As I watched Uma Thurman slogging her way through one tough challenge after another in “Motherhood,” I kept thinking, what this movie needs is a scene of perspective. Granted, Uma’s Eliza works hard and is overwhelmed—but someone needed to point out that being a bloggy Mommy in the West Village is hardly akin to raising kids in Burundi or Zimbabwe or even certain neighborhoods in the Bronx or on the South Side of Chicago.
Writer/director Katherine Dieckmann and her still-luminous star surely know this territory, and I wouldn’t dream of belittling the enormous and all-encompassing job of being a mother anywhere on this planet. It’s just that “Motherhood” is almost too documentary-like in its endless scenes of Thurman’s Eliza trying to juggle six or seven balls at once—and too implausible in the one big triumphant scene.
Who’s the audience for this movie? Working mothers? Do you really want to sit through a fictionalized version of your life? I know one thing: it ain’t a guy movie. The last time Anthony Edwards was in a guy movie, it was “Top Gun.” Here Edwards does his constipated-distracted thing as Eliza’s husband, a whiny, self-pitying editor who’s more interested in stacking the house with rare books than helping out with the kids. You want to shake him and say, “Dude, that’s Uma Thurman over there. Pay attention.”
Minnie Driver has some nice scenes as Liza’s sexually deprived and very pregnant best friend, and there’s a clever cameo by a big-name Oscar winner playing herself. But Thurman is in every scene in “Motherhood,” working up a sweat as she climbs the stairs, plans a birthday party, bickers constantly with other yuppie moms and anguishes over her blog, which is titled, “The Bjorn Identity.” OK. We get it.
Well-intentioned? Certainly? Somewhat realistic? Sure. Good performances? Absolutely. But this is one of the most exhausting 90-minute films in recent memory.