Mother, Couch is the type of movie with a jaw-dropping cast that you keep hoping and praying gets better but never turns that corner. And that’s saying something for a film that mercifully ends around the 90-minute mark. The film has worthy performances, particularly from its star, Ewan McGregor, who does what he can to elevate the material.
However, Mother, Couch is more interested in its existential mood than in what will draw the audience in. The story is not engaging or interesting, and, for that matter, entertaining is the story. That’s the one thing about some first-time directors—they forget their audience.
Mother, Couch Review and Synopsis
Mother, Couch’s story is set in a remote furniture store, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, run by Marcus (Academy Award winner F. Murray Abraham) and his loyal young associate, Bella (Bones & All’s Taylor Russell). Bella finds an older adult woman, Mother (Ellen Burstyn), planting herself on one of the outlet’s green couches and refusing to leave.
Naturally, the family is notified, and they all converge at the store, wondering why their mother won’t get up. This includes the oldest, Gruffudd (House of the Dragon’s Rhys Ifans), the youngest sibling, David (Ewan McGregor), his wife (Lake Bell), and his children. The older sister, Linda (Lara Flynn Boyle), also arrives, and they all ask their mother the same thing: Why won’t you leave?
Ewan McGregor stars in Mother, Couch and It’s an Unmitigated Disaster
Mother, Couch is based on Jerker Virdborg’s 2020 Swedish novel Mamma i soffa. Directed by Niclas Larsson, who also wrote the film adaptation. This is the filmmaker’s first feature film. It’s an ambitious project in surrealist filmmaking. However, if you think you’re working into such dark comedies as I’m Thinking of Ending Things, Beau Is Afraid, or Dream Scenario, you are mistaken.
The fact is Mother, Couch is muddled, and before you point out that’s the nature of the genre, you would be wrong. The best surreality films strive to maintain a clear, thematic vision. However, Larrsson’s film lacks thematic consistency and the emotional resonance it strives for. In fact, the latter is almost achieved with Ewan McGregor’s acute manic turn but falls short.
Is Mother, Couch Worth Watching?
Despite her willpower to keep the film around an hour and a half, Mother, Couch is agonizingly sluggish. Any conflict and tension between characters, particularly the siblings, is manufactured and forced. They lack depth, particularly Burstyn’s titular character and Ifans’s Gruffudd. Additionally, there is the added flaw of being unable to offer a character the audience can relate to.
The movie is not worth watching for those reasons, but the first and foremost strike against Larsson’s film is that it’s just not entertaining. The final product’s existential crisis tone and saccharine ending are incongruous. The film is a journey with a destination that not only confuses the audience about how they got there but also makes a grave mistake.
Being so self-serving, the result causes the viewer to have an apathetic reaction to how they arrived.
You can watch Ewan McGregor in Mother, Couch only in theaters this holiday weekend starting on July 5th.
4/10
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