Three generations of women come together in the week leading up to “Mother’s Day” to make this a special day that none of them will ever forget. As Mother’s Day draws close, a group of seemingly unconnected people come to terms with the relationships they have with their mothers. Sandy (Jennifer Aniston) is a divorced mother of two boys whose ex-husband (Timothy Olyphant) has recently remarried a younger woman named Tina (Shay Mitchell). Miranda (Julia Roberts) is an accomplished writer who gave up her only child, Kristin (Britt Robertson) for adoption at birth. But as a grown-up, as Kristin prepares herself for marriage, she begins to contemplate the missing part in her life and is encouraged by her friend, Jesse (Kate Hudson), to go out and find her mother. Meanwhile, Jesse, who never sees her mother (Margo Martindale), is surprised by her parents when they come to visit and must come to terms with their failing relationship. “Mother’s Day” is the latest film from acclaimed director Garry Marshall, and is rated PG-13 for adult language and suggestive material.

Garry Marshall has always been a trail blazer for strong female characters in his movies. With credits like “Raising Helen” and “Pretty Woman” to his name, Garry has surprisingly dialed it back on the creativity recently, instead opting for ensemble pieces like “New Years Eve” and “Valentines Day” that offer little in the way of his creative genius. Which brings me to his latest film “Mother’s Day” and how truly disappointed I was to see the way he opted against the female protagonist, as well as offer little in the film to honor this plain title. As usual with any ensemble comedy, the top-notch A-listers are all fighting for appropriate screen time, but the sum of its parts never composes a magnetic synergy to make the movie anything but forgettable a day after you see it.

The film disects its script into four different storylines. Three of which blend together because they are played for manipulative comedy to the lowest of levels. Then there’s the one difference between them that is played off for purely dramatic tones, and that’s the storyline between Britt Robertson and Julia Roberts. This area of the movie would’ve made a compelling watch by itself, as it was the only time during the movie when I either wasn’t offended or muddled in pointless transitional scenes. On the latter, sometimes the camera is left on in these scenes for far too long, and others you wonder why we were even brought to this area of the story to begin with. What works for this Britt and Roberts storyline is that it’s the only time during the movie where we get well represented women for the story. Julia is a hard worker who has a little bit of regret that she never became a Mother, and Britt Robertson, while dealing with some trust issues for her long-time boyfriend, feels like a legit character, due to the credible acting that Britt displays here. This is the end of the compliments when it comes to the cast because I can’t fathom what made Marshall accept the rest of the character developments. Jennifer Aniston is a psychopath whose only focus is on her ex-husband and his newer, younger wife. The film wants to manipulate the audience into thinking that Timothy Olyphant is the vilain of the movie, but you soon start to comprehend things and understand that this all centers on Aniston’s insecurities within herself. She is a great Mother to two boys, but this point goes virtually unnoticed until Aniston wakes up one day and out-of-the-blue, doesn’t hate this other woman anymore. Kate Hudson is a liar to her parents, as well as her husband. She keeps so many secrets from the people she holds closest to her heart, and for a woman who seems to take control in every other aspect of her life, you wonder why the film chooses to make her a victim against people who are plain shallow.

That is where the movie really took a turn for the worst for me; its comic material. The film does offer some cute-but-corny laughs over the course of a nearly two hour run time, but no subject is off limits for its female demographic. Racist terms like “Towel-head” and “Brown crown” are used for laughs, and it all feels like the film takes place during a time when that sort of thing was acceptable. Lets not stop there however, as the LGBT crowd also get their digs, with Margo Martindale’s character shaming this lesbian marriage within the film at every chance she gets. I grasp that there are some people in the world that are still living in the 1960’s, but this kind of material and the way it is comically presented is the kinds of things that I see in “God’s Not Dead” or something similar. You can choose not to take these kind of things seriously, but any viewers of the movie will be puzzled to find a moment in the film where eye-rolling musical tones don’t play to drag out the emotion out of the audience. When the film wants you to giggle, it will play soft tones. When it wants you sad, it will play sad tones. When a movie can’t let the audience figure out the laughs for themselves, it means that the production has no faith in its material, and that thought process is easily communicated in the movie.

The biggest surprise to me came in just how little the movie has to do with its respectable holiday. The day itself doesn’t happen until about 35 minutes left in the film, and by then most of the conflicts (If you can call them that) have already been solved. Marshall’s script doesn’t feel like it pays tributes to the kinds of ideals and saviors that Mothers are, instead we are left with four different stories that honestly could’ve taken place under any title in any movie. Marshall is smart to know where his audience is, but for anyone else, these jokes fall flat. The material is so over-the-top that nothing feels relatable anymore. Nothing about this film provoked the kind of love that a Mother deserves, and it leaves the effort a hideous bathrobe on the list of Mother’s Day gifts.

This is one “Mother’s Day” in which you have my permission to forget.

3/10