Only now does it occur to me... that MOTHER'S BOYS (1993) deserves its place in the pantheon of scary-campy "diva gone mad" thrillers, a proud tradition stretching at least from 1964's STRAIT-JACKET to 2019's MA.
Picture it: KRAMER VS. KRAMER, THE STEPFATHER, and SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY, mashed together and directed by John Waters as a Hitchcockian thriller... and starring Jamie Lee Curtis!
It must be noted that Jamie Lee, in a rare villainous turn, is decked out as if her style icons are Angelica Huston and Annette Bening in THE GRIFTERS: cool sunglasses, dyed blonde hair in a "sea anemone" cut, and the most wicked blazers this side of a Joan Crawford movie. I mean, look at how Queen JLC elevates the pedestrian act of grocery shopping:
JLC plays "Jude," a mother of three who abruptly left her husband (Peter Gallagher) and kids for reasons the screenplay judges as "um, I dunno... unknowable crazy-woman motivations maybe involving a traumatic childhood?" She didn't leave a note, at any rate.
In the three years since, Gallagher's "Robert"––a primo soap opera archetype, the stiff-upper-lip architect dad who's trying to repair his broken heart––has moved on and is dating Joanne Whalley (WILLOW, NAVY SEALS). She is styled like Jeanne Tripplehorn in the thrillers of this era and in no way deserves the inspired madness which is deposited on her doorstep.
You see, Jamie Lee Curtis shows up out of nowhere––and she wants her family back, her Gallagher back, and Joanne Whalley... dead!
She is willing to use raw sexual/elaborately violent schemes to get what she wants, and I must say that this movie truly has a Joe Eszterhas-ian (BASIC INSTINCT, SHOWGIRLS) understanding of human sensuality.
There are so many ludicrous happenings in this movie that Dame Vanessa Redgrave (!)
is pushed down a flight of stairs by a her grandson
––we're talkin' two, full-body flips––
and it's only, like, the fifth most insane thing to happen in this movie.
What are some others, you might ask? I couldn't dream of giving them all away, but I will say that Jamie Lee gets a bathtub masturbation scene as campy as anything in THE PAPERBOY or the Angela Lansbury workout video.
A personal favorite is when she buys a bunch of sugary cereals for her estranged family (on that grocery trip where she looked so fabulous) and, before she can gift them to her children, she sees them out enjoying a nice dinner with Joanne Whalley (the horror!). She does what any sensible hag-horror-heroine would do and drives into the sunset, sob-steering while she flings entire bags of groceries onto the highway.
To me, this is as iconic as the bunny boiling in FATAL ATTRACTION, Bette Davis' outbursts in WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE, and the car burning in WAITING TO EXHALE.
There's melodrama for days, and Jamie Lee does a tremendous job, really giving it 110%––
"I'M STILL THEIR FUCKING MOMMA!"
––even when the three screenwriters let it be known that they have the combined
psychological maturity of an adolescent boy who caught a double feature
of THE CRUSH and POISON IVY on late nite TV after his parents went to
sleep. This all works in the movie's favor, I believe.
Oh man, there's a scene where Jamie Lee tries to show her son her c-section scar in a (seductive?) attempt to manipulate him into becoming THE BAD SEED/THE GOOD SON, so... MOTHER'S BOYS is not without its groaners, I suppose.
Ooh, and there's a very proto-FIGHT CLUB bit where Jamie Lee gets into a fight with herself in Joanne Whalley's office
to make it look like Joanne is the crazy one who attacked her. Nice!
The grand finale involves a beautifully absurd scenario wherein Joanne is tied up and put on trial by "Mother's Boys"
and Jamie Lee orchestrates a murder plot which involves cutting the brakes on someone's car and sending out the family dog to make them swerve to their doom
and it's all camp, beyond camp, and it brought many a smile to my lips.
There's a glossy "taking this seriously" workmanship to the direction by Yves Simoneau (BLIND TRUST, BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE) and a solid supporting cast which includes the aforementioned Vanessa Redgrave as Jamie Lee's mom, John C. McGinley (THE ROCK, SCRUBS, SURVIVING THE GAME, OFFICE SPACE) as a hapless biology teacher
and Joss Ackland (THE APPLE, LETHAL WEAPON 2) as a slimy divorce lawyer.
But, as you would assume, the entire project rides on the commitment and charisma of one Jamie Lee Curtis
Check out those fish earrings, a WANDA reference?
who I've now decided is the hero of this picture and will be awarded full custody. MOTHER'S BOYS, ladies and gentlemen.
