Boston's Weekly Dig
May 2005
"Monster-in-Law" Review
Causes critic to search his degenerate soul
By David Wildman
SPOILERS!
There is a scene about halfway through Monster-in-Law where Jane Fonda, the mother-in-law, is given knockout pills by beleaguered bride-to-be J Lo and goes down face-first into a plateful of tripe. Shouldn't that really say it all? That this film is like Fonda sticking her face into a big pile of stink?
If only it were that easy.
The problem is, I should have hated this thing. But I didn't, at least not completely. So I'm searching my soul here to find the phony plastic part that can accept a made-for-the-mall piece of disposable fluff as an actual entertaining film.
To be sure, there is plenty not to like. This is primarily a big screen situation comedy with a plot that works kind of like an Excel spreadsheet: Plug in the variables and watch the computer do the rest. Viola Fields (Fonda) is a well-to-do socialite snob who freaks when her son Kevin (Michael Vartan) chooses to marry lower-class Charlotte Cantilini (J Lo), a hot babe who nonetheless suffers from terminally uncultured speech patterns and a temp job. Viola tries to scuttle the wedding with various situation comedy devices, the sort of thing you would expect on an episode of Frasier: She throws an intimidating party of high-class dignitaries and tricks J Lo into wearing a dress that's too small (ha ha fucking ha), and makes sure her son's horny ex-girlfriend shows up. From there, momma ups the ante, faking an illness as a pretext to move in with the couple, and making J Lo sleep next to her when her son is away. In the middle of the night, Viola gets violent, punching and kicking J Lo under the pretense of having a bad dream. Eventually the bride-to-be gets wise to her and starts turning the tables.
And on and on like that.
Now for the performances. Though there is scant evidence of it here, J Lo actually has a sliver of acting talent in her somewhere. For instance, I recall a particularly effective scene in, absurdly enough, the uber-turkey Gigli, where she plays a lesbian describing what it's like to kiss a girl's Charro. Maybe I'm just a perv, but it worked for me. Here, though, she plays a bland, predictable character, with less interesting quirks than even an ancillary cast member of Friends. This is basically an episode of “I Love J Lo”, and the former flygirl with the ample ass may be many things, but she's no Lucille Ball. Her mate Kevin is no Ricky Ricardo, but it isn't his fault that the character he's been given to play is basically furniture. When J Lo tells him, after the party fiasco, “I don't belong, this isn't my world, Kevin,” he looks at her and says-he really says this-”You're my world, now.”
So, you're asking, why don't I just turn out the lights and go home?
Maybe it's because, despite all its flaws, the movie actually does work. Ultimately, this stupid, predictable flick contains some inexplicable flicker of charm within it.
Part of it might be Wanda Sykes, who plays Fonda's “assistant,” basically a modern version of the bad-old-days “look how crazy 'dem white folks is”-type maid. She spends the whole film looking bemused at Fonda's over-the-top performance, and seems to relish the ridiculousness of lines she has to utter, like: “Damn, girl, I think I dislocated my vagina!” Half the time when she's onscreen you could swear you're watching a blooper reel.
It could be because Fonda is so enthusiastic at playing the demented diva that she manages to rise above the sitcom caricature and the robo-plot to put some real feeling into the whole thing. Even as you hate her, you find yourself liking her. J Lo gets better as her character wises up, and it is fun to watch as the tension ratchets up between her and Fonda. Everything culminates in an actually funny scene where the two face off against each other right before the wedding. At this point they've expended every trick and said everything they could think of to each other, so it disintegrates it into an all-out bitch-slap battle.
Finally, I think it is the realization that, hey, this may be a TV sitcom, but come to think of it, there really aren't any TV sitcoms anymore. Reality shows clog the airways, and as awful as sitcoms were, reality TV is worse. Maybe as a genre starts to become extinct, this is where it goes to die. I remember the Star Trek franchise making that move, as well as The X-Files. Audiences that won't keep a show alive by watching it every week will sometimes come out to the Cineplex or buy the DVD if the stew is stocked with enough beef-in this case the presence of heavyweights from two generations of pop culture. Plus there's always the fact that the big screen can have some healthy swearing and, of course, the potential of nudity.
Here's hoping we see Survivor: The Movie sometime soon.
© The Weekly Dig 2005
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