MONSTER-IN-LAW

Rating: 1

There is nothing wrong with a light comedy, even one as formulaic as MONSTER-IN-LAW. At least not in principle. Alas, when the makers rely on the formula to carry the day, and they are stuck with the self-absorbed performances of their two starring actresses, who are more concerned with image than character, well, there is a lot wrong. A whole lot.
In what is now the accepted Jennifer Lopez vehicle, she is Charlie Honeywell, a plucky and gorgeous working girl with big dreams and the disposition of an angel. She aspires to be an artist, but for the time being works several jobs: dog walker, office temp, caterer and such, but is still the center of a group of really, really nice friends who adore her madly. To say that she’s boring is an understatement. She’s also single and, in the tradition of such tales, meets her Prince Charming, Kevin (Michael Vartan), a doctor, of course, while walking the dogs and it’s love at first sight for them both. Of course it will take a few more chance meetings and a nasty attempt by Kevin’s would-be girlfriend to keep them apart before they finally hook up, move in together and then face the title character. That would be Kevin’s mother, the imposing and emotionally dangerous Viola (Jane Fonda), a big-time television interviewer (think Barbara Walters) tossed aside unceremoniously when the passing years didn’t skew well with a younger demographic. With a schedule of a gazillion phone calls to Kevin when she had a job to occupy her, now that she’s at loose ends, she?s even more demanding, and, naturally, Charlie is in the way.
If only Charlie weren’t such a wimp. If only Viola weren’t so obvious. If only there were an actual character written for Kevin instead of having Vartan play him as a placeholder. What ensues are a series of increasingly unfunny and increasingly desperate attempts to go over the top comedically and not land with a disappointing splat. When all else fails, Fonda is swathed in silly clothes. It doesn’t help. She’s so far off the mark with her broad attempts at humor and oblivious readings of already stale dialogue that one has trouble reconciling the screeching caricature on screen with the complex characters she created in KLUTE and COMING HOME. Heck, it’s hard to reconcile it with Barbarella.
Lopez, determined to be angelic, remains saintly and bland even when Viola’s machinations finally become apparent to her. This makes her the dullest plucky heroine in recent memory. The confrontation between these two, when it comes, plays like the rest of the flick, which is to say a particularly uninspired sitcom that’s desperately recycling hack-material at cyclone speed to no avail. The only thing missing is the laugh track to tell us when we are supposed to be amused.
There are exactly two bright spots in this mess. One is Viola, in her last television appearance, telling off a gum-smacking airhead that has been packaged into a top ten commodity. The other is Wanda Sykes as Viola’s personal assistant and de-facto caretaker. Sykes at least sticks around for the whole film. There is something in the way her character, Ruby, looks at the fools around her that is enough to validate our assessment of them and, as stand-ins for us, tell them off with her particular style of smack-down delivery that brooks no argument. One can’t help but suspect that Sykes, seeing to her own reputation and future career, wrote her own lines. If not, she’s a genius as getting, as it were, blood from a stone.
After a 15-year absence from the screen, Jane Fonda chose MONSTER-IN-LAW for her return. There may or may not be volumes of philosophy to be gleaned from this, but that would require thinking about this film again, and , well, I’m just not willing to do that.