Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Albert Brooks seems to have made a career out of writing, and starring in, successful small films about a man (played by Brooks) who has some self-esteem issues. By small films I mean they can be shot in any city, don't require special effects, and use very good actors but ones who are not fantastically expensive at the time of the filming. I usually find his movies enjoyable, but not "rolling in the aisles with laughter" funny. (Very few shows cause me to laugh out loud, and fewer crack me up the way some of Alec Guinness' classic comedies did.)This film is no exception. It is not the funniest or wittiest film of our time, but it is funny, witty, insightful and points out the humor of the human condition. In this case the story is about a writer (Brooks) who has recently been divorced, again, and is trying to understand why his marriages, and relationships with women in general, have been so unsuccessful. He realizes that the common factor in his marriages is that he marries women who are not supportive of him; they don't see him as a successful author. He comes up with the idea that his problem with women stem from his relationship with his mother (played delightfully by multi-talented Debbie Reynolds), who always finds fault with him but dotes on his younger brother (played by Rob Morrow), a sports agent with a wife and children. So he decides to try an experiment of moving back into his old room in his mother's house to try to learn more about why they interact the way they do.Woody Allen also writes comedies that are strong on character, but Allen seems to me to be on a higher tier, with more complex characters and deeper situations. I don't see Brooks as the West Coast Allen.

Albert Brooks certainly runs hot ("Lost In America", "Defending Your Life") and cold (just about everything else). "Mother" combines bits of his quirky, low-key style with his more commercial impulses, but the results aren't especially funny or convincing or involving. Brooks as an actor is again right on the money playing a writer with female troubles who moves back in with his mom to find out where he went wrong in life. Debbie Reynolds is just right as his middle-aged mother who freezes everything except the Saltines. But this premise is dubious. It only passes in the film because Brooks rationalizes its merits, but it makes no sense on a realistic level. On the other hand, there are many quirky character traits that viewers will be able to relate to. It's a mixed bag, but is finally handicapped by a condescending dinner scene with Lisa Kudrow (typecast as a ditz) and also by Rob Morrow's irritating performance as Brooks' wishy-washy brother (not to mention a rewrite/remake of Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson" that verges on sacrilege). A one-joke affair. ** from ****

If I enjoy a film enough to purchase it, then it means I KNOW I can enjoy repeated viewings of it, and that is certainly the case with "Mother". The story is character-driven, and the comedy is clever and often subtle, rather than being filled with broad, gag-oriented laughs--so it won't appeal to everyone. Debbie Reynolds is wonderfully understated, and does a great job of shedding the glamorous persona we're used to seeing from earlier films and TV roles. Albert Brooks is his standard but enjoyable self, and though his screen characters are known for their complaining, I never found it irritating. Lisa Kudrow has a small but funny role as one of the women Brooks dates early in the film.

Albert Brooks has made a lot of money (and a couple of pretty good movies) by whining. He may not like being called the "West Coast Woody Allen", but these neurotics who keep returning to the same neurotic themes are certainly not worlds apart. I'm a big fan of the writer/director's 'Real Life' & 'Lost In America' and I expected his mid-life crisis mama's boy movie, 'Mother', would delight me in the same ways. Nah. Brooks is not very enjoyable this time and Debbie Reynolds (as the cold-fish title character) is merely acceptable.In a creaky contrivance, two-time divorcee John Henderson (Brooks) decides to move back in with his unenthused mom to solve his woman dilemma. If he can find out what's wrong with this screwed-up relationship, then he might be able to find Mrs. Right Enough To Marry. It's a curious theory and I wonder if Freudian shrinks in the audience kept themselves from falling over in Hamlet-like convulsions. Most of the film is stuffed with the grating, quirky bickering of two complainers who weren't as fascinating as they might have seemed on paper. They weren't even interesting enough to keep me from thinking about my grocery list.This comedy ended 30 minutes ago and I can't remember one funny joke. Brooks' script (with frequent collaborator, Monica Mcgowan Johnson) has Debbie Reynolds uttering a few dirty words and the filmmakers seems to think this can carry minutes of limp comedy at a stretch. Sure, there are no invented melodramas (unless you count the awkward scenes with Rob Morrow, as the fortunate son who clings to his madre like a total wuss) and the film could have been even more annoying. What we have is a flimsy, psycho-babble kvetchfest with ho-hum revelations and a plot resolution that seems incredibly obvious from the opening credits. 'Mother' is too much 'Muse', not enough...well, anything other than 'The Muse'.