Review of Stepmom (1998) by Filipeneto — 02 Nov 2019

A movie that works best on TV, but it has been forgotten over time.

This one-hundred-percent family movie is about divorce and how families rebuild later. Essentially, it's a movie about losses, and how they are surmountable. Directed by Chris Columbus and dedicated by him to his late mother, who had died of cancer the previous year, the film also deals with cancer and death. To some extent, it may even have been a way for the director to deal with grief.

The script is simple: After divorcing Jackie, Luke decides to date photographer Isabel. But she is not welcomed by his ex-wife, who declares war on her, nor by the two children they have had, and who definitely don't want her around, seeing her as their mother's illegitimate substitute in their father's life. Isabel, a woman who never wanted to be a mother, tries to deal with children in the best way but makes mistakes and is heavily reprimanded. But everything changes when Jackie is diagnosed with cancer. The disease forces everyone to review how they relate and ultimately drives Jackie closer to Isabel.

At cast level, the two lead actresses take the film back on their own: Julia Roberts is a good actress and is in good shape here, and Susan Sarandon also does a good job, although her character is obnoxious and cynical most of the time. The end makes us feel that she has received back the bad karma she has planted. Ed Harris does what he needs to do, but his character only exists because he really had to exist, and hardly appears in most of the movie. It's a female movie. Children, of course, have a good participation as well, but they just do childish things, with the exception of Jena Malone, who is old enough to give us something else - and she can do it.

Personally, I found this movie decent enough for the TV as it reminds me of movies that are made from scratch for the small screen. There is no cinematic sense in the way everything was conceived. I've never seen him in the movie theater but I think it would go a long way ... it's a wrong-thinking movie with great actors that seem to me to be underused most of the time. Perhaps that is why it has been forgotten and, more than twenty years after its release, almost no one remembers it.