Not that the bar for Netflix original movies is high, but yeesh Otherhood should’ve been shelved.
Late April was the original release date for the latest Netflix original movie, Otherhood, starring a trio of veteran actresses: Angela Bassett, Patricia Arquette and Felicity Huffman. The last of these, as we now know, plead guilty to her college fraud felony right around that time. Otherhood got pushed, and it’s now released this weekend.
For a movie that’s all about embracing your mother’s love and opening your heart to their advice, it certainly feels weird this thing is released in August. And this becomes especially true watching the movie because you’ll quickly glean that the only real reason to throw this on is if you’re spending Mother’s Day weekend with your mom, and she thought it’d be something nice for the two of you to enjoy together.
Otherhood follows three mothers with adult sons on, yes, Mother’s Day. Gillian (Patricia Arquette), Carol (Angela Bassett) and Helen (Felicity Huffman) are longtime friends, and they get together, having been forgotten by their sons, and they lament about how these sons have all outgrown their love and no longer need their mothers. After one splash of bourbon from Helen, the ladies all hatch the crazy plan to road trip from the suburbs to New York City to crash in on their sons’ lives.
Perhaps what’s most cringe-y in this scene is when they come up with the term “other” instead of “mother,” which…doesn’t really come naturally. It really is just cramming a bad title down our throats. Get it? They’re not mothers; they’re others! Other-ed out their sons’ lives!
Gillian’s son Daniel (Jake Hoffman) just witnessed his girlfriend he was about to propose to cheating on him with her trainer. He’s also stagnant in his career living in a basement apartment with mice, and Gillian takes it upon herself to try and set up Daniel on a date with a new woman. After that fails, she realizes her disapproval of Daniel’s girlfriend is what might’ve driven her away in the first place.
Carol’s son Matt (Sinqua Falls) actually seems like he’s doing absolutely fine for himself with a great job, great apartment and dating regularly, but Carol sees his lifestyle as superficial and womanizing. Turns out she might still be clinging to the baggage of her husband who has passed on, and it really is a bummer to see Angela Bassett who’s such a dynamic, powerful actress shoehorned into a character so middling.
And finally, Helen’s son Paul (Jake Lacy) is an out and proud gay man with a hot boyfriend, but it turns out he also has kept a secret from his mom. First of all, he never officially came out to his mom and only to his dad, which offends Helen, even though she obviously figured it out through context clues as Paul grew up. But more importantly, he lent sperm to his friends, a lesbian couple, so they could have a baby. Once Helen hears this news, she proclaims, “I’m not a grandmother; I’m a grand-other!”
Each of these women are forced to learn something about themselves and the things they have to let go in their own lives, but at the same time, the meddling they do back into their son’s lives ends up helping them, so really any possible lesson becomes moot. Carol does end up setting her son up with a man so he’ll settle down, Gillian does rekindle her son’s love with his estranged ex and Helen forces her way into that lesbian couple’s lives so she can meet her grandson.
It all feels a little bit icky, no coherent themes emerge, and none of the storylines are satisfying. The entirety of Otherhood refuses to be specific, is painfully generic, and it’s complete with a makeover sequence (Carol gets her hair done!) and a fun, freeing music video moment (the ladies go out for a night of drinking!) and the aftermath of the sons having to take care of the moms (they’re so hungover!).
All the hijinks are painfully lame, and these talented actresses deserve better — well, except felon Felicity Huffman. The only real redeeming quality to come out of this thing is to see Huffman play an uptight, overbearing, superficial, material-obsessed mother, which probably mirrors who she is in real life. She has typecast herself!
I enjoy watching Netflix original movies. I actually do. I think they’ve really become a genre in and of themselves, a weird throwback to glossy studio movies we just don’t see anymore. But my god, Otherhood feels even lower-tier. It feels like something you’d find in the $5 DVD bargain bin at Walmart.