A day in the life of Motherhood

If you want to spend two hours of your life watching Uma Thurman (who looks about eighty and wears clothes that accompany that age) trudge around Manhattan, bitching about damn near everything in her oh so complicated life, then Motherhood, released in 2009, is the flick for you.

Her character, Eliza Welch, is married to Avery (Anthony Edwards), and is mother to a two-year-old son, Lucas, and five-year-old daughter, Clara. It’s Clara’s birthday and the movie is a day in the life of Eliza attempting to: scurry around New York procuring birthday party supplies, tend to Lucas, keep her car from getting towed because it’s street-sweeping day, deal with an arrogant movie production team that’s filming right in front of her house, keep some sort of normalcy by hanging with her friend Sheila (Minnie Driver), and attempt to finish her essay on, what else, motherhood that she’s writing because she entered an internet writing contest. Whew!

And where’s Avery during all of this? Well, he’s the cliché “idiot” father who can’t seem to do much right in Eliza’s view. At one point, she calls him on his cell numerous times, only to get voice mail. When she confronts him about it, Avery pulls his phone from his pocket, glances at it like he’s never seen a cell phone in his life, and says “Oh, sorry, it was turned off.”

A major problem with Eliza’s character is that one gets the feeling that she detests her own children. That she’s blaming them for her stalled writing career and all the other problems in her life. At times, when she looks at her kids, her facial expressions are rife with contempt teetering on rage. Excuse me, but I thought mothers were supposed to love their children. This movie isn’t Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire, it's billed as a comedy. Hey, I have a great idea for a comedy, let’s write a movie about a harried mother in New York who hates her kids, that ‘ell really knock ‘em dead.

Another aspect of the movie that didn’t ring true to me is the relationship between Avery and Eliza. From the outset, it seems fine. He’s trying the best he can to be a father, and help Eliza in any way possible. In one scene, he actually comes home from work early, so she can get her chores done. Seems like a pretty nice guy, right? Well, not according to Eliza. Towards the end of the movie, she bitches that he doesn’t seem to care for her anymore and that their relationship is a disaster.

What? Where did that come from? This was not set-up at all in the first two acts. It just flies out of left field like a freaking jet airplane. Screenplays are "supposed" to set-up or "drop" hints about future events. They're called "call-backs." There is one scene where Eliza and a young, sexy bike messenger have a completely ridiculous "dance" in her apartment, and some sub-textual sexual tension does take place, but she denies it, and tells him to leave. That's it? This is the perfect scene for Eliza to let us in on her dissatisfaction with the marriage, but no, she just instructs him (to his cougar slaying dismay) to leave.

Finally, there were two lines of dialogue that actually floored me. One of them is when Eliza’s in the middle of an emotional breakdown, and she’s bailing to New Jersey in her car. She’s in a tunnel; I don’t know which one, while screaming at Avery on her cell phone. She then looks at the phone, somewhat surprised and says, “Well, I guess one good thing came from 9/11, better cell reception in tunnels.” OK, let’s alienate a large portion of the audience. The other is when she and Clara are having a conversation and Clara says, “Mothers do everything, Dads only do some things.” OK, let’s alienate the men whose girlfriends or wives dragged them to, or rented, this flick. I can just see the notes from my reader in Hollywood “Are you fucking crazy? Kill these lines or I’ll kill you!” Katherine Dieckmann, who wrote the screenplay, must have some issues. (Most writers do, I should know).

Motherhood does have some very nice dialogue and some funny scenes. I can totally relate to the movie production scene, as I once lived in San Francisco, and believe me, when you see the movie trailers pull into town you know you’re in for some serious parking nightmares.

Also, Avery comes through at the end of the movie with an act of total unselfish sacrifice dealing with a prized possession that he’s sold and gives the money to Eliza. And in an act of total selfishness, she takes it! The scene would have played out so much better, and Eliza would finally have a redeeming quality, if she refused the money and made him retrieve his possession.

Anyway, as she finalizes her essay on the steps of their walk-up apartment (while Clara’s party rages full-on in the apartment), she realizes, of course, that motherhood is good, great, blah, blah, blah, while she’s missing her own daughter’s sixth birthday! Perfect. She’s so selfishly caught up in HER writing project, that she’s missing her own daughter’s sixth birthday party.

Also, there are many scenes, when she’s toting around town, with Eliza and the clichéd “rude” New Yorkers. I’ve been to The Big Apple about five times, and the populous were some of the nicest people I’ve ever met. (Except when I had to buy some condoms in a drug store, the place was packed and the checker had to do a price check over the intercom system. “Price check on Trojans? Price check on Trojans?” It was a little embarrassing).

In my humble opinion, Motherhood’s main problem is a rather large one: The protagonist. Eliza isn’t likable, and that, my friends, is rule number one in screenwriting. For God’s sake, HAVE AN EMPATHETIC PROTAGONIST! AT LEAST ONE WE CAN RELATE TO, FEEL FOR, MAYBE EVEN LIKE, OR IF THEY ARE AN A-HOLE, AT LEAST GIVE THEM A REASON TO BE SUCH AS MICHAEL CORLEONE!

I give it two and a half beers out of a six pack, because I REALLY wish Uma Thruman was my Super NOT Ex Girlfriend.