|
Creative Loafing Charlotte
May 11, 2005
New Releases: "Monster-in-Law"
By Matt Brunson
SPOILERS!
After a 15-year hiatus, Jane Fonda returns to the big screen, and young uns who've only heard about her standing as one of the finest actresses of the 1970s will automatically assume that their parents have been pulling their legs all these years. Fonda, whose remarkable performances in Klute and The China Syndrome (among others) still have the power to stun, is an embarrassment in Monster-In-Law, betrayed both by director Robert Luketic's mishandling and by her own rusty instincts. Fonda apparently accepted the role in the hope that she'd end up in a monster hit a la Barbra Streisand in Meet the Fockers - there's simply no other logical explanation as for why she would subject herself to such humiliation.
Jennifer Lopez, continuing to headline the sort of inane features that Fonda for the most part avoided in her heyday, stars as Charlie, a jill-of-all-trades (caterer, dog walker, receptionist) who finds the perfect man in Dr. Kevin Fields (Alias' Michael Vartan). All goes well until Charlie meets his mother Viola, a former TV personality (think Barbara Walters) who hates Charlie because... why exactly? Because Charlie's young and beautiful? Because she's a temp? Because she's a Latino? Because Mom enjoys an Oedipal relationship with her son? The reason's never clear, but suffice it to say that Viola immediately attempts to railroad the couple's impending marriage by running Charlie off through all types of juvenile stunts.
As Fonda's wisecracking assistant, Wanda Sykes steals the show with her acerbic wit, and there's one priceless sequence in which Viola interviews an airhead pop star clearly based on Britney Spears. Otherwise, the laughs are as scarce as Coke machines in the Kalahari.
* 1/2
© Creative Loafing Charlotte, Inc. 2005
 Back To Monster-in-Law Expositions
|
|
