son then asks him to bring the phone to her as she sits in the bath . Again I refer to the incompetence of director Yves Simoneau because this scene comes across as downright objectionable since it looks like Jude is trying to seduce her son and it's this one scene more than the clichéd hackneyed plot and poor storytelling that makes this a film to avoid