A Dream Movie for Tired Moms Everywhere
· The Atlantic
As he introduced Saturday Night Live’s annual Mother’s Day show last night, Matt Damon had a confession to make. This year, he was sad to say, the cast’s moms weren’t at 30 Rock to kick things off with a dose of warm fuzzies. Instead, he offered a service to every panicked child in the audience who’d made it to the night before Mother’s Day without buying their mom a gift: a “personal,” direct-to-camera greeting that not only flattered its recipient’s looks but also reminded them that they deserved a night out. Why not head to the theater—perhaps to see the actor’s upcoming film, The Odyssey, a trailer for which conveniently played in the commercial break following Damon’s monologue.
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In a way, he was offering a culture-wide apology for an unfortunate tendency: to overlook the one day a year dedicated to recognizing our moms and the often taken-for-granted toil of motherhood. But what if there were a way to make up for all those forgotten Mother’s Days? An everlasting thank-you card fulfilling the wishes of any mom who may be feeling unappreciated, exhausted, or neglected? Maybe one that comes with goo-goo eyes from Matt Damon?
That’s what “Mom: The Movie” is for. In the spoof of gentle, soft, focused crowd pleasers, SNL’s Ashley Padilla channeled the kind of maternal figure she’s honed over two seasons on the show—culturally out of touch, relentlessly cheerful, and covered in statement accessories. The central joke: Only in the movies would a family indulge its matriarch’s basic desires for companionship, sensitivity, and praise. More than that, she was the mom who’d gotten everything she’d ever wanted: Her adult kids had moved back into her house, two grandchildren were on the way, and she was Mrs. Matt Damon—Rhonda Damon, to be exact. Yet funny as it was, the “story by moms, for moms” had a twinge of sadness at its core. The movie-trailer framing and Padilla’s exaggerated reactions and line readings kept the sketch in the realm of comedy. But just as much of its humor came from portraying displays of everyday decency as the stuff of Hollywood make-believe, on par with the cinematic catharsis of a high-stakes Damon vehicle.
The comedic targets were hit hard and often, with punch lines that could resonate on either side of the parent-child divide. Rhonda tempted Damon with an offer to “slip into something a little more comfortable,” then tore at her Talbots-esque top to reveal a pair of saucy, shoulder-baring cutouts. A gaudy gift she gave her daughter was not only tolerated but proudly worn outside the house—which prompted Padilla’s motormouthed exclamation: “Is that the pink puffy purse I bought you with the big old gold chain?” And in a nod to anyone who’d ever had to give their mom a mid-movie rundown of which character was which and how they were related to one another, everyone on-screen wore a name tag.
When the trailer cut to three middle-aged women in the audience (played by Chloe Fineman, Sarah Sherman, and Jane Wickline) offering their reactions to the movie, a striking irony set in: The film in which a mom had a blast spending all her time with her adoring family existed to give her real-world counterparts needed time away from their families. That paradox was all over the movie’s fairy-tale elements, which allowed the intended viewers to escape their own dreary realities and live in Padilla’s glammed-up, scarf-festooned one. (The stark contrast between her cozy-chic house and the unremarkable, harshly lit theater lobby was a clear differentiating touch.)
Then again, one of the parody’s other turns argued that the fantasy had more in common with a screensaver than actual cinema. The sketch understood the parody’s target demographic well enough to recognize that with all the mental and physical energy that moms expend, they’re probably going to conk out before the second act. For the remainder of the runtime, a narrator explained in voiceover, the movie was little more than a nonstop parade of smiling actors and rearranged props.
The women were shown snoozing while the movie did its best to not disturb their slumber—revealing an additional, crucial poignancy. Moms were the subject of mockery, but they were depicted empathetically too. Because, sure, the average mother works hard enough the other 364 days of the year to deserve a Mother’s Day tribute that puts her modest dreams of grateful children and a thoughtful spouse on the silver screen. But maybe the best gift is a quiet, dark room where she can drift off for an extended period of alone time.