I have always enjoyed going to the movies because of the wide range of emotions I can experience. No matter what kind of day I have had in the real world, once I am in that theater I know that whatever movie I am going to see will change my mood. For me though I never seek out a certain kind of movie, instead I just want that feeling to come to me naturally. Even though I can either be entertained or not, once in awhile I come across a movie that just makes me happy, something I was during “The Meddler”
Marnie (Susan Sarandon) recently lost her husband and has done what any mother would do when she is alone, she moves closer to her daughter. Lori (Rose Byrne) is a screenwriter who lives in L.A. and tries to keep her mother at arms length, something that is quite difficult since her mother is always around. Marnie doesn’t mean to be intrusive, she is just the helping type, even going as far as paying for one of her daughter’s friend’s dream weeding. While her daughter seems not to be enjoying life that much at the moment, Marnie is, as her husband left her in a position where she would not have to worry about much. Marnie doesn’t spend all her time interfering in her daughter’s life, she also has time to volunteer at a hospital, be driver for a kid she met at the Apple store, and even meet a love intereste named Zipper (J.K. Simmons) who has a love for chickens. With all that going on you would think there is little time for actual meddling, but don’t worry there is plenty of that.
While watching this, I felt often like I was watching a “One Woman” show on Broadway, but with other characters popping of once in a while. Sarandon is a tour de force and gives one of the better performances in her storied career. There is no doubt Sarandon is the sun of this movie’s solar system and all the other actors are the planets that circle her. As good as Sarandon is, you have to also enjoy Lorene Scafaria’s script, which is a stealer the whole way through. Scafaria also takes care of directing duties and is responsible for a very well made movie. This is one of those movies that just made me smile. With the right amount of humor and the message the film conveys, you can’t help but see how good its aura is, a description you thought you would never hear in a review. If you can’t tell I really enjoyed this movie, something I didn’t think much about much before seeing it. Now that I have though I couldn’t recommend it more, and think that everybody should take their mother to see it, either to show her what its like to be her child, or to say thank you for not being this way. While I say that, Marnie would be my second choice after my own mother, because in my eyes she is not so much the meddler as the one who leads.
