REVIEW: Netflix Subscribers Deserve Better Than ‘Mother Of The Bride’

Netflix subscribers deserve so much better than Mother of the Bride. This Netlifx Original rom-com from director Mark Waters and writer Robin Bernheim is frustratingly bad. It’s such a good idea. Emma (Miranda Cosgrove) comes home from college in England to announce to her mother, Lana (Brooke Shields), that she’s going to pursue a career as an influencer and get married to a man she basically just met, RJ (Sean Teale). The great twist is that when they all arrive in Phuket for the big destination wedding, it turns out that Lana had a serious relationship with RJ’s dad, Will (Benjamin Bratt).

But for as much fun as it genuinely is to imagine how this plot could play out, how poorly it does makes it all the more frustrating. Mother of the Bride feels like it doesn’t have characters so much as a collection of line-readers who sometimes share a screen with one another on and off for a half-hour. Whether it’s because of poor writing, poor acting, poor chemistry, or abysmal ADR, almost every single line read in this movie is unbearable. The level to which it feels like each actor is just speaking their uninspired lines into a void rather than actually interacting with each other is so completely distracting that you could almost forget the the rest of the movie is also bad.

Mother of the Bride is, first and foremost, about Lana more than it is about Emma. And that does feel fairly novel, even if it’s not a new concept. Focusing on a single mother’s emotions in the wake of a surprise wedding to the son of the man who broke your heart 30 or so years prior is an exciting idea. It’s such a great concept, and so much of the exposition is well-conceived, even if it’s not always well-written. This does break through now and again to offer some brief respite from the otherwise unpleasant viewing experience.

But any time Emma is in a scene, the movie breaks. It’s not Cosgrove’s fault by any means. She’s acting perfectly well and her interactions with her mother come across benignly enough. Her character is just so deeply disinteresting and frustrating to engage with. All of her drama is derived from arguments with her mother or her influencer handler. Based on the opening act, the former is set up from the beginning as derived from Emma’s fear of disappointing her mother. Which is fair. Lana can be intense. But she’s also initially set up as overbearing and intimidating. Both qualities are instantly dropped to favor making Lana lovesick and too afraid to talk to her daughter.

The lovesick part works. It’s a fun idea that this hardass mother is suddenly bumbling because her old flame is making her feel things she hasn’t in decades. The sudden onset of fecklessness isn’t believable at all, though. The character we meet in the first scene she appears in would not be afraid to squeeze the truth out of Emma the instant things become suspect between them.

The influencer part of it all completely fails. There is nothing about Cosgrove as a persona or Emma as a character that matches any presumptions about influencers audiences might have. She also doesn’t behave like one whatsoever. This makes the problems she has with her manager terribly elementary while also neglecting any of what makes people enjoy influencers in the first place. The only reason Emma’s an influencer is to cause strife with her mother over the wedding. But there’s enough absurdity to a last-minute destination wedding to a man she barely knows to produce conflict without this unsatisfying sub-plot.

Netflix subscribers deserve so much better for their dollar. This movie takes place in a criminally underutilized gorgeous location. It features beloved cast members. It has an excellent concept. So why is it so bad? With a script punchup to make the jokes land more regularly and the conversations between any given characters feel less mechanical, Mother of the Bride could be great. There are some solid scenes here and there that remind you of what a better version of the whole movie could have felt like. Instead, it repeatedly returns to frustrating miscommunication tropes to create unnecessary layers of drama.

This movie contains perhaps the single worst example of full-grown adults simply refusing to communicate over something so small and so obviously in need of a conversation. It’s frankly offensive to make viewers watch the scene unfold and deal with its childish repercussions for the next ten minutes. Especially when things were humming along fine enough just prior.

Rom-coms do not need to rely on these outdated tension-builders. Adults can have difficult conversations. They can be clear and honest about their needs and fears. All of the characters in this movie had just proven moments prior that they were fully competent and ready to resolve their tensions. And yet, to pad out the drama, this heinous plot decision ruins all of the goodwill Mother of the Bride was starting to build in its penultimate act.

The conclusion is so laughably off-beat. The humor mismatches everything that came before it. The melodrama is dialed so high with an aggravatingly corny score. There’s a universe where maybe this could have worked if the rest of the movie was as nearly screwball as this scene is. In fact, a lot about Emma’s stiffness and the total lack of value added by the many tertiary characters—including Chad Michael Murray and Michael McDonald—could have been improved if the movie picked a lane from the beginning and stuck with it.

Mother of the Bride could well be the movie that finally makes me swear off Netflix Original rom-coms for good. I watch a lot of these movies in any number of languages and it’s the same story over and over again. Decent ideas and reasonable acting are ruined by scripts that offend viewers’ intellect and emotional maturity with the same bad communication-based plot devices.

This movie had so much potential to be a fun time with a novel concept and some endearing actors. Instead, it’s a completely uninspired script that never finds its lane comedically or proves either of its romances are worth a grain of salt. It could just as well be a radio play because the beautiful location is hardly taken advantage of, and the actors barely feel like they’re talking to each other half the time and sound like they’ve been dubbed over. Netflix must stop releasing first drafts and elevate their rom-coms to justify the ever-rising cost of a monthly subscription.

Mother of the Bride is streaming now, exclusively on Netflix.