Mother's Day (2016) and the Holiday Trilogy

Today is Mother’s Day, the day meant to show mothers how much we appreciate the things that they’ve done for us.  We should appreciate them every single day, but most people take their mothers for granted and the one day a year reminds them not to.  As a celebration of the day, I watched a movie related to mothers, much like I did last year with The Single Moms Club.  The difference is that this year won’t be a post about how much mothers mean to us.  There’s something else to cover with this post, something that I might not ever be able to cover again.

You see, I watched Mother’s Day for this week’s post.  It came out last year and told the stories of a few mothers in the Atlanta area as their day loomed around the corner.  Not a whole lot of the story had to do with that specific day, but that doesn’t matter.  The movie was about mothers.  It was the final movie directed by Garry Marshall before his death in July of 2016.  More importantly, it was the final movie in his Holiday Trilogy.  It capped off the thematic trio of movies that began with Valentine’s Day and continued with New Year’s Eve.  This week, I will be looking at the trilogy as a whole.

There are five topics that are going to be covered with each of the three movies.  The holiday itself was important because it helped to shape the story.  It wasn’t the story itself, but a major part of what happened.  The location of each movie was different, which gave some variety in the landmarks and events.  Each movie had an ensemble of recognizable actors which provided a certain feel.  Some of the actors were featured in two or even all three movies, so I’ll also be looking at these people who I call the regulars.  Finally, I’m going to discuss some of the notable storylines from each of the movies.  Five topics, three movies.  Let’s get started.

Holidays

It seems fairly obvious what the holidays were for the movies based on their titles.  What I want to point out is how the days helped to shape the stories.  There was reasoning behind each of the holidays because of the stories, or the stories were written around each holiday.  No matter what the case was, the holidays were integral to what happened.

Valentine’s Day was about the relationships of the people involved.  Whether the relationships were new, old, or anywhere in between, they were the crux of the story.  It was a bunch of romantic comedy stories tied together through one of the most romantic days of the year.  The movie also led to the real life relationship of Taylor Swift and Taylor Lautner, which the pre-teen and teenage girls ate up.

New Year’s Eve was about new starts.  Most of them had to do with the same sort of romantic comedy storylines that were present throughout Valentine’s Day, but there were a few other story types that bled into the ensemble piece this time.  New parents, new relationships, new experiences, and a new year kept the movie going forward.  New Year’s Eve was an important part of telling the stories because it is looked upon as the day were people try to get a new start.  That’s why resolutions exist.

Mother’s Day was different.  It wasn’t so much about the romantic comedy stuff.  It focused on motherhood and how that affected mothers at different stages of their lives.  There were new mothers, divorced mothers, and children who had issues with their mothers.  The one constant thing was that every story revolved around being a mother.  Mother’s Day was always looming around the.  The movie began on Thursday or Friday and led into the Sunday festivities.  It brought the parents and their children together.

Location

Los Angeles can do a lot for a movie if used as the setting.  That’s what happened in Valentine’s Day.  There are enough landscapes to give a variety to the look and feel of the movie.  There is also a large amount of traffic that can add to the stakes of a scene.  If a character is trying to get from one location to another in a certain amount of time, such as was the case for Ashton Kutcher’s flower delivery service, it can be a difficult task thanks to the multitude of cars on the street.  The final way that Los Angeles helps build the story is that it adds to the novelty of an ensemble cast.  Actors tend to be based out of Los Angeles when it comes to Hollywood films.  Setting the movie in Los Angeles can make the stars in a movie shine even more because it seems like a movie made for the stars.

New York has a dreamlike quality that elevates romantic stories.  That’s because New York itself has been romanticized.  What’s the line from the song New York, New York?  If I can make it there, I can make it anywhere?  The thought of achieving your dreams has been a part of New York for many years, and placing that feeling over romance can do magical things.  That, along with the New Year’s theme, helped to elevate New Year’s Eve and give it a special feeling.  The movie might not have lived up to the feeling, but it had the feeling.  New York and New Year’s Eve also go together like peanut butter and jelly.  Who doesn’t know about the ball drop that happens every New Year’s in Times Square?

Atlanta was probably the least effective of the locations in the three movies.  There was no reason that Mother’s Day had to be set in Atlanta.  It could have been set in any city and had the same story.  Nothing was quintessentially Atlanta about it.  The story wasn’t structured to use Atlanta as another character in the way that Los Angeles and New York were used in their respective movies.  It was a bunch of mothers being mothers, and that was about it.  Weirder were the things that were in the story that didn’t feel like they should be in Atlanta.  There was a storyline involving stand-up comedy and a storyline involving a celebrity from the Home Shopping Network.  Neither of those things seemed right in Atlanta.  HSN is based out of Florida, and stand-up comedy would fit better in either of the cities that had already been used in the holiday trilogy.  They felt wrong in Atlanta.

Ensembles

Garry Marshall built his Holiday Trilogy with many notable faces of the time when each movie came out.  Whoever was a hot name was chosen for the movie.  They might not be the biggest names.  You don’t get any Matt Damons or Tom Cruises in the movies.  But the people who were cast in each of the three movies were notable.

