Otherhood

“Otherhood” is a new Netflix original starring Angela Basset, Felicity Huffman, & Patricia Arquette. Let me just start off by saying that this movie is legitimately terrible, an absolute waste of time.

It’s about three mothers who don’t receive a call from their sons on Mother’s Day & go into an entire spiel about how their kids don’t love them anymore, & how they are no longer considered “mothers” but “others,” hence the title of the film (which they say twice in the film itself, very unnecessary). One of the women has been divorced, one is a widow, & one has been cheated on by her husband. It’s clear in the early stages of this pointless movie that one of the sole reasons these women are so up their son’s asses is because they lost their husbands, which is honestly kind of weird. They make a spontaneous decision to show up to the boy’s houses in New York, where all three are living in separate locations, & decide to show their sons why they’re still needed.

It’s honestly a very pathetic story. Their sons are well in their mid-20’s-30’s yet because these women are so obsessed with the concept of still being needed by their adult children, they stay at their houses and unnecessarily take up space for the duration of the film. That’s all that this movie is, three middle aged women going through some sort of mid-life crisis that’s triggered by the “abandonment” of their sons. It tries too hard to be a “feel good” family film, nothing felt good about it. Even the argument scene between the three women felt forced & came absolutely out of nowhere, nice job on trying to shove a lame conflict in there.

In the same instance, their sons are also very ungrateful. So at this point I’m confused on who I should be more annoyed with: the overbearing mothers who’s lives revolve around their sons or the sons who don’t appreciate their mothers. The plot was also very rushed, which I guess wasn’t so bad considering I was waiting for the movie to finally be over.

The acting was less than remarkable, even Angela Bassett couldn’t fully deliver but I will blame that on the mediocrity in the writing. The scenery in many of the scenes was lovely & there were a few nice shots here and there but that was about it, it was entirely too cheesy. How about we not make movies about old women being obsessed with every single aspect of their adult son’s lives? That would be great. At one point Angela Bassett’s character tells her son “I need to figure out who I am without you”… get a grip, so corny. Hopefully actresses as prominent as the ones in this film stop wasting their talents on watered down, useless story lines.

Final Rating – 2/10