As the eponymous 'mother', Jennifer Lawrence confirms her status as the most overrated star in Hollywood. She completely takes me out of the film with her blank stare, and hammy, overbaked reaction shots.
I would rank 'mother!' up there as one of her most miscast roles, along with an embittered housewife in American Hustle (Lawrence was decades too young and tried to overcompensate for the lack of life experience and talent by over-acting and screeching) and Silver Linings Playbook (Lawrence's simplistic interpretation of a person suffering from mental issues, by screaming and looking dead behind the eyes, stole an Oscar from the truly deserving Emmanuelle Riva).
To this day, Lawrence's Oscar is the most undeserved, the most egregious case of a terrible, shallow performance beating a terrific one in Riva's superhuman transformation.
Darren Aronofsky is to pretension what Jennifer Lawrence is to bad acting, so he clearly think he has something to say with 'mother!', and licentiously wastes our time in doing so. But ultimately, his film is as ropey and creaky as the house Lawrence and Bardem's characters inhabit. Ultraviolence is thrown into the mix into the third act in an attempt to evoke a response from the audience, but the allegories are all a bit try hard and on the nose. The result is a maelstrom of GCSE-level metaphors where nothing makes sense that is difficult to watch because it is so sophomorically executed.
The film gets 2 out of 10. 1 star for Michelle Pfeiffer's villainous turn, which evoked more of a visceral response in me than Jlaw's nativity play-esque acting could ever dream of doing. Another star for the ubiquitous Domhnall Gleeson, bravely playing against type and unafraid to bare his teeth.
Don't waste your time with this.
I would rank 'mother!' up there as one of her most miscast roles, along with an embittered housewife in American Hustle (Lawrence was decades too young and tried to overcompensate for the lack of life experience and talent by over-acting and screeching) and Silver Linings Playbook (Lawrence's simplistic interpretation of a person suffering from mental issues, by screaming and looking dead behind the eyes, stole an Oscar from the truly deserving Emmanuelle Riva).
To this day, Lawrence's Oscar is the most undeserved, the most egregious case of a terrible, shallow performance beating a terrific one in Riva's superhuman transformation.
Darren Aronofsky is to pretension what Jennifer Lawrence is to bad acting, so he clearly think he has something to say with 'mother!', and licentiously wastes our time in doing so. But ultimately, his film is as ropey and creaky as the house Lawrence and Bardem's characters inhabit. Ultraviolence is thrown into the mix into the third act in an attempt to evoke a response from the audience, but the allegories are all a bit try hard and on the nose. The result is a maelstrom of GCSE-level metaphors where nothing makes sense that is difficult to watch because it is so sophomorically executed.
The film gets 2 out of 10. 1 star for Michelle Pfeiffer's villainous turn, which evoked more of a visceral response in me than Jlaw's nativity play-esque acting could ever dream of doing. Another star for the ubiquitous Domhnall Gleeson, bravely playing against type and unafraid to bare his teeth.
Don't waste your time with this.