Review of The Guilt Trip (2012) by M B — 17 May 2013

It's really sad when movies like this get made, because when the script is so seemingly flawed, you have to know in advance that it's not going to go anywhere, so why make it? It has the sentimentality that everyone likes to see, and the chemistry between the two leads, but even with a stellar cast, the writing for this is not good.

Not horrible, scratching at my corneas and pushing the Q-tip through my eardrum bad, but not good either. This film is in part based on the real life road trip taken by screenwriter Dan Fogelman and his mother.

The comedy has hints of the Jewish mother-son comedy where the mother nitpicks everything about her son until he implodes. It may not be a genre but it's definitely been seen before, and though the most Jewish-centric leads were chosen, and had an amazing amount of chemistry, this film was doomed from the start.

The dialogue is so flimsy, there aren't any huge climactic moments, and most of the time Joyce (Streisand) is schmaltzy and ineffectual while Andrew (Rogen) comes off as a weak and socially awkward mama's boy.

After a while Joyce's nagging feels genuine and heartless, and their relationship never gets to the point of sweet or maternal, but instead a strange dissidence between having a real life and ruining your only child's.

It's really creepy the way she watches old videos of them, buys him things, talks about him all the time, butts into his life. He then has to love her for all her faults, time and again, when really she needs major therapy.

Even the trip itself is boring, between the lack of things actually happening and their horrible relationship. The resolutions are forced, the characters are flat, and overall this film is simply frustrating and bland.

The ending, which was also forced sentimentality, was somewhat clever, but didn't have any of the raw emotion that would have made it moving. I'm not even mad, I'm just very disappointed.