The Guilt Trip
Where: Cineplex Odeon Victoria, Empire University 4
Starring: Barbra Streisand, Seth Rogen
Directed by: Anne Fletcher
Written by: Dan Fogelman
Parental advisory: PG, coarse language
Rating: HH 1/2 stars (out of five)
Want to drive your son crazy? Buy him two shirts, and when he wears one, say, 鈥淲hat鈥檚 the matter? You didn鈥檛 like the other one?鈥� 鈥� Old joke.
Ah yes, the interfering mother, or, more to the point, the Jewish mother. Where would stand-up comedy be without her? Stop me if you鈥檝e heard this one: a nice, studious boy with limited social skills, no girlfriend and a degree in chemical engineering goes on a week-long road trip with his mother, a yenta with a heart of gold. The result is 95 minutes of mildly entertaining schmaltz called The Guilt Trip, a sort of Thelma and Louise with a bar mitzvah.
The nice boy is Andy, played by Seth Rogen with that croak of matter-of-fact incredulity that helped ground the reality in several Judd Apatow projects. Rogen is a likable foil who thrives on understated outrage, but The Guilt Trip is more interested in reconciliation: It goes for 鈥渨armth鈥� rather than 鈥渂eing funny.鈥�
Nevertheless, he is a persuasive son of Joyce, played by Barbra Streisand with comic timing that falls just this side of aggravation: She鈥檚 a mother who phones her son several times a day to check whether he wants her to buy him some slacks from the Gap, monitors his water intake (she fills water bottles from the tap; why waste money?) and isn鈥檛 averse to discussing the problems she discovered with his penis when he was an infant. The fact that she does this in a strip club does nothing to make her lower her voice.
Andy is a failed genius 鈥� my son the loner 鈥� who has invented a great household-cleaning product. Unfortunately, he can鈥檛 sell it, mostly because of his awkward, boring, scientific sales pitch that has prospective buyers walking out the door almost from the moment he begins.
He鈥檚 about to head off on a cross-country jaunt, a last-ditch effort at success, and he invites his mom to come along. He does this for reasons that are typically warm-hearted. He has learned that his widowed mother had an old flame from her teenage years, and he has tracked the man down in San Francisco. Maybe he can reintroduce her to the life she abandoned when her husband died many years before.
Screenwriter Dan Fogelman (the Cars movies, Crazy, Stupid, Love) is like Apatow without the claws, and The Guilt Trip is more reassuring than edgy. For instance, when they get into the car, Joyce wants to listen to a book on tape of Middlesex, the novel about a hermaphrodite whose several references to sex are embarrassing for Andy to hear in the company of his mother. Apatow, you suspect, would have had them listening to 50 Shades of Grey.
The Guilt Trip doesn鈥檛 identify these people by ethnicity (their family name is Brewster) but it鈥檚 apparent that this is an extended Jewish mother joke. As such, it鈥檚 anodyne but comfortable, and Rogen and Streisand form an amiable bond, allowing for the way she sticks her nose into every aspect of his life. It鈥檚 just part of the film鈥檚 affectionate look at the mother who loves too much, a type familiar from a thousand stand-up routines and a hundred novels.
During the film鈥檚 big blow-up scene 鈥� which is later defused with welcome maturity 鈥� Andy tells his mother to mind her own business. She replies, 鈥淚 don鈥檛 know what to say,鈥� and he says, 鈥淔inally.鈥�
The road trip meanders from spot to spot, carried on the blunted edge of chemistry that Rogen and Streisand provide. Director Anne Fletcher (27 Dresses) softens their antagonisms into something forgivable 鈥� the soundtrack lights up several times with the yearning of violins 鈥� and eventually we realize that there鈥檚 not much at stake here at all. Andy and Joyce really don鈥檛 have any problem with one another, at least nothing that couldn鈥檛 be solved if he could just sell some cleanser.
