Anyone who keeps Ruby on the payroll has her feet on the ground. There follows a sequence where Viola throws a "reception" for her prospective daughter-in-law and invites the most famous people in the world, so the little temp will be humiliated Charlie is so serene in her self-confidence that even though she's dressed more for volleyball than diplomacy, she keeps her composure.Īll during her monster act, we don't for a second believe Fonda's character because if she really were such a monster, she would fire Ruby, who insults her with a zeal approaching joy. The movie's most peculiar scenes involve Charlie being steadfastly and heroically nice while Viola hurls rudeness and abuse at her. Kevin is engaged to marry Charlie, she begins a campaign to sabotage their romance, moaning "My son the brilliant surgeon is going to marry a temp." Viola is seen as a possessive, egotistical, imperious monster who is, and I quote, "on the verge of a psychotic break." The far verge, I would say.
#MONSTER IN LAW MOVIE#
When we meet her, she's "fresh off the funny farm," guzzling booze, taking pills, and getting wake-up calls from Ruby, who is played by Sykes as if she thinks the movie needs an adult chaperone. Her last show goes badly when she attempts to kill her guest. In a flashback, we see that she was a famous television personality, fired under circumstances no one associated with this movie could possibly have thought were realistic - and then allowed to telecast one more program, when in fact security guards would be helping her carry cardboard boxes out to her car. You get the outlines but there's a lot of missing detail. Kevin's mother Viola, played by Fonda, is not so much a clone of Barbara Walters as a rubbing. She can't believe a guy like that would really like a girl like her, which is unlikely, since anyone who looks like Jennifer Lopez and walks dogs on the boardwalk has already been hit on by every dot.com entrepreneur and boy band dropout in Santa Monica, along with Donald Trump and Charlie Sheen.ĭr. Kevin Fields ( Michael Vartan), a surgeon who falls in love with her.
I enjoyed these scenes, right up until the Meet Cute with Young Dr. She walks dogs, she works as a temp, she likes to cook, she's friendly and loyal, she roughs it on Venice Beach in an apartment that can't cost more than $2,950 a month, she has a gay neighbor who's her best bud. The movie opens by establishing Charlotte "Charlie" Cantilini (Lopez) as an awfully nice person. "Monster-in-Law" fails the Gene Siskel Test: "Is this film more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch?" What you do is lift the whole plot up on rollers, and use heavy equipment to relocate it in Ruby's universe, which is a lot more promising than the rabbit hole this movie falls into. No, you don't get rid of the supporting character, whose name is Ruby and who is played by Wanda Sykes.
0 kommentar(er)
