The humor is soft, the dramas are small, and the movie stumbles from loose and scruffy naturalism to sitcom tidiness.
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10/23/09
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Motherhood (2009)
26
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:31
Fresh:8
Rotten:23
Average Rating:4/10
Consensus: Despite Uma Thurman's comic skills, Motherhood's contrived set-ups and cliched jokes keep this comedy from delivering laughs -- or insights into modern parenting.
Genre: Comedies
Synopsis: Shot entirely on location in New York’s West Village, MOTHERHOOD is a comedy distilling the dilemmas of the maternal state into the trials and tribulations of one pivotal day. MOTHERHOOD forms a... [More]
Starring: Uma Thurman, Anthony Edwards, Minnie Driver, Samantha Bee
Director: Katherine Dieckmann
Reviews for Motherhood
Top CriticWhat Eliza writes, like Motherhood itself, feels like a stale collection of harried-parent material that the bland comedy duo The Mommies milked dry more than a decade ago.
10/20/09
It scares straight any wishful daydreams about parenting, living in Manhattan and even looking like Uma Thurman.
10/23/09
Director Katherine Dieckmann, who demonstrated some natural comic rhythms and efficiency with actors in Diggers, is here unable to surmount the sitcom dreariness of her first original screenplay, apparently a "write-what-you-know" misjudgment.
10/20/09
Misguided, cluttered, annoying mess of a dramedy, a film only moderately redeemed by the still-luminous Thurman, but even she is dragged down by a truly awful screenplay. Mothers still get no respect.
10/22/09
gets stuck in the starting gate, unsure of what kind of film it wants to be.
10/22/09
[Motherhood] not only overdoes its premise, but it's hampered by several flaws. When it tries to be serious, it's too earnest, and when it tries to strike a chord, it's banal.
10/23/09
Too bad the writing didn't include (Thurman) lopping off people's heads, sort of a sequel to her "Kill Bill" roles. Now 90 minutes of that could be entertaining.
10/23/09
If Ms. Dieckmann really thinks that people communicate as inanely as she has written this script, then we are all doomed.
10/23/09
Unfortunately, nothing here digs too deep.
10/23/09
The film treats the responsibilities of parenthood like another film would treat cancer, as a dream-killing condition to be endured until it passes or kills you. As a contraceptive device, that works brilliantly.
10/22/09
If Carrie Bradshaw ever trades her Manolos for sneakers and starts blogging about raising children, I pray she wouldn't be as tiresome as the heroine of Katherine Dieckmann's insufferable comedy Motherhood.
10/23/09
The lesson, I guess, is that it really sucks being a mom, but it's also incredibly unrewarding.
10/22/09
In a few brief moments, Thurman's Eliza springs to life... but it's not Thurman's fault that those moments are few and far between.
11/02/09
So focuses on Eliza's need to look out for number one that [the film] obscures the reasons people become parents, winding up with a movie light on love and heavy on narcissism.
10/22/09
Motherhood gives upper-middle-class whining a bad name.
10/26/09
Dieckmann nails the look of a certain niche of urban neo-middle-class living, but the film's hyper-earnest tone and reliance on "day-from-hell" New York clichés overwhelm those details.
10/20/09
A portrait of parenthood that’s apt to turn one into an ardent advocate of contraception, Motherhood portrays such shrill, mopey and all-around unpleasant adults that it’s hard to believe any of them found procreative partners.
10/21/09
Uma, overload. Overload, Uma.
10/23/09
Though pregnant with possibility, Motherhood fails to deliver.
09/01/09
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