MY MOM'S NEW BOYFRIEND - DVD review

Writer-director George Gallo says that "My Mom's New Boyfriend" is a homage to the caper films he loved while growing up, from tongue-in-cheek romantic comedies like "To Catch a Thief" to just plain cheeky romps like "The Pink Panther." But maybe he should have picked just one style to emulate, because this 2008 film has neither the classy charm and suspense of that Cary Grant-Grace Kelly film, nor the laughs that those Peter Sellers films delivered. It gets caught in a kind of bland limboland where good actors meet lackluster scripts.

If you deconstruct this film mentally and just isolate single performers, you'll see that two of the headliners do a decent job with their roles. But, not surprisingly, the two who pull it off have the better parts. Antonio Banderas even has a few Grant moments as Tommy, an international art thief whom we see at the outset getting trapped inside a glass museum display case because of his two bumbling sidekicks (Thomas Joseph Adams, Tom Adams). Meg Ryan, despite some rather off-putting plastic surgery to stave off aging, is her usual flamboyant self as Marty Durand, whom we see in the opening sequences in a fat suit looking and behaving like the worst sort of trailer trash imaginable. How she has a doting son who's a suit-wearing, Dragnet-behaving FBI agent just boggles the mind, since fruit isn't supposed to fall far from the tree. But fast forward three years, as we do in this film, and art thief Tommy is miraculously free to resume pursuit of a statue that has preoccupied him for the past seven years, and Marty is back in the slender hard body of Meg Ryan.

Gallo ("Code Name: The Cleaner") vacillates between hitting us with too much information or else leaving big gaps in the plot that leave even bigger holes in whatever logic is holding this thing together. And the attempt at comedy doesn't just fall flat: it's so bad you want to help it fall.

For one thing, if field agent Henry Durand (Colin Hanks) is as doting of a son and as connected to her as the opening sequence establishes, then how is it that he's surprised when he pops in to see her years later as a slender, attractive woman? Why didn't he visit sooner? You don't go from fat to flat in a matter of months. They appeared to be close, so why the sudden distance? Mom hasn't only just gotten thin, either. She's turned a bit slutty with her newfound shape and Hedonistic philosophy, which has led her to date a number of men. Among them are an Italian chef who shows up in the middle of the night and stands in the street shouting his devotion to her, and a twentysomething motorcyle-riding boy toy who calls Henry "Dude." Apart from running gags over wiretapping agents who seem easily amused/arounsed by the romantic interludes of the suspects, that's the extent of the humor. Henry, meanwhile, announces to Mom that he's engaged, and though Emily (Selma Blair), another field agent, seems as bland and by-the-book as Henry, she sides inexplicably with Marty when it comes to her outrageous sexual behavior, or to ask him, while they're in bed, "Do you ever think of your mom while we're having sex?" That leaves poor Colin Hanks to attempt what Dad does best: reaction shots. At this stage in his acting career, Colin is probably where Tom Hanks was when he was doing "Bosom Buddies." He just doesn't have the range and depth of facial expression, yet, to make a dull and stiff character like this come more to life. But you can't fault him. Blair can't do much with her role, either, with some of her lines seeming like Mrs. Roper ones, as when Henry complains of his motorcycle-riding mom, "She's out riding somebody's beast," and Emily deadpans, "At least somebody is." They're both minor characters, really, masquerading as major ones, and that's Gallo's fault, not the actors.

The plot isn't much. It revolves around Henry's discomfort with his "new" Mom's new morality, and his assignment to head a wiretapping and spy team to keep tabs on Mom as she dates Tommy, who's the target. I won't spoil anything, but I have to say that I guessed at the first main plot twist long before it was revealed, as I did with the secondary one. And I'm arrogant enough to think that if I can see something, a lot of other people are probably going to see the same thing. The problem, though, is that there are elements in the plot that logically run in opposition to the twist, and it's also "too easy," as the guys from "White Men Can't Jump" would say. When a film opens in Spain, Israel, and Russia and pretty much goes straight to DVD, it doesn't reflect a great deal of confidence on the part of the studio. Then again, when the film plays like an extended "your mom" joke, who can blame them? And while they're fine individually, there's no believable chemistry between Ryan and Banderas, or between Hanks and Blair, for that matter. Yet, for all the negatives that this lightweight film has, it's still not as awful as I expected it to be. It's passable entertainment. And that's the best I can say about it.

Video:
Surprisingly, viewers get to choose between full screen (1.33:1 aspect ratio) and widescreen (2.40:1), and because it's mastered in High Definition the film looks very good, with natural-looking skin tones, bright colors elsewhere, and a minimum of grain. No complaints here.

Audio:
Same with the audio, which is a French or English Dolby Digital 5.1 that delivers a pleasingly balanced soundtrack with just enough rear-speaker action to "round out" the tones that fill the room. The front speaker spread is decent, too. If there's a shortcoming, it's that some scenes of dialogue are recorded at a lower volume so that the music and FX seem overpowering. Balance is a minor issue. Subtitles are in English (CC), French, Spanish and Chinese. Not Israeli or Russian? Again, logic fails.

Extras:
The extras are scant, but then again for a film like this you're not wanting a lot. There's a brief just under 20-minute making-of feature that offers the usual blend of talking heads and clips. But it quickly deteriorates into something you suspect was made to promote the film, rather than a DVD bonus feature made to explain the film. Eleven minutes of deleted scenes (seven of them) are also included, and if you thought some scenes in the film were bad, you should watch these turkeys.

Bottom Line:
As a light romantic-comedy caper flick, "My Mom's New Boyfriend" succeeds on only one level: it's light. After you're done watching it you won't grouse that you wasted an evening, but you won't feel it was enriched, either.