Valentine’s Day kicked it off with television stars like Patrick Dempsey, Topher Grace, and Ashton Kutcher.  They have had movie careers, but they’re more recognizable for the work they’ve done on the small screen.  Then there were the movie stars of the time like Anne Hathaway, Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, Jamie Foxx, and Bradley Cooper.  Some of them are still big stars.  Hathaway has since won an Oscar, Bradley Cooper is arguably one of the biggest stars in movies right now, and Jamie Foxx is still doing his thing.  The movie capitalized on casting family in Julia Roberts and Emma Roberts.  It went for the teen audience with Taylor Swift and Taylor Lautner.  Jennifer Garner, Queen Latifah, and Kathy Bates also had roles.

New Year’s Eve went the same route in its casting.  It took famous people from different demographics and threw them together in another bunch of stories of love.  Older audiences would find Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Cary Elwes, Jim Belushi, and Penny Marshall.  Younger audiences got to see Zac Efron and Abigail Breslin.  But the movie really tapped into the television acting pool.  Katherine Heigl, Lea Michele, Ashton Kutcher, Sofia Vergara, Seth Meyers, and Sarah Paulson all found their success in television before breaking out into other ventures.  Sure, some had done other work before television, but TV made them stars.  Other notable cast members included Hilary Swank, Jessica Biel, Til Schweiger, Ludacris, Halle Berry, Carla Gugino, Common, Russell Peters, Jon Bon Jovi, Josh Duhamel, and Alyssa Milano.

Mother’s Day held back on the size of the cast a little bit, though it was still huge.  It just wasn’t as big because the characters seemed to all be connected, so the stories could be contained.  Kate Hudson, Jennifer Aniston, Sarah Chalke, Margo Martindale, Cameron Esposito, and Britt Robertson played the mothers throughout the movie, each dealing with motherhood in a different way.  Timothy Olyphant, Jason Sudeikis, Aasif Mandvi, Robert Pine, and Jack Whitehall appeared as the fathers.  Julia Roberts, Jon Lovitz, and Jennifer Garner had roles as well.  It was much more about the mothers than the fathers and other characters.  That doesn’t mean that Garry Marshall didn’t make sure that he cast some recognizable faces and people that he enjoyed working with.

Regulars

Garry Marshall liked to work with the same people over and over again.  One such person was Julia Roberts.  He helped push her into super stardom with the one-two punch of Pretty Woman and Runaway Bride.  When he went about making his Holiday Trilogy, of course he would bring her into the movies.  She was featured in both Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day because she was one of his people.  That’s also why Kate Hudson was in Mother’s Day.  She was one of his people after starring in Raising Helen.  And Anne Hathaway showed up in Valentine’s Day after being featured in two Princess Diaries movies.

But the real area where Garry Marshall shined when it came to recurring casts was in the supporting actors.  That was where audiences would see recognizable faces that they might not be able to put a name to.  The most notable of these actors was Hector Elizondo, who was in many Garry Marshall movies, including all three of the holiday movies in prominent roles.  In Valentine’s Day, Elizondo played one half of the older couple.  His role was important in that it showed a stage of romance that no other relationship in the movie showed.  He and his movie wife were showing that love could last a lifetime.  It wasn’t just a young person’s game.  When New Year’s Eve came around, Elizondo had a new role.  He played a fired city electrician who was called in at the last minute to save the Times Square ceremony.  He wasn’t one of the romantically inclined characters in the movie, but he was the man who made sure that everyone else would get their new start.  Mother’s Day had yet another role for him to play as the manager of Julia Roberts’s Home Shopping Network personality character.  He wasn’t a huge influence over the story, but his moments on screen stood out for his comedic touch.

Other notable cast members that managed to be in all three movies in the holiday trilogy were Wedil David, Beth Kennedy, Larry Miller, Christine Lakin, and Matthew Walker.  Walker, in particular, had a great scene in Mother’s Day where he played a clown at a party thrown by one of the mothers.  He gave an inspiring speech that helped the mother realize that her children would always love her, regardless of what other things came into their lives.  It was a sweet moment between a clown and a mom.

Notable Stories

Throughout the Holiday Trilogy, many storylines played out.  Some didn’t mean too much, while others were heartwarming tales of love, acceptance, and other things.  Each movie had storylines that mattered and storylines that didn’t.  I want to take a little bit of time to discuss some of my favourites or some of the ones that I thought stood out enough to warrant a mention.

I’ve already written about the storyline in Valentine’s Day where it was two older people sharing their love for one another. This came through some troubles.  The wife in the couple had an affair years earlier with a friend of the husband.  They managed to overcome this trouble, realizing that they loved each other and have for many years.  It showed that love could stand the test of time.  There was a storyline about a gay football player coming out to the public, and a storyline about a man falling in love with a woman who he discovered was a sex phone line worker.

