It's not often that I actively hate a movie while I watch it, that its every frame frustrates, bores or makes me wish I was somewhere else. But I hate the living hell out of Smother. An insipid, dull, incredibly trite comedy, there is almost nothing redeeming whatsoever about this tragedy of an independently produced time-suck. In fact, it is a classic example of a terrible dumped-on-DVD film with a cover focused more on the stars in it than on trying to communicate what the film is about. The words above the title names are impressive and would convince any sane person that this might be worth a look. But sadly, it is not.

Dax Shepard is a young, happily married physical therapist who has just lost his job. The beautiful Liv Tyler is his adorable ovulating wife eager for a bun in the oven. But just as things seem to be going great, unexpected houseguests descend upon our happy couple. One is Tyler's screenwriter cousin (Mike White) in town for a screenwriting seminar. The other is Shepard's deranged, overbearing mother played by comic legend Diane Keaton. Hilarity ensues. Right? Um. No.

This is a movie so bad that its only special features were made exclusively for the DVD release. They made them knowing that it wouldn't actually see wide theatrical release. Despite being produced by comedy writer/director/producer Jay Roach (The Austin Powers movies), this film is minute after minute of soul-crushing banality as we endure every crazy mother cliché in the book, which drives our hero to become terribly unlikable and something of a total ass.

Making it marginally less bearable is Mike White's tongue-in-cheek performance as the slacker cousin, mooching off of his family while writing a screenplay. White, a professional screenwriter who only occasionally takes a turn at acting, is making fun of his profession, but doing so in a movie so terribly underwritten, so lacking in cleverness, that it only further underscores how bad this is. He's making fun of all the cheap tools wannabe writers use to write their clearly awful screenplays (which in this case is a science-fiction horror film about a Vietnam war hero turned into a human mosquito) ... it just made me wish I was watching this fictional screenplay turned into a film instead. At least the clichés in that film seem like fun. This is just cheap and trite, and wastes the talents of every actor involved -- White included.

Listening to the director open the film's one special feature, an uninspired seven-minute making-of, is probably the most telling moment on the disc. "Smother started," he begins, "... uh ... when I was born, 33 years ago. And, uh, there was a period of unremarkability in my life that lasted until age 31. And then it sorta got interesting and, uh, by the age of 33 we had the script and we got some people interested in it." The main character in the film is 29. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about the origins of the film (they never bother to tell us what anything has to do with the director or his life) and the incendiary, edge-of-your-seat thrill ride that this making-of consists of. My only consolation was that there were no further special features to torment me.

Smother is available now from Screen Media Films.

Recommend (0)

|  Comments (0)

|  Email

|  Share

Share  Facebook Digg del.icio.us