Smother

Year of Release: 2008
Genre: Comedy
Rating: PG-13 for crude, sexual content, drug material & language.
Director: Vince Di Meglio
Starring: Diane Keaton, Dax Shepard, Liv Tyler, Mike White, Ken Howard, Selma Stern, Jerry Lambert

Date Of Review: May 2008

“Smother” is a comedy about mothers not unlike the 2005 film “Monster In-Law” starring Jane Fonda and Jennifer Lopez. When “Monster In-Law” came out the film received mixed reviews that would have worried the producers, however, at the end of the day they really had nothing to worry about when you compare it to “Smother”, an absolute train-wreck of a comedy.  That’s right, “Monster In-Law” is a masterpiece in comparison to this film. Unfortunately, “Smother” is a terribly unfunny attempt at comedy with cringe-worthy dialogue and performances to match. Simply put, the film is a disappointment for all concerned.

Diane Keaton gives an annoying, over the top performance as the paranoid, overbearing mother who moves in with her son and his wife because she thinks that her husband is having an affair.  Dax Shepard plays her son, a physical therapist who is fired the same day that his mother moves in with him.  Shepard tries hard with the unappealing material on offer but his character just isn’t likeable, what chance has he got when he is labored with a plot element that has him trying to “sabotage his sperm count” so that his pretty wife, Liv Tyler, doesn’t get pregnant, all because he is not ready to have children yet. Every attempt at humor regarding this is sub-plot is simply revolting and just doesn’t work.

To add further madness to the already crazy plot, both Shepard and Keaton get new jobs at the same carpet company and later when Shepard is forced to fire Keaton, he winds up getting fired himself. Yes, it really is that ridiculous. On the other hand, Liv Tyler is cutesy in her minor role as Shepard’s wife but cutesy is not enough to save the film. Unfortunately, Tyler is no more than window dressing in a rather thankless role and it’s a shame because she certainly deserves better material than this. In a final bid to extract some more jokes the scriptwriters lace the film’s funeral scene finale with a series of tasteless one-liners during the church speeches and then subject us to Diane Keaton’s pot-smoking epilogue that is painfully unfunny to watch.

At this point in time “Smother” has failed to get a distribution date in US theatres. It has wound up in cinemas in two countries, Taiwan (30th April) and Australia (8th May) probably in a last ditch effort to earn back some of its $8million production costs. In Australia it was released especially for mother’s day with a marketing campaign to match but I am sure that any mother that turned up for this one would have had to hide their disappointment from their children who may have taken them to see it.

I really couldn’t recommend this laugh-free comedy to anyone other than a die-hard Diane Keaton fan. In fact even Diane Keaton fans might struggle to get something out of this one because “Smother” is far from her finest hour. I even feel that if Diane Keaton was to watch back her performance she would be scratching her head wondering why on earth she bothered with this film. I went into this film with some expectations, I don’t know exactly why, but when I came out I was feeling extremely disappointed. If "Smother" does eventually get a release date in the US, I have a slim suspicion that it might be a DVD release not a cinema release.

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