New Year’s Eve reigned in the adult themes a little bit.  The only storyline that I think is worth mentioning (because it’s way above anything else in the movie) is one in which a young delivery man took an older woman on a great night of completing New Year’s resolutions.  It was a great story about a woman discovering who she could be after living a long life of unhappiness.  Zac Efron was the perfect person to open her eyes for her and he had great chemistry with Michele Pfeiffer.  If there is any reason to watch New Year’s Eve, it’s for that storyline.

The one storyline in Mother’s Day that tried to be culturally important was the storyline of Margo Martindale’s character travelling to Atlanta to visit her daughters, both of whom had lied about their home lives.  One daughter was married to a man of Indian descent, who she knew her mother wouldn’t approve of.  The other daughter hadn’t told her mother that she was gay.  The story was about the mother learning about acceptance and equality.  This is an important lesson in modern society.  People need to think about these things more and learn about how to treat people of different backgrounds as equals.  There were other storylines in the movie, such as the family dealing with the death of their mother, or the mother who was worried about marriage because she had been adopted, that brought some depth to the movie.  Mother’s Day might not have handled these stories properly, but the movie tried to do more than simple mother stories.

Three movies made between 2010 and 2016 told the intertwining stories of romance, restarting, and loss through the filter of celebrity.  Garry Marshall took stars from all walks of life and threw them together to create a sense of star power within his stories that gave a unique feel to the proceedings.  It was a quintessentially Garry Marshall trilogy of movies.

There will always be a place in movies for star-studded casts experiencing different dilemmas.  It could be romance like Valentine’s Day or New Year’s Eve.  It could be motherhood like Mother’s Day.  It could be a fiery tower of death like The Towering Inferno (I know I haven’t covered it, and I probably won’t because it’s a good movie, but it had the same sort of star power as these movies for a different time). No matter what the case, there’s always something magical about having a dozen or more recognizable faces lighting up the screen in one movie outing.  It feels special.  It feels novel.

The Holiday Trilogy will always hold a special place in my heart.  They’re not great movies.  Valentine’s Day isn’t bad, but the other two are varied levels of okay at best.  Yet there’s a charm to them that makes them palatable.  Something about the movies, maybe the cast or maybe the Garry Marshall vibe, makes them sweeter than they may have been otherwise.  They are as much groan worthy as they are heart-warming.  There’s stuff to like in each movie and they’re worth it just for that.  I’m glad these movies are in my life.

I’m glad these notes are here too:

• I mentioned The Single Moms Club in this post.
• Garry Marshall, director of Mother’s Day, also directed New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day.
• Christine Lakin made her fifth Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in Mother’s Day.  She was previously in Parental Guidance, New Year’s Eve, Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2, and Valentine’s Day.
• Another five-timer in Mother’s Day was Jon Lovitz.  He had roles in Bark Ranger, Mom and Dad Save the World, Hamburger: The Motion Picutre, and Sandy Wexler.
• Larry Miller reached four appearances in the Sunday “Bad” Movies with Mother’s Day.  He had already appeared in New Year’s Eve, Foodfight!, and Valentine’s Day.
• Sandra Taylor returned to the Sunday “Bad” Movies with Mother’s Day, after being seen in New Year’s Eve, Batman and Robin, and Valentine’s Day.
• Eight different actors have appeared in the Sunday “Bad” Movies in New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s Day, and Mother’s Day.  They are Wedil David, Hector Elizondo, Beth Kennedy, Barbara Marshall, Lily Marshall-Fricker, Sam Marshall, Matthew Walker, and Greg Wilson.
• Jennifer Garner made her third Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance this week.  You may have seen her in Valentine’s Day or Nine Lives before her appearance in Mother’s Day.
• Four actors from New Year’s Eve returned for Mother’s Day.  They were Tom Hines, Penny Marshall, Rob Nagle, and Sean O’Bryan.
• Six actors from Valentine’s Day returned for Mother’s Day.  They were Joseph Leo Bwarie, Adreana Gonzalez, Natalie Machado, Marty Nadler, Julia Roberts, and Paul Vogt.
• Mother’s Day was the second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance for Jennifer Aniston, who made a quick appearance in Mac and Me.
• Kate Hudson returned for a second Sunday “Bad” Movies outing after being featured in 200 Cigarettes.
• Finally, Gianna Simone had a quick return to the Sunday “Bad” Movies after recently showing up in God’s Not Dead 2.
• Have you seen Mother’s Day or either of its two predecessors in the Holiday Trilogy?  What do you think about big ensemble casts of stars?  You can discuss any of this stuff in the comments below.
• Another discussion topic for the comments is the topic of movie recommendations.  If there’s a movie that you think I should watch for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, you can let me know there or on my Twitter feed.  It’s a way to get me to see movies I might not know about.  I’m open to all suggestions.
• You can also find me on snapchat under the username jurassicgriffin.  Sometimes I put clips of bad movies into my story.  Sometimes it’s bottles of Coke.  Sometimes there are other, weirder things.  Check me out.
• Next week’s movie goes back to something I watched a few times when I was a child.  Kung Pow: Enter the Fist is coming up in seven days’ time.  It’s an action packed kung fu parody that I’m excited to revisit.  I hope you’ll join me next week for whatever I write about it.