The movie on Netflix that will make you laugh and cry, but also teach you how to move on

The protagonists of “Mom and Much More” seem to be at a crossroads, sitting on the side of the road watching the hours pass, half hypnotized by their own lethargy. Enjoying life while crazy is becoming an idea increasingly locked away in other times, more and more limited to that movie with Matthew Broderick, after celebrating forty years, the magical age that some damned people spend their lives dreaming and longing for. to be freed from the obligation to always be in shape; willing; and full of uncertainty, but enclosed in models that define what is success and what is failure, as if God poured the souls of men into a mold, with depth, width and height corresponding to all the more than eight billion homo sapiens sapiens , who are on this plane now, in addition to the many others who have already passed through here and the many who have yet to arrive. After forty, it is concluded that many things, very many things, must be transformed, and the relationship with the children is perhaps the most delicate. I am becoming a little more convinced every day that approaching forty is the most suitable season of life to begin to think of children, for men and women—who will have to rely more and more on the providential help of the doctor, regardless of purchasing power (if you’re going to have any faith in humanity, let’s get it right).

Carol Walker, Gillian Lieberman and Helen Halston, the characters of Angela Bassett, Patricia Arquette and Felicity Huffman married too soon, became mothers too soon, had their marital disappointments at times when they might not have been mature enough, and got used to it false truth that life is just that, a series of disappointments, frustrations, hypocrisy and boredom, boredom of a handful, that marriage and, most importantly, children, the holy children turn all sorrow into fullness. Cindy Chupack, the director, along with co-writer Mark Andrus, adapted the novel “Whatever Makes You Happy” (“whatever makes you happy”, in literal translation, [2008]), by William Sutcliffe, to highlight the emptiness of these three women clinging to motherhood as if drowning for a lifeline, despite the fact that the film never descends into drama per se – even the most melancholic situations are wrapped in funny jokes that no one dares to want to see reproduced in real life. Bassett, Arquette and Huffman lend an exaggerated levity to the plethora of absurdities that Carol, Gillian and Helen pull off without blushing, leaving “Mother and Much More” far from the natural and obvious intent expressed in the title, which is to proving that motherhood is not living for children, much less adult children. To be perfectly fair, in the eleventh hour, the sixty-year-old part of the cast – Arquette is 54 and plays the mother of a 41-year-old man, which is to say, she is, to say the least, quite professional, to be fair to her – seems touched by the angelic blue of serenity, takes life by the horns and decides to be happy. But then all the public is left with is the feeling of a trap that poisons everything.

However, there are memorable moments in “Mother and Much More”. Bassett’s character goes through the lamentations of the three friends – and thankfully the impression of Carol’s uncomfortable and eternal mutism is not borne out as seen in the trailer – upset, even furious, at the fact that the children have grown. Receiving text messages instead of phone calls on Mother’s Day sounds like an insult (and the most correct thing would be for them to send a vase of hyacinths at least once a week, which Carol does for herself, including signing a card) . There’s no way to take a movie like this seriously if you don’t take it as a parameter of what not to do in being a mother. Their journey, from Poughkeepsie, on the outskirts of New York, to the megalopolis where Matt, Daniel and Paul, the children played by Sinqua Walls, Jake Hoffman and Jake Lacy, live, turns their lives into hell, and I honestly spoken does not know how at least one of them does not lose the job that took centuries to get and where he fulfills himself. In this segment, “Mother and Much More” begins to resemble “The Meddler” (2016), the great drama series in which Lorene Scafaria makes Susan Sarandon look like an idiot begging for the affection of strangers because her daughter is trying to win her life without your auspices. In terms of children, Hoffman’s character is certainly the closest to the dramatic content expected in a film with such a proposition. Daniel, the son of Arquette’s character, is a pathologically vacillating man who lives in fits and starts with a reality that is too harsh, undoubtedly the inversely proportional reaction to the delusions of grandeur sown by his mother, who, among other pearls, returns to say. that Daniel’s alcoholism suits him well because the boy is a writer – in fact he had published a short story in “The New Yorker” long ago and had a book frozen by the publisher with whom he signed a rather dubious contract – , in addition to accusing his relationship with Erin, Heidi Gardner’s hairdresser, in a brief but exceptional appearance because the girl is “just” a hairdresser. There are women who definitely deserved to sign a document, notarized, in which they assured that they would never give birth or dare to educate anyone.

The ending, as I have already hinted, breaks a little of the twisted beauty of “Mãe e Much More”, which, I say again, must be taken for its opposite. With mothers like Carol, Gillian and Helen, I continue with Machado and the unfailing pessimism of the witch of Cosme Velho, who thought it unfair, even cruel, to transfer the legacy of misery that comes from so far away to a child. And the worst thing is that no one can ever be sure with all conviction that they will not become a mother or a father like the civilized ladies.

Movie: Mother and more
Direction: Cindy Chupack
Year: 2019
genres: Comedy
Note: 8/10