Rated PG-13 for sex references and language.
120 Minutes
Directed By: Robert Luketic
Written By: Anya Kochoff
Staring: Jennifer Lopez, Jane Fonda, Michael Vartan, Wanda Sykes, Adam Scott, and Monet Mazur
Let’s go someplace near the ocean and drink lunch. -Viola Fields
Synopsis
The love life of Charlotte is reduced to an endless string of disastrous blind dates, until she meets the perfect man, Kevin. Unfortunately, his merciless mother will do anything to destroy their relationship.
Review
Not unlike Because I Said So, Monster-In-Law takes a topic that can be related to and that has the ability to interweave drama and comedy together and gives us a twisted and sadistic story that of course ends in kisses and lollipops. Jennifer Lopez films should come with rating labels that say: bad, really bad, terrible. Monster In Law was a cliche prediction just waiting to annoy it’s eager viewers.
Jane Fonda, whom I adore, played her obnoxious, selfish and hateful roll quite well. It only took two scenes to really loathe her and find her mere existence intolerable. In contrast is the ever sweet and simple character played by Jennifer Lopez, who actually has some acting talent, but for some reason has opted for a career of less than savory films. Lopez plays her role well enough, just as Fonda does, but it isn’t their performances that make this movie a monstrosity, it’s the script.
The entire movie makes Fonda’s character Viola out to be almost as wicked as the devil, and Fonda’s performance makes us believe this woman is truly wicked, so in the last five minutes everything about this woman is supposed to be forgiven? There is no amount of suspension of disbelief about this that makes it plausible, besides the fact that at no point is it funny. It’s one thing to be completely unrealistic, but it’s another to make your created universe unfunny in a movie that is clearly expecting you to laugh every time it’s antagonist does something evil.
Monster-In-Law falls into the category of a flush-able movie. It stunk and was easy to dispose of. What made it almost tolerable to sit threw was the fact that the acting wasn’t horrific and Lopez’s attempts to “get even” were “almost” funny at times. The hope that something would happen or some kind of interesting climax would occur was never a thought. The hope was simply not to bash my own head in until I got to the end credits. I made it, head still intact, so perhaps Monster-In-Law doesn’t require the warning label “may incite self inflicting pain”. That’s better than some.
I couldn’t get thru more than fifteen minutes of this